December 31, 1976
OCEANSIDE, Calif.--Three hundred people jammed into the Balderrama Community Center here December 14 to demand the release of fourteen imprisoned Black marines at Camp Pendleton.

The marine base, the largest on the West Coast, is located in this small city, thirty miles north of San Diego.

The crowd, mainly from Oceanside's Black community, heard speeches by local Black leaders and by Rev. Jesse Jackson, head of the Chicago-based civil rights group Operation PUSH.

The Pendleton Fourteen, as the jailed marines are now called, are accused of conspiracy to commit murder. After a series of racist provocations by the Ku Klux Klan on the base, the fourteen Black soldiers--the marine brass allege--attacked what they believed to be a Ku Klux Klan party.

"When the Klan threatens us in Oceanside, we should get excited not just in Oceanside, but everywhere," Jackson said.

"We must mobilize...to keep these fourteen men from being railroaded," Jackson said. "The military has the responsibility to exonerate these men."

Jackson charged that marine officials are trying to keep the issue of the Klan's racist provocations out of the military trial of the Pendleton Fourteen.

When the fourteen Black marines were first arrested, Pendleton authorities portrayed the attack on the white soldiers as totally unprovoked. The San Diego Urban League later looked into the arrests and uncovered information about the Klan's anti-Black harassment on the base.  
 
December 31, 1951
The year 1951 opened with the promulgation of the government wage-freeze last January, and closed with a challenge to that wage-freeze on the part of over a million steel workers. Between these two events came the unprecedented resignation of all labor members from government war agencies and the calling of a national United Labor Conference in Washington on March 21.

Thus while 1951 was not marked by great labor strike struggles, events of the year clearly foreshadow the coming social crisis in America.

The issue of the year has been the wage-freeze. The workers have not been willing to reconcile themselves to any freeze on wages while prices and taxes mount skyward. The union officialdom has also opposed the wage-freeze, reflecting, in this stand, the sentiments of the ranks. However, the Murray-Green policy of supporting the Truman administration and its war program has prevented the unions from developing a real offensive against discriminatory wage controls. The politics of the union leaders have repeatedly clashed with the needs of the ranks.

The government wage-freeze order was made effective on Jan. 25, 1951. Under this order, all contracts between unions and employers signed after that date were to be reviewed by the Wage Stabilization Board. Wage increases were to be restricted to 10% above the pay level of Jan. 10, 1950.

The Truman administration indicated that it intends to hold workers' wages within this limit, despite the rise of both prices and profits to the highest levels in history.  
 
 
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