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Dr. King understood this connection deeply. When he spoke to the AFL-CIO in 1961, he made it clear: "Our needs are identical with labor's needs: decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old-age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children, and respect in the community."
Yet when King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, he was in Memphis supporting sanitation workers fighting to form a union. And those rail unions that helped anchor the civil rights movement? Most didn't allow Black Americans to join until King and others forced them to change.
This MLK Day, we're witnessing that same fusion of labor power and civil rights struggle in Minneapolis. After ICE killed Renee Good on January 7 and unleashed a campaign of terror against immigrant and non-immigrant workers alike, dozens of unions — including SEIU, UNITE HERE, transit workers, educators, and the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation — have joined with community organizations to call for a statewide action this Friday, January 23: no work, no school, no shopping.
Workers across Minnesota are refusing to participate in business as usual until ICE leaves their communities. It's exactly the kind of united working-class action King called for in his final years.
Today, rail carriers still refuse to recognize MLK Day as a paid holiday, even as one in three U.S. workers receive it. Railroad Workers United calls on all carriers to grant this holiday to rail workers. Until they do, we continue the struggle King described in his final year — the fight to redistribute economic and political power to working people of all races.
The lesson from the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters to the streets of Minneapolis today rings true: our unions must be more than contract enforcers. They must be anchors for economic justice and civil rights. That's the work King died for. That's the work that continues.
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