Northwest labor press., January 15, 2010, Page 7, Image 7

Jan. 15, 2010:NWLP
1/12/10
10:23 AM
Page 7
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 Warren, 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, AFSCME Local 1733.
As Warren recalls: “He told us you
can have it, but you can never get dues
checkoff or recognition. 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 sanitation workers, many of whom
were standing up against white author-
ity 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 rep-
resents 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 Mem-
phis. 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 minister at the
time, Bell had turned down a scholar-
ship to Harvard to attend all-black Ten-
nessee State University. His father had
been a Mississippi sharecropper and
once worked as a sanitation 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
nation 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 depart-
ment, 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 un-
til they achieved recognition of a union.
“Dr. King’s involvement showed he
“The labor movement was the principal force that transformed
misery and despair into hope and progress. Out of its bold strug-
gles, economic and social reform gave birth to unemployment in-
surance, old-age pensions, government relief for the destitute
and, above all, new wage levels that meant not mere survival but
a tolerable life. The captains of industry did not lead this transfor-
mation; they resisted it until they were overcome. When in the
‘30s the wave of union organization crested over the nation, it
carried to secure shores not only itself but the whole society.”
—Dr. King’s speech to the state convention of the Illinois AFL-CIO,
Oct. 7, 1965
recognized 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 strug-
gle and the struggle for workers’ rights
are intertwined.”
Hattie Jackson says the strike hap-
pened because 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 marching with the
strikers, one of their daughters came
home from college to march with them.
Contrary to the common perception
that the strikers and marchers were all
poor, Jackson says they had many mid-
dle-class black supporters. 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 denomi-
nation.
“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 deserve
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 lead-
ers. He recounts that on the day Martin
Luther King Jr. was assassinated, he and
a representative of the national Presby-
terian church met with the white Pres-
byterian ministers in Memphis to de-
liver a $10,000 check from the national
Presbyterian 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 Presbyte-
rian 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.”
• The 2010 National AFL-CIO MLK
Holiday Observance will be held Jan.
14-18 in Greensboro, North Carolina.
• International Brotherhood of Elec-
trical Workers (IBEW) Local 48 will
host the Electrical Workers Minority
Caucus Convention Jan. 14-17 at the
Benson Hotel. The caucus has been
meeting for the past 20 years prior to
the MLK Jr. holiday. For that reason, in
addition to workshops, panel discus-
sions, a banquet, and the awarding of
scholarships, the conference also in-
cludes a day of community service on
Thursday, Jan. 14. For more informa-
tion, go online to www.ibew-ewmc.com
or ewmc@ ibew48.com.
• A daylong tribute to Dr. King will
be held Monday, Jan. 18, at the High-
land Christian Center, 7600 NE Glisan,
Portland. The tribute starts at 11 a.m.
and goes to 6:30 p.m.
• One of the largest MLK celebra-
tions in the nation will take place in
Seattle on Jan. 18. “Justice Now!
Health care, Housing, Jobs & Educa-
tion” is a daylong event featuring work-
shops, entertainment, and a rally and
march through the streets of Seattle.
Workshops start at 9:30 a.m. at
Garfield High School, 400 23rd Ave at
East Jefferson. At 11 a.m., a rally with
speakers, poetry, and music will be
held. Then, at noon, participants will
march to the Jackson Federal Building,
2nd & Marion, downtown for a rally.
JANUARY 15, 2010
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
PAGE 7