The Nation : 10,000 Rally to Protest Low Wage Rate

About 10,000 union members and civil rights activists rallied in Atlanta for jobs with better pay and better benefits. “People aren’t poor because they don’t have jobs, but because of the low pay for the jobs they’ve got,” Texas Commissioner of Agriculture Jim Hightower told the crowd. The rally at the Atlanta Civic Center marked the end of a four-state “pilgrimage for economic justice” by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The journey began in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 20 years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in that city. The pilgrimage demonstrated the “rebirth of the coalition of labor unions and civil rights workers seeking full employment with decent wages,” said the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, president of the SCLC, which King founded. “The current minimum wage ($3.35 an hour) just won’t do it.”