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Celebrating Martin Luther King Day
Voices from the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike
By JAMES PARKS
National AFL-CIO
In the fall of 1967, T.O. Jones and Joe War-
ren, the first two leaders of the effort to organize
a union of sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn.,
met with then-Mayor Henry Loeb to recognize
and bargain with the almost all-black union, AF-
SCME Local 1733.
As Warren recalls: “He told us you can have
it, but you can never get dues checkoff or recog-
nition. When I told him we would strike, he told
me I would be the first one fired.”
But after a two-month strike in 1968, the san-
itation workers, many of whom were standing
up against white authority for the first time in
their lives, won recognition of the union. That
victory was the catalyst for change in the pater-
nalistic racist environment in Memphis. Today,
the city has a black mayor and county executive,
and Local 1733 represents public workers across
the city.
Warren joined seven other veterans of the
strike and told their stories at the annual AFL-
CIO Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration last
year in Memphis. King, a longtime supporter of
unions, went to Memphis in April 1968 to lend
his support to the sanitation workers’ strike, and
was assassinated while he was there.
The Rev. Ezekiel Bell was the first minister
to support the strikers and one of their strongest
backers. The city’s only black Presbyterian min-
ister at the time, Bell had turned down a scholar-
ship to Harvard to attend all-black Tennessee
State University. His father had been a Missis-
sippi sharecropper and once worked as a sanita-
tion worker, so Bell
says he understood
the workers’ pain.
“I felt my place
was out there with
them. These men
were working for sub-
standard wages. For
me not to be there
would have been a
denial of what I was
preaching about every
Sunday,” he said.
Now retired, Bell
says the strike was a
key turning point in
Memphis and the na-
tion because it
showed the power of
being organized and determined.
“It was time for change. They helped people
to see that we could make things better for us all
if we worked together, he said.
AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer William Lucy
agrees. The sanitation workers recognized the
importance of union membership to lifting black
workers out of poverty, says Lucy, who was one
of the organizers working with the Memphis
strikers in 1968.
As Lucy says today: “The workers in the
Memphis public works department, and I think
workers across the South, recognized that their
future was tied to their ability to organize a union
and have a union represent them in the areas of
wages, hours and conditions of employment. So
no matter how bad the situation was, it would be
worse if they were not able to form a union. And
as bad as the strike got and as tough as life was,
they were not about to give up until they
Martin Luther King
Jr. addresses striking
sanitation workers the
day before he was
killed in Memphis.
achieved recognition of a union.
“Dr. King’s involvement showed he recog-
nized the fact that you had people who worked
every single day and yet were not able to raise
themselves out of poverty ... and that the civil
rights struggle and the struggle for workers’
rights are intertwined.”
Hattie Jackson says the strike happened be-
cause blacks in Memphis were tired of being
treated like slaves. “You wake up one morning
and say ‘no more.’ You just have to get on with it
and not be a slave anymore,” she said.
Jackson and her late husband, the Rev. H.
Ralph Jackson, were involved in the strike from
the beginning. Ralph
Jackson was one of the
leaders of the strike. The
strike was a family affair
for the Jacksons, she
says. Not only were she
and her husband march-
ing with the strikers, one
of their daughters came
home from college to
march with them.
Contrary to the com-
mon perception that the
strikers and marchers
were all poor, Jackson
says they had many
middle-class black sup-
porters. She was, at the
time, the only black
principal of an all-white school in Memphis, and
her husband was a national officer of the African
Methodist Episcopal denomination.
“A lot of teachers and principals came to the
mass meetings and gave money to support the
strikers, but they hid their faces because they
were afraid of losing their jobs,” she said.
Jackson says the strike was good not only for
black men, but for women as well. “You know
that slogan ‘I Am A Man,’ well we wanted to let
them know that ‘I Am A Wo-man’ and we de-
serve dignity and fair treatment as well,” she
said.
Bell, who says he was arrested more times
than he can count during the strike, says he was
enraged with the racism not only of Memphis’
political leaders, but he was even more outraged
at the racism of its white religious leaders.
He recounts that on the day Martin Luther
King Jr. was assassinated, he and a representative
‘The workers in the
Memphis public works
department, and I think
workers across the South,
recognized that their future
was tied to their ability to
organize a union and have
a union represent them in
the areas of wages, hours
and conditions ...’
PAGE 8
of the national Presbyterian church met with the
white Presbyterian ministers in Memphis to de-
liver a $10,000 check from the national Presby-
terian Church to help support the strikers.
“They went on about how it was an illegal
strike and they refused to take the money. So I
got [the national Presbyterian staffer] out of there
and we were on the way to the Lorraine Motel
[where King was killed] to pick up his bags and
take him to the airport. That’s when the news
came over the radio that Dr. King had been shot.
Later they reported he was dead,” he said.
“When we got to the Lorraine, those same
ministers called to say they would take the
check. I’ll never forget that.”
(Editor’s Note: The 2009 National
AFL-CIO Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holi-
day observance will be held Jan. 15-19 in
New Orleans. In addition to celebrating
the historic election of Barack Obama as
the nation’s first black president, union
members will examine what the election
means for working families. They also will
volunteer with community service projects
in and around New Orleans, which contin-
ues to suffer from the effects of Hurricane
Katrina. For more information, contact
Eva Walton in the AFL-CIO Civil, Human
and Women’s Rights Department at ewal-
ton@aflcio.org or at 202-637-5274.
Portland State University will host a
full week of events Jan. 19-24 to commem-
orate the legacy of Dr. King. In addition to
library exhibits, films, and a musical per-
formance, PSU’s Student Leaders for
Service will take part in a day of service
— “A Day On, Not a Day Off” — with
Portland VOZ, an organization that sup-
ports day laborers in the city. PSU also
will host former Georgia Congressman
Andrew Young as the “Living the Legacy”
guest lecturer on Thursday, Jan. 22, from
3 to 4:30 p.m., at Smith Memorial Student
Union. For more information, call Haili
Jones Graff at PSU at 503 725-8763.)
AFSCME Local 88
acknowledges the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day
January 19, 2009
In 1968 Dr. King marched with striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Ten-
nessee. Today, we honor Dr. King and those who struggled and stood for the
dignity and rights of all workers. We acknowledge their many sacrifices in helping
to create AFSCME Local 1733.
In addition, we acknowledge the historic inauguration of Barack Obama on
January 20, 2009. President-
elect Obama supports workers,
the right to form unions, and the
Employee Free Choice Act.
On this national holiday, let us
reach out and help serve our
community. Let us continue to
organize those who are unrepre-
sented and fight for the dignity
and rights of all workers.
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
AFSCME Local 88
Representing Multnomah County,
Central City Concern,
Transition Projects, Inc., and
American Friends Services Committee
JANUARY 16, 2009