[Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated 55 years ago today while
in Memphis standing in solidarity with striking sanitation workers.
His life and radical words stand as a beacon of hope, urging us to
keep fighting for economic and racial justice.]
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55 YEARS AFTER MLK’S DEATH, HIS RADICAL VISION SHOULD GALVANIZE OUR
STRUGGLES TODAY  
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Michael K. Honey
April 4, 2023
Jacobin
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_ Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated 55 years ago today while in
Memphis standing in solidarity with striking sanitation workers. His
life and radical words stand as a beacon of hope, urging us to keep
fighting for economic and racial justice. _

On April 3, 1968, Dr Martin Luther King addresses 2,000 people on the
eve of his death in Memphis., Bettmann / Getty Images

 

Every year, Americans pay homage to Martin Luther King Jr, on the
weekend of his birthday in Atlanta on January 15, 1929. It was the eve
of the Great Depression. Jim Crow segregation ruled the South and, de
facto or by law, most of the United States. His remarkable life
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ordinary people through small acts of resistance and mass
mobilizations that together mandated equality in the law and full
voting rights for all. Today we still fight to protect and extend
these advances, now under attack by the Trump Republican Party.

On April 4, we commemorate [[link removed]]
another day of homage to King. That day in 1968, an assassin used an
unregistered, high-powered rifle to shoot King down as he stood at the
balcony at the Lorraine Motel. King’s murder in the prime of life
(like Malcolm X, at age thirty-nine) set off rebellions in over one
hundred cities. Outrage at King’s assassination triggered the
greatest mobilization of US troops to suppress domestic rebellions
since the Civil War. Two months later, another assassin murdered
Senator Robert F. Kennedy in California.

These two murders marked a turning point with broad implications for
social justice in America, dampening hopes of ending the Vietnam War
and reallocating US resources from war to fighting poverty, as Kennedy
had suggested, and as King had demanded in his Poor People’s
Campaign. It seemed to close out the 1960s, placing Richard M. Nixon
in the presidency and setting off an era of heightened racism,
repression, and reaction.

But although we lost King, resistance continued
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workers in Memphis continued their struggle and won union
representation by the American Federation of State, County and
Municipal Employees (AFSCME).  “I am a man — that means I ain’t
no boy no longer,” one striker told me; said another, the slogan
meant “we ain’t gonna take that shit no more.” After the
sanitation workers’ strike, public employee union membership
skyrocketed, and public employee unions became a powerful segment of
the US labor movement.

Remembering April 4 raises the banner for dignity and recognition for
workers and the poor. It reminds us of the importance of the labor and
freedom movement coalition King championed. In 2018, some fifty
thousand of us marched on that date in Memphis as a show of resistance
to the cruel, racist government of President Donald Trump. We
celebrated the Memphis story with our hope that organizing can still
succeed against the odds.

This year, fifty-five since King’s death, Starbucks workers,
hospital workers, academic workers, and many others are taking up the
demand for unions. Protesters against the murder of Tyre Nichols in
Memphis carried “I Am a Man” signs. “I am a woman” and other
derivative slogans recall the workers’ fight for recognition and
King’s vision of a just society. Memphis is one of the poorest
cities in the nation, plagued by inequality and police brutality, yet
hope survives.

“All labor has dignity,” King told striking sanitation workers in
1968
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“Either we go up together or we go down together.” That remains
true today. Republicans may try to outlaw black history and unions
with right-to-work laws (they provide “no rights and no work,” as
King said). But racists and reactionaries can’t outlaw hope. As King
prophesied in his last words, “I may not get there with you, but we
as a people will get to the promised land.”

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Michael Honey is the author of many books, including Going Down
Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, King’s Last Campaign, and To the
Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice.
He also edited a book of King’s labor speeches, All Labor Has
Dignity.

* Martin Luther King
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* Jr.; Racism; US Labor;
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