African American
In reply to the discussion: They are getting close to silencing 1StrongBlackMan [View all]lovemydog
(11,833 posts)The events around Memphis are easily available to all. The black sanitation workers went on strike because they were not even allowed to organize and their union was not even recognized! The white community of so-called religious and business leaders turned a blind eye to them. As it says at the King encyclopedia:
The night before his assassination in April 1968, Martin Luther King told a group of striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee: Weve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. Weve got to see it through (King, Ive Been to the Mountaintop, 217). King believed the struggle in Memphis exposed the need for economic equality and social justice that he hoped his Poor Peoples Campaign would highlight nationally.
On 1 February 1968, two Memphis garbage collectors, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed to death by a malfunctioning truck. Twelve days later, frustrated by the citys response to the latest event in a long pattern of neglect and abuse of its black employees, 1,300 black men from the Memphis Department of Public Works went on strike. Sanitation workers, led by garbage-collector-turned-union-organizer, T. O. Jones, and supported by the president of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Jerry Wurf, demanded recognition of their union, better safety standards, and a decent wage.
The union, which had been granted a charter by AFSCME in 1964, had attempted a strike in 1966, but it failed, in large part because workers were unable to arouse the support of Memphiss religious community or middle class. Conditions for black sanitation workers worsened when Henry Loeb became mayor in January 1968. Loeb refused to take dilapidated trucks out of service or pay overtime when men were forced to work late-night shifts. Sanitation workers earned wages so low that many were on welfare and hundreds relied on food stamps to feed their families.
much more here: http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_memphis_sanitation_workers_strike_1968/
By the way, I finally responded to that MLK meme thread. I just felt I should throw in my two cents, lol.