Martin Luther King Jr. exemplified the historic struggle for justice, dignity, and equality for all. On Monday, January 20th, we officially honor his life and legacy in the civil rights and labor movements.
King and Van Arsdale are pictured here together attending the first meeting of the Brotherhood Party at the Commodore Hotel in Manhattan, October 1961.
King was born on January 15, 1929. As president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), he became the most prominent leader of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. He led the Montgomery bus boycott, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and the march for voting rights in Selma, Alabama.
Under the leadership of Harry Van Arsdale Jr., both Local 3 and the New York City Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, formed a deep connection with Martin Luther King Jr. and the campaigns he led. When King and others were arrested for a sit-in at lunch counters in Atlanta, Georgia in October 1960, Van Arsdale wrote a letter in solidarity on behalf of the CLC and its 1 million affiliated members, who voted to send $1,000 in monetary support as well. A year later, King addressed the first meeting of the Brotherhood Party, organized by Van Arsdale, at the Hotel Commodore in Manhattan. For the historic March on Washington in August 1963, Local 3 Fixture Division member Leroy Tempro was the labor coordinator, bringing more than 400 members of Local 3 and 50,000 trade unionists to the nation's capital. And in 1965, at the invitation of King himself, Van Arsdale and CLC Secretary Morris Iushewitz went to Selma to lend their support to the movement for voting rights, which culminated in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
A. Philip Randolph, Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr., and Harry Van Arsdale Jr.
At the age of 39 years old, King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was actively supporting African-American sanitation workers on strike during a citywide labor dispute over the right to organize a union and improve their working conditions.
In his honor, we observe Martin Luther King Day every year on the third Monday of January.
At the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28th, 1963, left to right: David Sullivan, International President of the Building Service Employees Union (now the SEIU); NYC Central Labor Council Treasurer William Bowe; and NYC CLC President and Local 3 Business Manager Harry Van Arsdale Jr.
Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King Jr., Harry Van Arsdale Jr., and Bayard Rustin.
