1300 men: memphis strike ‘68
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Episode 9: ‘We’ve Gotta March Again.’ Sanitation Workers Remember Martin Luther King Jr.’s Last Battle Cry
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. returned to Memphis, Tenn., on April 3, 1968, one day after the funeral of Larry Payne—the 16-year-old boy killed by Memphis Police Officer Leslie Dean Jones. King was exhausted and battling deep depression, the kind that makes it difficult to get out of bed. He was tired of…
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Episode 8: Memphis Police Officer Guns Down 16-Year-Old #LarryPayne as Sanitation Strike Continues
Memphis, Tenn., exploded into chaos on March 28, 1968, as militarized police officers—armed with rifles, tear gas, billy clubs and the full authority of the state—terrorized black protesters who were out in full force to support Memphis sanitation strikers. It was amid this violent siege that Memphis Police Officer Leslie Dean Jones stuck a shotgun…
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Episode 7: Police Officers Terrorize Black Memphis During MLK’s Final March
After speaking to a rapt crowd on March 18, 1968, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. returned to Memphis, Tenn., as promised, to march in solidarity with Memphis sanitation strikers. The date was March 28, 1968—50 years ago today—King’s first and only march in Memphis and the last march of his all-too-brief life. He would…
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Episode 6: The Memphis Sanitation Strike From the Wives’ Perspective
During the 1968 Memphis, Tenn., sanitation strike, there were no signs that read “I am a woman” or “I am a wife” or “I am a mother.” The wives of sanitation strikers were given no awards for their tireless contributions to the struggle, but they should have been. Sanitation strikers consulted with their wives before…
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Episode 5: Children of the Memphis Sanitation Strike Share Their Stories
For the children of the Memphis, Tenn., sanitation strikers, the sounds, sights and smells of revolution, capitalism and white supremacy settled deep into their bones like the heaviest blues song, the kind that haunts and heals. Their childhood experiences were molded and shaped by fathers who struggled to provide for their families while also throwing…
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Episode 4: Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Memphis Sanitation Workers Go on Strike
As the families of Echol Cole and Robert Walker struggled to put their loved ones to rest, a different kind of storm was brewing in Memphis, Tenn.—and Feb. 12, 1968, was a tipping point. Cole and Walker had only been dead for about two weeks, having been crushed to death by a faulty, outdated garbage…
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Episode 3: ‘I Know Hard Work’: Memphis Sanitation Strikers on Childhoods Sharecropping in the Jim Crow South
Sharecropping in the United States was slavery by another name, and many of the 1968 Memphis, Tenn., sanitation strikers were well acquainted with it. After the Reconstruction Era ended in 1877, Jim Crow laws intended to maintain white supremacy through violence, intimidation and segregation, spread across the Southern states—and some Northern states, too (pdf). Even…
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Episode 2: The Tragic Deaths of Robert Walker and Echol Cole Sparked 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike
Robert Walker, 30, and Echol Cole, 36, woke up on Thursday, Feb. 1, 1968, and went to work for the Memphis (Tenn.) Sanitation Department. They left their families for a long day of collecting garbage with the full expectation of returning home to them. Instead, as their shifts were about to end and heavy rain…
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Episode 1: Our Video Series Shares Never-Been-Told Stories of the Memphis Sanitation Workers
In Memphis, Tenn., 1968, 1,300 sanitation workers braved the bitter cold to engage in a revolutionary 65-day action to defend their right to personhood. These men struggled against the noose of white supremacy to proclaim their dignity. They stood, shoulder to shoulder, armed with picket signs and perseverance, determined to declare to the world, “I…