Carl Schutt – Local 6 President

Carl Schutt – Local 6 President

The following are highlights of the speech of Local 6 President Carl Schutt at the meeting on June 12 at which the Local 6 Better Relations Award was presented to the nine Little Rock students.

We meet here tonight just a little over four years since the day, May 17, 1954, that the highest court of our land made its historic decision that in the country of Jefferson, Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt it is unconstitutional to discriminate against any child in our public schools.

The Supreme Court ordered enforcement of its decision with "deliberate speed." There may be varying interpretations of what deliberate means, but we, the members of the largest culinary local union in the world, understand perhaps more than most, what speed means when it is a question of ending, once and for all, any barriers to the complete democracy that has always been the promise of America.

Only by deliberately speeding an end to discrimination was it possible to build the mighty and united institution we have today, which has achieved dignity and a new life for the hotel and club workers of New York City. Had we not made that our foundation stone - none would have achieved the standards we all have today. And when we established our Civil Rights Award a few years ago, it was for the deliberate purpose of promoting on a national scale the fight for full civil rights that we had conducted so successfully in our own industry.

It is because too many people in high places are deliberating rather than working to speed the full implementation of the Supreme Court's decision that some of the finest persons in our country-such as our guests tonight from Little Rock-are compelled to demonstrate almost superhuman courage to secure their constitutional right of an opportunity to an equal education, without discrimination.