Public Employee Press

AFSCME revisits Memphis
From tragedy to triumph

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

Forty years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down, members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees from around the country met in Memphis Jan. 17 to 21 to honor the slain civil rights leader and the 33 surviving sanitation workers from the pivotal 1968 strike.

“Dr. King came to this city on behalf of AFSCME and Memphis sanitation workers because he was a champion for workers’ rights as well as civil rights,” said AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee. “He understood the nobility of their cause, and sadly, it was in this city that he was killed. But his legacy lives on. We’re here today because AFSCME is still fighting for better lives for the working families of Memphis, and we are still committed to Dr. King’s dream for our nation and the world.”

More than 1,000 unionists attended an AFL-CIO conference in Memphis over the King holiday weekend, and AFSCME and the AFL-CIO donated a computer lab to a local school and $15,000 in toys, clothing and books to children at three area Head Start programs. Hundreds of members joined a candlelight vigil at the Shelby County jail to support the contract struggle of Local 1733 members there.

“It was very emotional for me to see elements of the struggle up close — the stark Lorraine Motel room where Dr. King ate his last meal, the strike survivors who are up in years — and to think of all the sacrifices they made,” said Local 2054 President Colleen Carew-Rogers. She was one of dozens of DC 37 members who traveled to Tennessee that weekend.

United for change
In 1968, with nonunion wages and no overtime, no health insurance, no sick leave and no paid vacation, 1,300 black sanitation workers in AFSCME Local 1733 said, “Enough!”

“A collective spirit of anger had taken hold of these men,” who walked out on an antagonistic mayor who refused to recognize their union, their rights and their humanity, wrote Michael Honey in the book, “Going Down Jericho Road.”

The gruesome deaths of two black workers in the mechanism of a malfunctioning garbage truck touched off the strike.

“A worker’s right to be treated with respect and dignity is a human right. To be treated fairly without prejudice is a civil right. To earn a living wage is an economic right,” said Memphis-born AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer William Lucy, then an AFSCME organizer working with the strikers. “Their situation would not change until they changed their perception of themselves.”

That change came as they demanded union rights, decent wages, human dignity and respect, as strikers who made meager livings picking cotton and hauling trash donned placards with the simple message: “I Am A Man.”

The two-month crucible of the strike became a turning point for the labor movement and Dr. King’s civil rights crusade, which came together in Memphis as they never had before, Lucy said.

Though King’s assassination on April 4, 1968, tragically disrupted the movement, the union pressed on and eventually triumphed, winning the rights and recognition they fought for.

“We were deeply honored to have MartinLuther King, Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, Reverend James Lawson and other civil rights leaders with us,” Lucy said. “But the true light of Memphis was all of us marching together, united by a common purpose. All those involved believed strongly that having their union — their AFSCME union — was essential if they were ever going to emerge from on-the-job institutionalized racism.”

The commemorative weekend “focused on the rights we were denied back in Dr. King’s day,” said Local 420’s Carl Jones. “The strike was always about the rights and dignity of the workers.”