AFSCME is celebrating its 75th anniversary with a special website, a brand new video on the union’s history and a yearlong series of events.

AFSCME is celebrating its 75 anniversary with a yearlong series of events. The observances include a traveling exhibit of the union’s 75 years of fighting for workers’ rights and the middle class from its founding in Wisconsin in 1936 to today.

This is an excerpt of a cross-post from the American Constitution Society Blog by Angelia Wade, associate general counsel for the AFL-CIO. The post coincided with the recent opening of the King National Memorial.

When he was assassinated in April 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis lending his support to striking garbage sanitation workers who were seeking to have their union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), recognized so they could negotiate a contract that raised their standard of living.

On Aug. 26, two days before the official dedication of the historic Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in Washington, D.C., the AFL-CIO and The King Center will host a national symposium to explore how far we have come in fulfilling King’s dream of a nation of economic equality and justice for all people.

On the eve of the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in Washington, D.C., AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Lee Saunders writes in this cross-post from AFSCME why the nation needs to revive King’s dream.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans are expected to gather this weekend in Washington, D.C., for the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial. Few can doubt that this is an extraordinary and historic moment. Only four other Americans—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt—have been given this honor: a national memorial on the hallowed grounds of our National Mall. As the first memorial to honor an African American, and the first to honor an individual who was never elected to high office, the memorial for Dr. King stands as a symbol of progress and purpose, dedicated to a man whose vision and courage transformed our nation and gave hope to the world.

J.W. Cleary, 55, says he has spent most of his adult life “with a union card in one hand and an NAACP card in the other.”

“Unions and the NAACP go hand-in-hand,” says the Paducah, Ky., United Steelworkers (USWA) member and longtime local NAACP president. “The NAACP fights for equality. In a union, everybody is equal.”

Tomorrow in Memphis, the 1,300 Memphis sanitation workers whose 1968 strike for the right to join a union and collectively bargain was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s last campaign, will be honored in the second part of their induction into the U.S. Department of Labor Hall of Fame.

This morning, I interviewed Martin Luther King III after he spoke to the AFL-CIO Executive Council, meeting here today in Washington, D.C.

At a jammed Electrical Workers (IBEW) hall in Trenton yesterday, New Jersey State AFL-CIO President Charles Wowkanech reminded the audience of union, community and civil rights activists that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.:

“understood the link between economic justice and social justice, and that the fight for labor rights and civil rights was the same struggle.”

Barb Kucera, editor at www.workdayminnesota.org, sends us this from Minneapolis.

Chanting “We Are One,” thousands gathered at the Cathedral of St. Paul Monday evening, then marched to the state Capitol to show their support for worker rights and a strong middle class.