1968 - Martin Luther King - Memphis and the Poor People's Campaign
By Martin J. Bennett
Most Americans know that a white racist assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968 – fifty years ago. But few understand the historical context and why King was in Memphis.
King came to Memphis in March of 1968 to support 1300 African-American sanitation workers that were on strike for a living wage, the right to form a union, and dignity in the workplace. Historian Michael Honey explains in his new book To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice that the sanitation strike marked the beginning of a nationwide Poor People’s campaign launched by Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to address the root causes of poverty and inequality.
Second Stage of the Civil Rights Movement
In 1954 the Montgomery Bus Boycott ignited a decade of nonviolent protests by black and white Americans against racism and segregation in the south. The Civil Rights movement pressured Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that overturned racist Jim Crow laws in the south, barred employment discrimination, and ensured federal protection for minority voters.
After 1965, the civil rights movement entered a new stage. Addressing sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968 King stated: “Now our struggle is for genuine equality, which means economic equality. What does it profit a man to be able to eat at an integrated lunch counter if he doesn’t earn enough money to buy a hamburger and a cup of coffee?”
Memphis sanitation workers were black public employees at the bottom of a class and racial caste system. They had long endured poverty wages, filthy and hazardous working conditions, and racist treatment by all-white bosses. In February, when a malfunctioning garbage truck compactor killed two workers, hundreds of sanitation workers walked off the job.
Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb, a white supremacist and defender of segregation, refused to recognize or bargain with the workers’ union, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). Every day a thousand workers marched downtown wearing “I Am A Man” placards asserting their demand for economic citizenship and affirming black personhood. The strikers defied a court injunction prohibiting the walkout and were arrested, beaten, and maced by police, yet maintained remarkable nonviolent discipline.
The Memphis Movement and Community-Labor Coalition
One hundred and fifty congregations provided food, raised money, and hosted rallies each evening. The NAACP, the most respected civil rights organization in the city, joined with the religious community to organize a boycott of downtown businesses. AFSCME national leaders vowed to stand with the strikers until victory was achieved, and committed funding and organizers to the effort.
The strike became much more than a labor struggle as a broad multiracial coalition of community and labor emerged to directly challenge the white power structure. Ministers and NAACP leaders at nightly rallies in black churches emphasized the relationship between the workers’ grievances and concerns about police brutality, segregated education, and slum housing. The strikers’ highly visible daily marches became the anchor for the coalition’s campaign.
King addressed the strikers and 25,000 supporters in March in Memphis and proclaimed, “All labor has dignity,” and, “You are reminding the nation that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages,” and, “This is the plight of our people all over America.” He told the sanitation workers, “Along with wages and other securities, you are struggling for the right to organize and be recognized.” His speech drew national media attention and inspired support for the strike from unions and faith organizations across the country.
Labor Rights, Civil Rights, and the Poor People’s Campaign
King claimed that African-Americans were attracted to the labor movement because it was “the first and pioneer anti-poverty program.” He envisioned a convergence of the labor and civil rights movements to bring about “a radical redistribution of political and economic power.”
Indeed King and the SCLC planned a ‘Poor People’s campaign’ for the summer of 1968 to address the “triple evils of poverty, war, and racism.” The foundation of the campaign was a multiracial coalition of grassroots, labor, faith, civil rights and community organizations representing the nation’s poor.
The campaign’s intent was to bring thousands of poor people to Washington, D.C. in May, construct a tent ‘Resurrection City' on the mall, and engage in nonviolent civil disobedience to pressure Congress and President Johnson to approve an ‘Economic Bill of Rights’ for America’s poor.
