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The National Negro Labor Council

Back in the day on October 27th, 1951, the National Negro Labor Council was founded in Cincinnati, Ohio. Delegates from across the country approved a program for the newly formed organization that set out to promote civil rights within the labor movement. Labor leader William Hood delivered a speech at the founding convention titled, “Uncle Tom is Dead,” and Paul Robeson sang and spoke as well. Delegates approved a program and agenda for the NNLC that called for the end of discrimination in the workplace, the construction of 100,000 new jobs for African-Americans, and making the Fair Employment Practices Committee clauses a part of union contract negotiations. Detractors of the organization, which unfortunately included the AFL and the CIO, tried to discredit the NNLC as a communist-front, and its leaders were eventually called before the House on Un-American Activities.

After five years, the NNLC folded making it one of the most short-lived but important civil rights groups, and for that, should never be forgotten.

For Uprising, this is your truth professa’ saying it’s no mystery why they conceal our people’s history