On this date in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Ray while in Memphis to support a strike by the city’s sanitation workers. This was the legendary I Am a Man strike that centered economic justice and civil rights. It also helps demonstrate how Republicans completely lie about what Martin Luther King believed when they cite him today to support their policies of hate and racism and poverty.
In the spring of 1968, Martin Luther King worked on his Poor People’s Campaign. Hoping to bring attention to the plight of the impoverished around the country, unite people across racial boundaries, directly challenge the Johnson Administration for acting too slowly on poverty, and move the civil rights movement ahead, King’s campaign showed a great deal of forward thinking. Centering economic justice was not universally popular among King’s advisors, but he was so far ahead of them in understanding how to keep pushing for racial equality.
At the same time, sanitation workers in Memphis went on strike. Racism defined Memphis. The city employed Black workers to do the hardest and most dangerous jobs in the city, but did not care if they lived or died. On February 1, 1968, a garbage truck crushed and killed two workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker. Frustrated by the city’s continued discrimination against them, the all-Black workforce walked off the job on February 12. These workers, affiliated with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) demanded union recognition, better safety standards, and higher wages.
The sanitation workers had struck before, in 1966, but the strike had failed in the face of indifference from the city’s sizable middle-class Black community. But in 1968, the deaths of Cole and Walker combined with antipathy toward the racist mayor of Memphis, Henry Loeb, who had alienated the city’s African-American community in many ways. Among other things, Loeb refused to take dilapidated trucks out of commission, endangering the lives of workers. Loeb was a racist of the worst kind, an old South mayor who had race-baited his way into power. This time, the city’s chapter of the NAACP came out in support. On February 22, following a sit-in, the City Council voted to recognize the union and increase wages. This would have ended the strike but Loeb vetoed it on the principle of not recognizing public sector unions. He hated unions almost as much as he hated racial equality.
The next day, February 23, Loeb ordered police to tear gas nonviolent protestors marching to city hall and the nation turned its attention to Memphis. National civil rights leaders, including Bayard Rustin, Roy Wilkins, and James Lawson, all came to Memphis to support the workers. Martin Luther King arrived on March 18, telling workers, “You are demonstrating that we can stick together. You are demonstrating that we are all tied in a single garment of destiny, and that if one Black person suffers, if one Black person is down, we are all down.”
On March 28, King returned to lead a mass march, but the crowd was angry and turning violent. This was the era of Black Power and the nonviolent protest King had pushed did not so much resonate with impatient young people. King was whisked out of the protest as looting began. Police shot and killed a 16-year-old protester that day. Loeb declared martial law, but the next day, 200 workers continued to protest with their iconic signs reading “I AM A MAN.”
King didn’t really want to return to Memphis. He was upset by what happened during the mass march. Moreover, he felt the movement had slipped away from him, with young people embracing violence that he hoped to avoid. Nonetheless, King felt that if his nonviolent movement for economic justice was to succeed, winning a victory in Memphis was absolutely necessary. On April 3, King arrived in Memphis. That night, he gave his final speech. This was the legendary Mountaintop speech that seemed to foreshadow his death.
The next day, James Earl Ray assassinated Martin Luther King as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel.
In the aftermath of King’s death, pressure rained down from both above and below on Loeb to settle the strike. He initially refused, but President Lyndon Johnson sent his Undersecretary of Labor to see this through. On April 8, the city came to an agreement to recognize the union and pay a higher wage, though the union had to continue pressuring the city once the cameras left to live up to the agreement.
The Poor Person’s Campaign went on without King, but lacked leadership and vision and faded quickly. More on that in a future post.
WHY IT MATTERS
This strike matters for three basic reasons. First, it demonstrated the core economic demands of the civil rights struggle. Everyone forgets that the March on Washington in 1963 was in fact called the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It had specific economic demands such as raising the minimum wage. It was largely paid for by the United Auto Workers. We don’t talk about these economic issues today when we discuss this history. We should think about why. Martin Luther King’s dream was as much about economic justice as about little kids playing together.
Second, highlighting King’s economic agenda shows the lie of Republicans citing him every MLK holiday, claiming he would support their beliefs that racism really is about people discriminating against whites, that he would hate immigrants, or whatever they are pushing that given year. King was not a man who spoke three sentences on a single day at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963. He was a man with a complicated agenda that really fought power in American life, including employers.
Third, this strike and its victory gave a huge boost to public sector unions, which today make up a greater percentage of unionized workers than ever. Black workers flooded into AFSCME and other public sector unions in cities both in the North and South. For the next decade, these unions would lead the labor movement in attacking established political leadership, including Black mayors as they took over cities in the 1970s.
FURTHER READING
Laurie Green, Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle
Michael Honey, To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice
William P. Jones, The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of the Civil Rights Movement
Bruce Nelson, Divided We Stand: American Workers and the Struggle for Black Equality
(The preceding links give Wonkette a small commission.)
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