Milwaukee Journal

(Friday, May 11, 1956)

The director of organization for the new AFL-CIO said here Thursday that he thought southern industrialists were promoting the organization of 'white citizens' councils in the South. John W. Livingston, Washington, D.C., named to direct organizational drives of the newly merged unions, said in an interview that he thought the same individuals who promoted 'right to work' laws in the south now were backing the white citizens' groups. The groups are anti-Negro and generally hostile to the AFL-CIO for its stand in favor of civil rights, he said.

Livingston spoke to 150 locals AFL and CIO business agents and representatives at a luncheon at the Schwaben-Hof Restaurant, 2042 N. 12th St.

The New South is becoming more like the North, Livingston said. It has become highly industrialized in the last five years. There are some 650,000 textile workers alone, he noted.

Whether any Southern unions will withdraw from the AFL-CIO over the race issue remains to be seen, he said, although he did not know of any which had yet done so, or any unions organized on a "white only" basis.

In this luncheon talk, Livingston said "very encouraging progress" was being made in solving jurisdictional problems in the merged union, a preliminary to any large scale organizing drives. He urged the local union leaders to be politically active.

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update 24 July 2008