Fayetteville : Union boss talks on King
Posted on Thursday, February 1, 2007
FAYETTEVILLE — A 26-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. faced death threats and feared for his followers as leader of a 1956 boycott against the Montgomery, Ala., bus system.
“He thought he was going to cost all of these people their jobs, he thought his family was going to die,” Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, said Wednesday at the University of Arkansas.
“He thought he had led them the wrong way.”
Late one sleepless night, Roberts said, King sat in his kitchen confused and consumed with stress, when an epiphany came to him.
He should do what he knew was right, Roberts said. It’s a lesson Roberts tried to convey to students at the Fayetteville campus’s Leflar Law Center.
Roberts’ talk, “Labor and Civil Rights — The King Legacy,” was part of UA’s Hartman Hotz Lecture Series. A sixthgeneration coal miner, Roberts drew parallels between the struggles of the civil rights and labor movements.
In both instances, people risked their lives to fight established systems, and in both cases their sacrifices benefited the greater good, he said.
“It’s hard to do what’s right,” Roberts said. “It’s hard to do what God would want you to do.”
Cyndi Nance, dean of the law school, said the school brought Roberts, who is white, to UA to kick off events for Black History Month in February and to expose students to a different perspective.
“We wanted to show that it didn’t have to be a person of color to talk about the civil rights movement,” Nance said. “We wanted to think outside of the box on this one.”
The link between the two movements is not a new one. In a Dec. 11, 1961, speech to the AFL-CIO, King said the plight of American blacks mirrored the struggles of the labor movement.
“We are confronted by powerful forces telling us to rely on the goodwill and understanding of those who profit by exploiting us,” King said in his speech. “They deplore our discontent, they resent our will to organize, so that we may guarantee that humanity will prevail and equality will be exacted.”
A. Philip Randolph, a trade union and civil rights activist, first proposed a march on Washington in 1941 to push for equal job opportunities for blacks. It wasn’t until 22 years later that his idea came to fruition with the August 28, 1963, march on Washington in which King made his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
It takes many people willing to stand up for what they believe in to enact change, Roberts said. “The moment you say it’s all right for someone to be discriminated against, it’s all right for everyone to be discriminated against,” he said. Kevin Vogeltanz, 25, a firstyear law student from New Orleans, said he found Roberts’ words inspirational and his historical anecdotes meaningful. Kendall Pringle, 32, a secondyear law student from Charleston, S. C., said Roberts “addressed some controversial issues, but he did it in a way that would make a person think.” Founded in 1890, the United Mine Workers is an independent union with a diverse membership including coal miners, clean coal technicians, healthcare workers, truck drivers and school employees spanning the U. S. and Canada. Roberts has been president since October 1995. “You’re going to be challenged in your lifetime,” he told the students. “When it’s your turn, look around you and just try to do what’s right.”
To contact this reporter: cpark@arkansasonline. com
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