Public Employee Press

Media Beat: Book Review
Dr. King, civil rights and the strike in Memphis

On April 4 we mourn the death of Martin Luther King Jr. and remember the struggle he died in. When he was assassinated, Dr. King was in Memphis fighting for the 1,300 AFSCME Sanitation workers who were on strike for their right to human dignity and a union.

These city workers had no benefits, made barely more than the minimum wage, endured unsafe working conditions, and were often sent home without pay when it rained.

In a city where the white majority claimed there was no race problem, the worst jobs were reserved for black workers. From its beginning the strike was supported by the entire black and labor communities of Memphis.

Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb insisted that outside forces controlled the strike and that everything would be OK if he could just talk directly with his workers.

Loeb’s intransigence led to the participation of the very “outside” forces he condemned — first AFSCME’s Bill Lucy and Jerry Wurf and then the Rev. King.

King was preparing to kick off what he called the second stage of the civil rights movement — uniting the civil rights and labor movements in a campaign for social justice that would start with a massive Poor People’s March on Washington. While the Memphis strike was a tactical detour from that march, it was just the kind of struggle he was highlighting.

Mike Honey has extensively documented the history of Memphis workers and the civil rights movement in many prior books. In his new book, “Going Down the Jericho Road: the Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign,” Honey connects the strike to the wider protest movement of the ’60s and tells its story with novelistic drama. Based on interviews with strikers and community, religious and labor supporters, the book describes conflict and cooperation within the movement.

This blow-by-blow account of the battle for Memphis is about nothing less than the joining of the civil rights and labor rights struggles for social change at the climax of the movement of the ’60s.
The goals and tactics of both movements merged to form a new kind of struggle that mobilized the entire community in marches and mass meetings — still a model for today. Both “Going Down the Jericho Road” and the excellent companion DVD, “At the River I Stand,” are available at the Ed Fund Library in Room 211 at DC 37.

— Ken Nash
DC 37 Education Fund Librarian