January 31, 1975

WASHINGTON, D.C.—A bitter wind whipped around the White House Jan. 15, but it failed to deter 4,500 demonstrators, the overwhelming majority of them Black, who were marching here to demand jobs.

The protest was part of a national day of actions against unemployment and in commemoration of the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.

The marchers —high school and college students, church and community activists, and trade unionists —chanted "Jobs for All!" and sang civil rights songs as they wound their way around the White House. Clusters of Black government employees gathered at the street corners to cheer them on, some joining the demonstration.

Meanwhile, well-dressed business executives and government officials, sitting in their limousines at the White House curb, peered sullenly out at the crowd.

Many of the marchers were out of work. They quickly picked up the spontaneous chant of one group of high school students: "We want a J-O-B so we can E-A-T!"  
 

January 30, 1950

Truman is preparing to intervene personally and directly against the militant coal miners, who have been battling courageously for eight months for wage increases, a strengthened welfare and pensions program, and the retention of union security safeguards.

The pretext for the threatened intervention, which may take the form of a Taft-Hartley injunction under the "national emergency" clause, is the refusal of some 70,000 soft coal miners, primarily in the mines of the steel corporations, to discontinue their strike against the stalling of the operators.

Through a statement by Dr. James Boyd, Director of the Bureau of Mines, to the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee yesterday, the Truman administration laid the basis for Taft-Hartley action by claiming that coal production has declined to the point where "the national economy, health and welfare is now or soon will be imperiled."

Last week, the coal company stores, like those of U.S. Steel's H.C. Frick Coke Co., began to cut off the miners' credit. It is a tribute to the miners' union that in the face of these odds, they are still full of fight, defiant as ever.  
 
 
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