Martin Luther King's Last Campaign

Grants Again Available - See page 10 Poverty & Race PRRAC POVERTY & RACE RESEARCH ACTION COUNCIL March/April 2007 Volume 16: Number 2 The Memphis Strike: Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign by Michael Honey Located in the heart of the Mis- trical wires. He pulled the truck over financed life insurance policy cover- sissippi River delta, Memphis often to the curb at 4:20 pm, but the ram ing death benefits up to $2,000, but drips with humidity so heavy that already was jamming Cole and Walker Walker and Cole could not afford it. merely walking outside is the equiva- back into the compactor. Because the City listed them as unclas- lent of taking a shower. When the skies One of the men lurched forward and sified, hourly employees (they could finally burst open, rain falls so hard nearly escaped, but the ram snagged be fired on a moments notice), the that people scurry for shelter. his raincoat and dragged him back. He states workmens compensation On February 1, 1968, Echol Cole, was standing there on the end of the didnt cover them. The two mens 36, and Robert Walker, 30, rode out truck, and suddenly it looked like the deaths left their wives and children a driving Memphis rainstorm by big thing just swallowed him, said a destitute. A funeral home held the climbing inside one of the sanitation horrified woman. mens bodies until the families found divisions old wiener barrel trucks. T.O. Jones, a union organizer, a way to pay for their caskets. The City The walls inside the packer were caked knew both of the men. He called their gave their families one months salary with putrefying garbage of all sorts deaths a disgrace and a sin. Two men and $500 for each man, but burial ex- yard waste, dead chickens, moldy had already been killed in 1964 due to penses of $900 for each worker used food. Any port in a storm, they say. a faulty garbage packer that rolled a that up. At the end of a miserable, cold truck over. And Jones had already These avoidable deaths rubbed raw workday, Coles and Walkers soiled, taken a grievance to the commissioner some long-existing frustrations. Work- worn-out clothes smelled of garbage. of the Department of Public Works ers had sparred with the administra- The City did not provide them with (DPW), asking that this particular truck tion of the Department of Public gloves, uniforms or a place to shower. no longer be used. Instead of junking Works about many issues, including They did hard, heavy work, lifting the old garbage packer, the sanitation (Please turn to page 2) garbage tubs and carrying them on division of DPW had tried to extend their shoulders or heads or pushcarts its life by putting in a second motor to to dump their contents into outmoded run the compactor after the first one CONTENTS: trucks. On this particular day, Cole wore out. Workers jump-started it in MLK’s Memphis and Walker rode in a precarious, stink- the morning and let the motor run all Campaign ................. 1 ing perch between a hydraulic ram used day long, pouring in fuel periodically. CERD .......................... 3 to mash garbage into a small wad and It was an accident just waiting to hap- CERD in Berkeley ....... 4 the wall of the trucks cavernous con- pen. tainer. The two dead men were black. Memphis Congressman As crew chief Willie Crain drove Jones was black. Almost everyone Steve Cohen ............. 8 the loaded garbage packer along Co- working in sanitation was black, ex- Apologies/ lonial Street to the Shelby Drive dump, cept the bosses. Hauling garbage was Reparations ............ 10 he heard the hydraulic ram go into the kind of work the City assigned to 2006 Witt Internship 12 action, perhaps set off by a shovel that blacks only. Resources ................. 13 had jarred loose and crossed some elec- The City provided a voluntary, self- Poverty & Race Research Action Council 1015 15th Street NW Suite 400 Washington, DC 20005 202/906-8023 FAX: 202/842-2885 E-mail: [email protected] www.prrac.org Recycled Paper (MEMPHIS: Continued from page 1) denied them adequate education, train- Rights Act of 1965. But Kings sec- ing and promotion ladders to better ond phase required a more radical de- the use of faulty equipment. The city jobs. They routinely endured police mand: to resolve centuries of inter- had no facilities for black workers to brutality and unjust incarceration. twined racial and economic injustice wash up, to change clothes or to get Many sanitation workers made so by overhauling American capitalism. out of the rain. little that they qualified for welfare As if that were not enough, King even after working a 40-hour week. had opened yet another front. In a And they couldnt even count on those stunning speech at Riverside Church The Context hourswhite supervisors sent them in New York City on April 4one home without pay or fired them on the year to the day before his deathKing African Americans constituted slightest pretext. Like most whites in offered the most severe moral indict- nearly 40% of a Memphis population Memphis, many of these supervisors ment of imperialism of his generation. of 500,000 in the mid-1960s, and 58% thought of blacks as their personal ser- He boldly condemned Americas Viet- of the citys black families lived in nam War as an unjustified, cynical and poverty10% above the national av- T.O Jones, a union hopeless slaughter of poor people of erage and almost four times the rate color. He critiqued the origins and ef- of poverty among Memphis white organizer, called the fects of the war, in which a million families. Many black families shat- workers’ deaths “a Vietnamese had already died, but he tered under the pressure; the unem- disgrace and a sin.” went further, saying, The war in Viet- ployed and people with marginal jobs nam is but a symptom of a far deeper suffered disproportionately from dia- malady within the American spirit. betes, sickle-cell anemia, high blood vants. They called people like Ed He spoke of corporate investments pressure and cancer. More than 80% Gillis72 years old in 1968boy. abroad and American support for mili- of employed black men worked as la- On February 12Lincolns Birth- tary dictatorships, and of greed. We borers, while most black women with dayGillis and others on the sewer and must rapidly begin the shift from a paid jobs worked in the homes of drainage crew had had enough. They thing-oriented society to a person- whites or in the service economy. and nearly 1,300 black men in the oriented society. When machines and Industrial unions had organized Memphis Department of Public computers, profit motives and prop- some of the manufacturing industries, Works, giving no notice to anyone, erty rights are considered more impor- but most had not reached out to work- went on strike. Little did they imag- tant than people, the giant triplets of ers in what economists called the sec- ine that their decision would challenge racism, materialism and militarism are ondary labor market. White employ- generations of white supremacy in incapable of being conquered. ers and craft union members alike for Memphis and have staggering conse- But rather than making the war his many years had barred African Ameri- quences for the nation. Six weeks later, top priority, as James Bevel urged, cans from entry into skilled jobs. The Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Mem- King thought the Movement should ready prospect of getting fired forced phis, prepared to defy an injunction merge its issueslinking racism, pov- many black workers to take what the and lead a community-wide mass erty and war as parts of an oppressive white man dished out. Segregation march on behalf of the strikers. system that needed to be changed. He tried to move from an inadequate pro- test phase to a stage of massive, ac- Poverty and Race (ISSN 1075-3591) tive, nonviolent resistance to the evils is published six times a year by the Building a Movement Poverty & Race Research Action Coun- of the modern system. Rather than cil, 1015 15th Street NW, Suite 400, For King, the Movement had al- seeking to integrate into existing val- Washington, DC 20005, 202/906- ready reached a turning point. Too ues, he said, blacks had to change those 8023, fax: 202/842-2885, E-mail: many crises erupted at the same time, values and the system that produced [email protected]. Chester Hartman, so that whenever he tried to address them. The black freedom movement, Editor. Subscriptions are $25/year, one set of circumstances, another set he said, is forcing America to face $45/two years. Foreign postage extra. would quickly arise. To counter the all its interrelated flaws of racism, pov- Articles, article suggestions, letters and general comments are welcome, as are Movements fragmentation, he in- erty, militarism and materialism. It is notices of publications, conferences, creasingly tried to find a unifying exposing evils that are deeply rooted job openings, etc. for our Resources theme and strategy in a second phase in the whole structure of our society. Section. Articles generally may be re- that would lead to the realization of Life itself, not theory, had revealed printed, providing PRRAC gives ad- economic and social justice as well as that radical reconstruction of society vance permission. civil rights. King still pushed for the itself is the real issue to be faced. © Copyright 2007 by the Poverty coalition between labor and civil rights King made numerous speeches to & Race Research Action Council.

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