---
title: The Labor Behind Desegregating the Labor Movement
date: 2023-10-18T05:30:00-04:00
author: University of Maryland
canonical_url: "https://today.umd.edu/the-labor-behind-desegregating-the-labor-movement"
section: Articles
---
# The Labor Behind Desegregating the Labor Movement

*October 18, 2023* — by [Maggie Haslam](/author/maggie-haslam)


> Special Collections and University Archives Digitizes Largest Collection of AFL-CIO Documents on Civil Rights

*1553c1f1 7f1c 420c a269 5571b8a6dc29 1920x1080 — United Auto Workers President Walter Reuther (center) links arms with Black advocates during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. Reuther was a steadfast supporter of civil rights and friend of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.; he helped mobilize other unions to march that day, despite AFL-CIO President George Meany’s lackluster support.*

Just days after the National Guard descended on Little Rock, Ark. to ensure nine black students could safely pass segregationist protesters to enter a formerly all-white high school, the United Packhouse Workers of America union president sent a telegram to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, writing, “When violence can be used to maintain injustice, juveniles and adults, both, can assume that violence pays dividends.”

It was a rare statement of support at a time when labor organizations were deeply divided on segregation. Many union leaders, particularly in the South, either decried Eisenhower’s decision or were reluctant to publicly endorse it.

Now, the yellowed 1957 Western Union telegram is part of a newly digitized University of Maryland Libraries collection that documents the hard-fought battle against discrimination within the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), and demonstrates how union politics, protests and behind-the-scenes support bolstered the civil rights movement in the United States.

[“Advancing Workers’ Rights in the American South: Digitizing the Records of the AFL-CIO’s Civil Rights Division”](https://digital.lib.umd.edu/awr) features over 90,000 selected documents—including letters, memos, newspapers, films and audio recordings—from 55 years of work by the AFL-CIO Civil Rights Division, available online to the public for the first time. A collaboration between the University of Maryland Libraries and Georgia State University, the digitization project was supported by a $350,000 grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources.


*A telegram to Martin Luther King Jr. advising him that Don Slaiman and other union leaders would join him in Selma, Alabama — The 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, marked a pivotal moment for the AFL’s public support of civil rights, with AFL-CIO President George Meany sending union leaders to march in response to a telegram from King.*




**Topics:** [Research](https://today.umd.edu/tags/research)


**Tags:** [Libraries](https://today.umd.edu/topic/libraries), [Research](https://today.umd.edu/topic/research)


**Units:** [University Libraries](https://today.umd.edu/topic/university-libraries)