Joining hands for freedom

Solidarity means economic and social justice for all, regardless of race. That commitment created the coalition that helped fuel early UAW victories and continues to define us.

Within the ranks and around the world, this union’s stance for racial equality has been undeniable. When black workers faced discrimination at the 1939 UAW Constitutional Convention in St. Louis, the union voted not to hold its convention there again.

When white workers walked out in refusal to work next to blacks during the early 1940s, such as at Detroit’s Packard plant, the union wasted no time in getting them back to work.

We were arm in arm with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. We marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., helping to organize the 1963 March on Washington. We bailed out Freedom Riders who were arrested during efforts to integrate the South.

When the University of Michigan’s affirmative action programs were challenged in the Supreme Court in 2003, the UAW filed an amicus brief in support of the school’s programs.

The fight for workers’ rights cannot be separated from the fight for racial justice. That’s something the UAW has known from the start.

Sandra Davis

Photos courtesy Walter P. Reuther Library, Wayne State University, Detroit

Walter Reuther leads the massive March on Washington with A. Philip Randolph, center, and others in 1963 in support of the Civil Rights Act, which passed the following year.

Below: Walter Reuther and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Detroit in 1966. The two men spoke frequently and Reuther loaned King office space in Solidarity House – the UAW’s headquarters – in 1963 when he was planning a civil rights march for Detroit.