She was speaking to a predominantly Black and Latina audience at an April 13 Loop Junior College meeting sponsored by AWARA (Aware Women for the ERA).

More Black and women's organizations are recognizing the double jeopardy of being Black and female in this society. Eichelberger announced that the recent convention of the National Association of Black Women Attorneys pledged to support the ERA.

Also the Chicago chapter of the National Council of Negro Women has endorsed the May 16 national ERA march.

Another reason why Black women are turning toward the ERA struggle is that they see in the anti-ERA movement the same forces that are fighting against Black rights.

"It's the same thing they do with busing," she continued. "They say 'Oh we think Black children deserve a decent education. We don't oppose busing because we're racists. It's just that we think busing isn't necessary.' And then, these so-called nonracists viciously attack Black people in Boston."

"Black women have an oppression that is different than Black men and white women," Eichelberger explained, summing up the importance of Black women organizing themselves to participate in the women's and Black rights struggles.
 
May 7, 1951
A handful of huge corporate farm interests in the South, the Southwest and the West Coast are working might and main to reintroduce peonage in this country. These agricultural monopolists who so ruthlessly exploit several million native and foreign migratory workers now seek to assure themselves of a vast reserve of imported labor in order to further drive down agricultural working and living standards. They are pressing hard for such legislation as the Senate bill 984, sponsored by Sen. Ellender of Louisiana, a bill that would secure large-scale importation of Mexican workers.

These charges were flatly made on the Senate floor by Sen. Chavez of New Mexico, not a radical by any stretch of the imagination, but a hard-boiled supporter of the capitalist system.

Over the past years these corporate farms have exploited the so-called wetbacks, or migrant workers from Mexico, who enter this country illegally by crossing the Rio Grande and who are then completely at the mercy of their employers. The number of these wetbacks is estimated at above a million. Last year alone, 500,000 of them were deported.

"People who are supposed to be outstanding citizens in their community have told me that they have the least trouble with a wetback. Certainly they do not have as much trouble with him as with a contract worker. They can take care of a wetback. If he complains or rebels or gripes, he is reported to the Immigration Bureau. He is at a disadvantage," said Chavez.  
 
 
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