Vol. 79/No. 37 October 19, 2015
October 19, 1990
KANSAS CITY, Missouri — After 18 months working under an expired contract, 650 members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 576 went out on strike September 22, against Wilson Foods Corp. in Marshall, Missouri.The 367-6 strike vote came after the company refused to negotiate and posted a notice in the plant declaring that the company’s final proposal would go into effect the following week. The union had proposed a wage freeze and retention of current benefits. “It’s time that either we take a stand or we don’t,” said Ray Arnett, a union steward at the hog-slaughtering plant.
The company’s proposal included cutting the base wage from $9.24 an hour to $7.50 and the new-hire rate from $7.50 to $6.00.
October 18, 1965
Fidel Castro spoke in Havana Oct. 3 on the occasion of the installation of the newly established central committee of Cuba’s revolutionary party. He discussed the question of Cuban emigration to the U.S.; read “Che” Guevara’s letter announcing his decision to leave Cuba; and reiterated Cuba’s ideological independence of both Moscow and Peking.Saluting Guevara as a revolutionary and comrade-in-arms, he declared that when “Che” proposed to go abroad to participate in the struggle against imperialism, “it was our duty to resign ourselves to it” because “we have a responsibility for helping the revolutionary movement to the best of our ability.” He added: “That is true liberty … those who leave to wield a rifle against the shackles of imperialism.”
October 19, 1940
A Negro committee this week declared it “repudiated and denounced” a statement from the White House which implied that the committee had approved Roosevelt’s policy of segregation of Negro units in the armed forces.The committee of three — A. Phillip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, T. Arnold Hill, and Walter White, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People — characterized the White House statement as a “trick.”
The telegram also declared:
“Many enlisted men in these segregated units have made repeated protests at being forced to serve as hostlers and servants to white army officers. We further question that Jim Crow policy of the army ‘has been proven satisfactory.’”
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