In the spring of 1963, the rate of unemployment for whites was 4.8 percent. For nonwhites it was 12.1 percent. According to government estimates, one-fifth of the white population was below the poverty line, and one-half the black population was below that line. The civil rights bills emphasized voting, but voting was not a fundamental […]

REGISTRAR: What do you want? CRAWFORD: I brought this lady down to register REGISTRAR: (after giving the woman a card to fill out and sending her outside in the hall) Why did you bring this lady down here? CRAWFORD: Because she wants to be a first class citizen like ya’ll. REGISTRAR: Who are you to […]

Desperate people were not waiting for the government to help them; they were helping themselves, acting directly. Aunt Molly Jackson, a woman who later became active in labor struggles in Appalachia, recalled how she walked into the local store, asked for a 24-pound sack of flour, gave it to her little boy to take it […]

Local authorities passed laws to stop them [the IWW] from speaking: the IWW defied these laws. In Missoula, Montana, a lumber and mining area, hundreds of Wobblies arrived by boxcar after some had been prevented from speaking. They were arrested one after another until they clogged the jails and the courts, and finally forced the […]