Listen to today’s Subversive Historian

The National Negro Labor Council by Subversive Historian Gabriel San Roman

Fifty-seven years ago on this day in people’s history, the National Negro Labor Council was founded in Cincinnati, Ohio. On October 27th, 1951, 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 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, it should never be forgotten by history.

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