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Bookreview
I AM A MAN! King and the fight for economic justice

By RALPH PALLADINO
2nd VP, Local 1549

This April marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the revered champion of civil rights, workers’ rights and peace.

“Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign,” examines a key chapter in the history of the civil rights movement and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

The book is a vivid account of the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike, which led to that fateful April 4th at the Lorraine Motel. Author Michael Honey tells of the horrendous working conditions, low pay and abusive supervisors that the sanitation workers had to endure, and their courage and determination to win respect.

The deaths of two workers, crushed in a faulty truck mechanism, touched off the strike that became a community movement, fought long-standing racial injustice and demanded dignity.

The phrase, “I AM A MAN!” was first used by AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer William Lucy at a strategy session and became the rallying cry of the strike. Strikers and leaders were threatened with imprisonment and death, but they carried their struggle to the picket lines and streets and to local government. Following Dr. King’s death, city leaders agreed to many of the workers’ demands.

The book depicts the segregated lives of the workers, who too often could not use bathrooms that whites could.

In a scene eerily reminiscent of the recent struggle in Jena, La., on excruciatingly hot days they could not have their lunches under the shade of trees that were for whites only, but had to eat in the shade of the hot, smelly sanitation trucks. Few local white residents openly supported the strike, but white union leaders and students from all over the country came to Memphis.

King was killed as he began to speak against the Vietnam War and to fight for economic justice by calling a Poor People’s March and supporting the strikers.

King questions economic system
He worked to change the values of the economic system he saw as responsible for the problems of the Memphis strikersand all working-class and poor Americans. The book quotes him saying, “Something is wrong with capitalism as it nowstands in the United States. We are notinterested in being integrated into this value structure.…A radical redistribution of power must take place.”