Civil rights, economic and social justice, the rights of workers to bargain collectively…the air here at the White House was thick with these sentiments today.
They were brought to us by eight of the surviving members of the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike, who came to the White House today for the first time in their lives.
President Barack Obama talks with participants from the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike, an iconic campaign in civil rights and labor rights history, during a meeting in the Map Room of the White House, April 29, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)
If that long-ago strike sticks out in your mind, it’s because Dr. Martin Luther King went to Memphis to support the almost entirely African-American sanitation workforce as they struck for union recognition, better pay, safer working conditions, and, fundamentally, respect.
It was there, on April 3, that Dr. King delivered his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech.
And it was there, on April 4, when that amazing man was taken from us.
Please, if you do nothing else today, read (or reread) that speech. Read it to yourself, to your partner, to your parents and to your kids. You would be hard-pressed to find another document that so perfectly weaves together the beautiful yet all too fragile fabric of the historical struggle for basic human rights.
Fonte: White House