Vol. 79/No. 21 June 8, 2015
June 8, 1990
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — “If it weren’t for the fact that I know I’m in the United States,” said Clinton Adlum as he walked down a rural dirt road, “from the conditions I have observed, much of this area could be in any Third World country.”Speaking to a group of 20 Black farmers, Adlum, the first secretary of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C., went on to describe the many advances for farmers and Blacks made by the Cuban revolution in the past 31 years. The farmers were members of the Western Alabama Farmers Cooperative.
“In Cuba we have gotten rid of race discrimination,” Adlum pointed out. “Of course, there are still people with racist ideas, totally eradicating such ideas will take much longer — but racial discrimination is against the law and that is enforced.”
June 7, 1965
NEW YORK — Elements of another social explosion in the big city ghettos are building up. Two incidents in the same Bronx slum neighborhood where crowds of passersby objected to arrests of Negro youths are symptoms of this. Hatred and mistrust of the police are very widespread and deep among ordinary decent people in the ghettos. This attitude flows in part from many incidents of racial prejudice, callousness and brutality on the part of police.The people in the ghettos themselves are the chief victims of the common crime. Their apartments are broken into with an infuriating regularity. But the police almost never solve such crimes.
Rackets like dope pushing, prostitution, and the pawning of stolen goods flourish more or less openly. The honest ghetto resident concludes that the cops must be involved.
June 8, 1940
More than 5,000 workers of the Federal Shipbuilding Company [in Kearny, N.J.] met on May 30 and by overwhelming majority voted to strike.They had grievances aplenty, the bosses were stalling, the old contract had expired the day before and a new one was nowhere in sight, and these good union men were tired of being kicked around.
When they voted to strike, they were well aware of the “defense program” ballyhoo. If they hadn’t been, their own leaders had made them listen to it all over again, arguing vainly for a further delay to continue negotiations.
The union was asking for 10 cents an hour increase in pay — the men were getting about the lowest scales in any shipyard in the country. The company was “offering” nothing except an increase of 2½ to 4 cents an hour.
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