The American Negro Labor Congress was established in 1925 by the Communist Party as a vehicle for advancing the rights of African-Americans, propagandizing for communism within the black community and recruiting African-American members for the party. The organization attacked the segregationist practices of many of the unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor; it also campaigned against lynching, the disfranchisement of black Americans, and Jim Crow laws. The group was renamed the League of Struggle for Negro Rights in 1930.
Famous quotes containing the words american, negro, labor and/or congress:
“If the American people don’t love me, their descendants will.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the shadowy and of the Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout history, the powers of single blacks flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)
“The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve, free to tramp the highways of this great country, he enjoys universal suffrage, and by that right, he has forged chains around his limbs. The reward that he receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting the right of boycott, of picketing, of everything, except the right to be robbed of the fruits of his labor.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“I date the end of the old republic and the birth of the empire to the invention, in the late thirties, of air conditioning. Before air conditioning, Washington was deserted from mid-June to September.... But after air conditioning and the Second World War arrived, more or less at the same time, Congress sits and sits while the presidents—or at least their staffs—never stop making mischief.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)