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Vol. 73/No. 47      December 7, 2009

 
25, 50 and 75 years ago
 
December 7, 1984
WASHINGTON—Protests demanding an end to Washington’s complicity with the racist South African government and an end to apartheid have continued here for a week. Actions have included sit-ins at the South African embassy—followed by arrests of protesters—and daily picket lines outside the embassy.

The immediate demand is the release of 13 South African labor leaders who have not been heard from since South African cops arrested them following the two-day strike in that country November 5-6.

The protests began on November 21, when Walter Fauntroy, Washington’s nonvoting delegate to Congress; Mary Berry, a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission; and Randall Robinson, director of TransAfrica, the Black lobby for Africa and the Caribbean, were arrested by uniformed Secret Service agents for refusing to leave the South African embassy.  
 
December 7, 1959
The recent conference held in Cleveland to organize an American Negro Labor Council was a historic step both for the Negro people and for organized labor. The response to the conference call and the plans laid by the delegates indicate that an important movement is in process of being born. It is a movement which will greatly advance the fight against Jim Crow and greatly strengthen the power of organized labor.

“More than 300 Negro labor leaders holding responsible administrative and management positions within the AFL-CIO and other independent unions” attended the conference, according to the Nov. 28 Michigan Chronicle.

Among those at the Cleveland conference were unionists from New York, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, St. Louis, Youngstown, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Columbus, Marietta and St. Clairsville, Ohio.  
 
December 8, 1934
The Commission on Unemployment of the Workers Party Convention, with Anthony Ramuglia, president of the National Unemployed League (NUL) presiding, took up a number of problems connected with the relation of the Workers Party to the NUL and the tactics to be used in building and extending the influence of the movement.

A decision was taken to recognize the National Unemployed League as the largest and most effective organization in that vast and relatively untapped field, and to place the Workers Party in full support of the NUL, working vigorously for its extension.

Workers Party tactics and principles in its unemployed work follow closely the tactics applied in the past by the American Workers Party and the Communist League of America and which have proved their correctness and effectiveness.  
 
 
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