Coretta Scott King and Full Employment

Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change, correspondence and printed materials, 1976 [page 39]

Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change, correspondence and printed materials, 1976 [page 38]

Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change, correspondence and printed materials, 1976 [page 84]

Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change, correspondence and printed materials, 1976 [page 43]

Patrick E. Gorman, Speech, 1976 [page 1]

Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change, correspondence and printed materials, 1976 [page 4]

Coretta Scott King with E. L. Abercrombie at a Laundry Workers Union Local 218 event, Atlanta, Georgia, early 1970s.

Mail-in invitation for the January 14, 1976 Full Employment Conference on the eighth birthday celebration of Dr. King.
Courtesy of Southern Labor Archives, Georgia State University, AFL-CIO Civil Rights Department, Southern Office records.
Poster for January 15 march and rally for Full Employment organized by the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Social Change.
Courtesy of Southern Labor Archives, Georgia State University, AFL-CIO Civil Rights Department, Southern Office records.
Atlanta Constitution article published five days before the Full Employment march in Atlanta. Mrs. King predicts a huge march that may be the "most significant demonstration since the march on Washington."
Courtesy of Southern Labor Archives, Georgia State University, AFL-CIO Civil Rights Department, Southern Office records.
January edition of the National Committee for Full Employment newsletter. In an article on Dr. King's birthday celebration, Mrs. King is quoted asking, "What good is the legal right to sit in a restaurant if one cannot afford the price of its food, and what good is the promise of fair employment when there is no employment?"
Courtesy of Southern Labor Archives, Georgia State University, AFL-CIO Civil Rights Department, Southern Office records.
Text of speech given by Patrick Gorman, secretary-treasurer of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America, AFL-CIO, at the Full Employment Conference. Asked to speak on "Organized Labor and the Unemployed," Gorman exhorts activists to fight against their jobs being taken by machines for their employers' profits.
Courtesy of Southern Labor Archives, Georgia State University, Patrick E. Gorman collection.
March letter from Coretta Scott King to E.T. Kehrer thanking him for assistance "contacting labor leaders" to plan that year's Conference on Full Employment.
Courtesy of Southern Labor Archives, Georgia State University, AFL-CIO Civil Rights Department, Southern Office records.
Photograph of Coretta Scott King (center) with E. L. Abercrombie (right) and an unidentified man at the 14th Southern Meeting of Laundry, Dry Cleaning, and Dye House Workers Local 218.
Courtesy of Southern Labor Archives, Georgia State University, E. L. Abercrombie papers.

In celebration of his birthday the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center held annual conferences where the public could hear civil rights leaders speak. The 1976 theme was full employment, an economic ideal where everyone willing and able to work could find a job. Speaking days before the rally, Coretta Scott King “predicted ‘a massive demonstration that will combine leaders on every level and groups like the National Urban League, the NAACP, the United Auto Workers, Teamsters, and women’s groups.’” Careful to include both civil rights and labor groups, King envisioned participants fighting for economic rights that had been undermined by rampant inflation. In the January edition of Focus on Full Employment, King said, “For black Americans, the economic policies and actions of the past few years have been nothing less than a frontal assault on all the gains and victories of the ’60s. To my mind, the current policies amount to nothing less than the repeal of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the gutting of the promise of justice.” Thanks in part to her advocacy, Congress passed the Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act in 1978, which required the federal government to promote full employment nationwide.

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