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Vol. 78/No. 8      March 3, 2014

 
9. 25, 50, and 75 Years Ago
 

March 10, 1989

STOCKHOLM, Sweden — More than 40 people attended a defense rally here for Mark Curtis on February 18. The featured speaker was Mark Curtis Defense Committee leader Kate Kaku, who is a laid-off packinghouse worker in Des Moines, Iowa, and the wife of Mark Curtis.

Curtis is serving 25 years in an Iowa prison, convicted on phony charges of rape and burglary. The defense committee says he is being victimized because of his political and union activities.

Kaku described the kind of political activities Curtis was involved in leading up to his arrest, from supporting the rights of immigrant workers to fighting against cop racism. “What Mark was doing is not unique,” stressed Kaku. “It is the kind of political activity that thousands and thousands of vanguard workers around the world are participating in.”

March 2, 1964

William Worthy, well-known correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American, scored a notable victory for freedom of travel Feb. 20 when a three-judge federal appeals court in New Orleans threw out his conviction for going to Cuba and returning without a passport. The appeals court declared unconstitutional the federal law which prohibits a citizen from leaving or entering the country without a valid passport.

Worthy was convicted of this charge in August 1962 and was sentenced to three months in jail plus nine months on probation.

His conviction was based on the fact he had gone to Cuba in July 1961 and returned in October of that year without a passport. Worthy was without a passport as a result of his earlier defiance of State Department efforts to curb the right to travel. In 1955 he challenged the ban on travel to China and Hungary by visiting these countries.

March 3, 1939

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 20 — The strike of 550 employees of the Goodrich Rubber plant was successfully terminated today when Local No. 43 of the United Rubber Workers Union obtained the approval of the rank and file to an agreement maintaining the 30-hour week and the four six-hour shifts in the 24-hour production departments of the plant.

The strike beginning Jan. 30 and lasting 20 days was called when management declared plans to change the number of shifts in the production departments which operate twenty-four hours a day to three shifts instead of the four six-hour shifts, indicating a move to return to the eight hour day.

The agreement signed is effective until October 31 and provides for the settlement of further grievances or complaints concerning temporary changes in the hours of labor by meetings between the union committees and the management.  
 
 
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