State Representative Eric Johnson announced at the AFL-CIO Labor Day Breakfast that Juanita Wallace had passed away the day before.
[caption caption="Juanita Wallace led Civil Rights activities"]
While she was head of the Dallas NAACP, we were proud to stand with her on issues that matter. Like us, she threw herself into the fight to stop the privatizing of Dallas public schools. Like us, she encouraged voting and every aspect of people's democracy.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr explained the close ties between unions and civil rights organizations when he addressed the AFL-CIO convention in 1961: "Negroes are almost entirely a working people. There are pitifully few Negro millionaires, and few Negro employers. Our needs are identical with labor's needs — decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor's demands and fight laws which curb labor. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth."
With all of progressive Dallas, we mourn the passing of Juanita Wallace.
--Gene Lantz, Press Secretary