Martin And The Garbageman

Until now I never really knew or understood why Dr. King
was in Memphis supporting a garbage strike. What did the
strike have to do with civil rights? Well after reading the article
below you'll see just how important this strike by local garbage
men changed the economic picture for blacks.


WHEN MARTIN Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April 1968, he was in Memphis supporting 1,300 striking sanitation workers.

This particular fact is sometimes mentioned in civil rights histories; when it is, the significance of that strike--for King, and for the strikers--is little understood. Likewise, the role of Black workers generally in the fight for racial and economic equality is not nearly as well studied.

In Going Down Jericho Road, historian Michael Honey brings to life the story of the Memphis sanitation strike, illuminating it not only with an organizer's sensitivity to the dynamics of the movement (Honey is a civil rights veteran himself), but with the voices of Black sanitation workers, union activists and Black radical youth.

Jericho Road is organized as two parallel stories--of the Memphis garbage workers fighting for union recognition, and of Martin Luther King Jr. searching for a way to build a movement for economic justice.

The white Memphis elite prided itself on granting enough concessions to Blacks to be able to avoid the explosive confrontations that had rocked other southern cities. Blacks could vote, and newspapers called for some compliance with the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that outlawed segregated schools.

Black sanitation workers saw things differently. They worked in plantation-like conditions for starvation wages, under the watch of racist white supervisors. "Since many of the white bosses came from the plantations themselves," Honey observes, "they treated black workers much like landlords in the Mississippi Delta treated their sharecroppers and tenants."

Forty years after King's last stand
The unfinished struggle

April 4, 2008 | Pages 6 and 7

MARTIN LUTHER King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis 40 years ago in the midst of a struggle that he saw as part of the next stage for the civil rights movement--supporting a strike of African American sanitation workers. Here, BRIAN JONES reviews an excellent new book, Michael Honey's Going Down Jericho Road, which tells the story of that struggle.

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WHEN MARTIN Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April 1968, he was in Memphis supporting 1,300 striking sanitation workers.

This particular fact is sometimes mentioned in civil rights histories; when it is, the significance of that strike--for King, and for the strikers--is little understood. Likewise, the role of Black workers generally in the fight for racial and economic equality is not nearly as well studied.

In Going Down Jericho Road, historian Michael Honey brings to life the story of the Memphis sanitation strike, illuminating it not only with an organizer's sensitivity to the dynamics of the movement (Honey is a civil rights veteran himself), but with the voices of Black sanitation workers, union activists and Black radical youth.

Jericho Road is organized as two parallel stories--of the Memphis garbage workers fighting for union recognition, and of Martin Luther King Jr. searching for a way to build a movement for economic justice.

What else to read Brian Jones expands on the final months of the civil rights leader's life in "Martin Luther King's last fight," published in the International Socialist Review as part of a series of articles on the high points of the revolutionary year 1968. Michael Honey's Going Down Jericho Road tells the story of the Memphis sanitation strike and vividly renders its dynamics and lessons. It is an invaluable read for those who want to carry on King's fight for real social and economic equality. For an overview of the struggle against racism in the U.S., from slavery to the present day, get Black Liberation and Socialism, by Ahmed Shawki. For more on the development of the civil rights struggle specifically, read Jack Bloom's Class, Race and the Civil Rights Movement. One of the best biographies of King is Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, by David Garrow. The struggle in Memphis is taken up in At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68, the final volume of Taylor Branch's multi-part biography. For more on how King's political ideas developed, see Michael Eric Dyson's I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King Jr.

The white Memphis elite prided itself on granting enough concessions to Blacks to be able to avoid the explosive confrontations that had rocked other southern cities. Blacks could vote, and newspapers called for some compliance with the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that outlawed segregated schools.

Black sanitation workers saw things differently. They worked in plantation-like conditions for starvation wages, under the watch of racist white supervisors. "Since many of the white bosses came from the plantations themselves," Honey observes, "they treated black workers much like landlords in the Mississippi Delta treated their sharecroppers and tenants."

Workers could be fired for being one minute late or for "talking back." They had no breaks. They had to eat their lunches in 15 minutes and couldn't be seen in the shade of a tree. The shade of the truck was their only refuge from the Memphis heat, even though the trucks were old and outmoded, smelled horribly and often had maggots falling off the side.

The city didn't require residents to pack up their garbage or even bring it to the curb, so the sanitation workers had to grab everything as it lay, including tree limbs, dead animals in the road, and unpacked garbage. "I wasn't making a damn thing," James Robinson recalled. After 15 years on the job, he was being paid $1.65 an hour, only 5 cents above the federal minimum wage. "We were workin' every day then for welfare wages."

This Article Continues Here

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