By UTU International President Mike Futhey

Brothers and Sisters:

I was a month shy of my 18th birthday and in high school in Memphis, Tenn., the day Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated there.

I recall the morning paper of April 4, 1968, reporting on his previous night’s, "I've Been to the Mountaintop," speech in support of 1,300 striking Memphis sanitation workers, who were protesting horrendous working conditions and low pay.

And that evening, Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis.

The subject of striking workers, civil rights and Dr. King dominated discussions in Memphis schools and at Memphis dinner tables for the following weeks. It is an event I shall never forget, and it is a time in history that had significant influence on my decision to become a committed trade unionist.

Dr. King’s, "I've Been to the Mountaintop," speech could well have been delivered at every union hall in America. Think of his words in the context of our own struggle for equitable wages, benefits and working conditions:

"Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation ... It means that we've got to stay together. We've got to stay together and maintain unity."

Dr. King was not simply a leader within the African-American community. He was an American leader with vision and courage whose voice rose on behalf of every American working family, regardless of race or religion. His message was one of equality, inclusiveness, diversity and unity, and that is a message the union movement and the United Transportation Union sends and celebrates today and every day.

Each of us working in the transportation industries respects a special bond with Dr. King and the civil rights movement, because it was on the buses and passenger and commuter trains we operate that the civil rights struggle -- as in the schools, public facilities and elsewhere -- was hard-fought and won.

Long before one of the bravest of American women -- Rosa Parks -- refused in 1955 to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Ala., there was a struggle for equality on the intercity buses and trains in America.

As early as the 1880s, southern states enacted what were known as "Jim Crow laws," requiring railroads to provide racially segregated transportation facilities. Transportation historians recall that in 1887, the Rev. William Council, an African-American who was principal of an Alabama school, purchased a first-class ticket for a train ride leaving Chattanooga, Tenn. Shortly after the train moved out of the station, he was beaten for being in a "white's only" first-class passenger car.

The Interstate Commerce Commission, rather than ordering an end to racial segregation, ordered that separate facilities for African-Americans be "equal" to those for white passengers -- a sordid "separate but equal" standard that sadly would persist throughout America until overturned by the Supreme Court in its landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. The case was successfully argued by a young attorney who later would become a Supreme Court justice -- Thurgood Marshall.

In 1955, the ICC, taking instruction from that Supreme Court decision, ruled that the very practice of racial segregation in interstate commerce "subjects Negro passengers to undue and unreasonable prejudice and disadvantage."

Our UTU coordinator of human rights, Ray Cunningham -- an Amtrak conductor and member of UTU Local 1933 -- has a favorite Dr. King quotation: "Our lives begin to end the day we become solemn about things that matter." (More information on the UTU Human Rights Committee is accessible under the "Contact UTU" link found in the red tile at the left of the UTU home page.)

As we prepare to celebrate Martin Luther King Day this year on Monday, Jan. 21 -- marking almost 40 years since the assassination of Dr. King -- let us reflect on the similarities between civil rights and trade-union struggles.