General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: We Live In The Emotional And Economic Wreckage Of This Broken Home.... [View all]bigtree
(94,197 posts). . . and it's insistence on keeping economic concerns about opportunity and work at the forefront of their every activism and advocacy.
I do know that many like Bayard Rustin were rebuffed by a racist (at the time) and cliquish white union leadership and membership when he worked to forge alliances that he felt would advance his own peoples potential for economic successes.
I grew up in DC and remember the Tent City and the Poor Peoples campaign. I remember the economic issues underlying the fight for the ERA and for Affirmative Action. I remember Dr. Kings insistence that there be actual legislation to provide jobs with a living wage.
I'm not sure about white liberals, but, blacks during that time were all about opportunity and jobs. Most of my father's rise in the military and in government grew out of the civil rights movement at the time and Kennedy and Johnson's executive orders and the Civil Rights Act which ushered in a new era of employment prospects in government and elsewhere.