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THIS LABOR DAY, REMEMBER THAT MLK’S LAST CAMPAIGN WAS FOR
WORKERS’ RIGHTS  
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Peter Dreier
September 2, 2024
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_ Most Americans today know that Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was
killed in Memphis, Tennessee in 1968, but few know why he was there.
King went to Memphis to support African American garbage workers,
striking to gain recognition for their union. _

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stands on the balcony of the Lorraine
Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, with other civil rights leaders on April
3, 1968, a day before he was assassinated. From left are Hosea
Williams, Jesse Jackson, King and Ralph Abernathy., Charles
Kelly/Associated Press

 

When Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968 in
Memphis, Tennessee, he was there supporting African American
sanitation workers whose picket signs relayed a simple, but profound,
message: "I Am A Man."

Today we view King as something of a saint, his birthday a national
holiday, and his name adorning schools and street signs. But in his
day, the establishment considered King a dangerous troublemaker. He
was harassed by the FBI and vilified in the media. He began his
activism in Montgomery, Alabama, as a crusader against the nation's
racial caste system, but the struggle for civil rights radicalized him
into a fighter for broader economic and social justice.

This Labor Day, labor unions are on the upsurge. In the past
year, workers at Starbucks, Amazon, REI, Apple, and Trader Joe’s
and many other companies have been organizing to gain a voice and a
collective bargaining contract at their workplaces. Earlier this year,
workers at Volkswagen’s 4,300-employee factory in Chattanooga voted
73% to 27% for the United Auto Workers, an historic victory in an
historically anti-union Southern state. The United Auto Workers won a
pathbreaking contract earlier this year, and President Joe Biden
joined their picket line – the first president ever to do so.  More
than 40,000 hotel workers in the Los Angeles area won an historic
contract this year after a months-long strike, and more hotel workers
are currently on strike in Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, and other
cities.  In addition, actors, school teachers, nurses, screenwriters,
and graduate students have recently won contracts to improve working
conditions.

More than at any time in memory, the Democratic Party convention
offered union leaders prime-time speaking moments, while elected
officials spoke enthusiastically about creating  “good union
jobs” and passing legislation to penalize corporations that engage
in union-busting.  According to a new Gallup poll, 70% of Americans
have favorable views toward unions  -- higher than at any time since
the mid-1960s, when they began asking the question.

But every day should be Labor Day – a celebration of the people who
do the work that makes our economy and society operate.

Dr. King understood that. “All labor has dignity,” he said. He was
committed to building bridges between the civil rights and labor
movements.

Invited to address the AFL-CIO's annual convention in 1961, King
observed:

"Our needs are identical with labor's needs: decent wages, fair
working conditions, livable housing, old-age security, health and
welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have
education for their children, and respect in the community. That is
why Negroes support labor's demands and fight laws which curb labor.
That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a
twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and
anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth."

He added:

"The labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but
enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor
miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation
to undreamed of levels of production. Those who today attack labor
forget these simple truths, but history remembers them."

Several major unions reciprocated King's support. When he was jailed
in Birmingham for participating in civil disobedience, it was Walter
Reuther, the charismatic leader of the United Auto Workers (UAW)
union, who paid his bail.

Several major unions, especially the UAW and the International Ladies
Garment Workers, had donated money to civil rights groups, supported
the sit-ins and freedom rides, and helped organize the massive 1963
March on Washington, where King delivered his famous "I Have a Dream"
speech.

We often forget that its official name was the March on Washington for
Jobs and Freedom and that its manifesto called on Congress not only to
pass a civil rights bill but also "a national minimum wage act that
will give all Americans a decent standard of living." The manifesto
pointed out that "anything less than $2.00 an hour fails to do this."

In 1963, the minimum wage was $1.25 -- the equivalent of $12.81  in
today's dollars. A $2 minimum wage in 1963 would be $20.49 an hour
today.

In the 1960s, the sit-ins (a tactic adopted from workers' sit-down
strikes in the 1930s), Freedom Rides, mass marches, and voter
registration drives eventually led Congress to enact the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

King was proud of the civil rights movement's success in winning the
passage of those important laws. But he realized that neither law did
much to provide better jobs or housing for the large numbers of
low-income African Americans in the cities and rural areas. He
recognized the limits of breaking down legal segregation.

"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?" King asked.

King observed: "Negroes are not the only poor in the nation. There are
nearly twice as many white poor as Negro, and therefore the struggle
against poverty is not involved solely with color or racial
discrimination but with elementary economic justice." To achieve
economic justice, King said, "there must be a better distribution of
wealth within this country for all God's children."

"There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from
paying an adequate wage to every American whether he [or she] is a
hospital worker, laundry worker, maid, or day laborer," said King.

In a speech to the Illinois AFL-CIO in 1965, King said:

"The two most dynamic movements that reshaped the nation during the
past three decades are the labor and civil rights movements. Our
combined strength is potentially enormous. We have not used a fraction
of it for our own good or for the needs of society as a whole. If we
make the war on poverty a total war; if we seek higher standards for
all workers for an enriched life, we have the ability to accomplish
it, and our nation has the ability to provide it. If our two movements
unite their social pioneering initiative, thirty years from now people
will look back on this day and honor those who had the vision to see
the full possibilities of modern society and the courage to fight for
their realization. On that day, the brotherhood of man, undergirded by
economic security, will be a thrilling and creative reality."

King warned about the "gulf between the haves and the have-nots" and
insisted that America needed a "better distribution of wealth."

Thus, it was not surprising that Memphis' civil rights and union
leaders invited King to their city to help draw national attention to
the garbage strike.

The strike began over the mistreatment of 22 sewer workers who
reported for work on January 31, 1968, and were sent home when it
began raining. White employees were not sent home. When the rain
stopped after an hour or so, they continued to work and were paid for
the full day, while the black workers lost a day's pay. The next day,
two sanitation workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed to
death by a malfunctioning city garbage truck.

These two incidents epitomized the workers' long-standing grievances.
Forty percent of the workers qualified for welfare to supplement their
poverty-level salaries. They had almost no health care benefits,
pensions, or vacations. They worked in filthy conditions, and lacked
basic amenities like a place to eat and shower. They were required to
haul leaky garbage tubs that spilled maggots and debris on them. White
supervisors called them "boy" and arbitrarily sent them home without
pay for minor infractions that they overlooked when white workers did
the same thing. The workers asked Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb and the
City Council to improve their working conditions, but they refused to
do so.

On February 12, 1,300 black sanitation workers walked off their jobs,
demanding that the city recognize their union (the American Federation
of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFSCME) and negotiate to
resolve their grievances. They also demanded a pay increase to $2.35
an hour, overtime pay, and merit promotions without regard to race.

For the next several months, city officials refused to negotiate with
the union. In private, Mayor Loeb reportedly told associates, "I'll
never be known as the mayor who signed a contract with a Negro union."

The city used non-union workers and supervisors to pick up garbage
downtown, from hospitals, and in residential areas. Even so, thousands
of tons of garbage piled up. Community support for the strikers grew
steadily. The NAACP endorsed the strike and sponsored all-night vigils
and pickets at City Hall. On February 23, 1,500 people -- strikers and
their supporters -- packed City Hall chambers, but the all-white City
Council voted to back the mayor's refusal to recognize the union.

Local ministers (led by Rev. James Lawson
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who died in June at 95)) formed a citywide group to support the
strikers. They called on their congregants to participate in rallies
and marches, donate to the strike fund, and boycott downtown stores in
order to get business leaders to pressure city officials to negotiate
with the union. On Sunday, March 3, an eight-hour gospel singing
marathon at Mason Temple raised money for strikers. The next day, the
beginning of the fourth week of the strike, 500 white labor unionists
from Memphis and other Tennessee cities joined black ministers and
sanitation workers in their daily downtown march.

On several occasions, the police attacked the strikers with clubs and
mace. They harassed protestors and even arrested strike leaders for
jaywalking. On March 5, 117 strikers and supporters were arrested for
sitting in at city hall. Six days later, hundreds of students skipped
high school to participate in a march led by black ministers. Two
students were arrested.

At the rallies, ministers and union activists linked the workers'
grievances with the black community's long-standing anger over police
abuse, slum housing, segregated and inadequate schools, and the
concentration of blacks in the lowest-paying, dirtiest jobs.

Despite the escalating protest, the city establishment dug in its
heals, refusing to compromise and demanding that the strikers return
to work or risk losing their jobs. The local daily newspaper,
the _Commercial Appeal_, consistently opposed the strikers. "Memphis
garbage strikers have turned an illegal walk out into anarchy," it
wrote in one editorial, "and Mayor Henry Loeb is exactly right when he
says, 'We can't submit to this sort of thing!'"

Mayor Loeb and City Attorney Frank B. Gianotti persuaded a local judge
to issue an injunction prohibiting the strike and picketing. The union
and its allies refused to end their protests. Several union leaders --
AFSCME's international president Jerry Wurf, Local 1733 President T.O.
Jones, and national staffers William Lucy and P. J. Ciampa -- were
cited for contempt, sentenced to 10 days in jail, fined $50, and freed
pending appeal.

With tensions rising and no compromise in sight, local ministers and
AFSCME invited King to Memphis to re-energize the local movement, lift
the strikers' flagging spirits, and encourage them to remain
nonviolent. On Monday, March 18, King spoke at a rally attended by
17,000 people and called for a citywide march. He said:

"One day our society will come to respect the sanitation worker if it
is to survive, for the person who picks up our garbage, in the final
analysis, is as significant as the physician, for if he doesn't do his
job, diseases are rampant. All labor has dignity."

His speech triggered national media attention, and catalyzed the rest
of the labor movement to expand its support for the strikers.

King returned to Memphis on Thursday, March 28, to lead a march. The
police moved into crowds with night sticks, mace, tear gas, and
gunfire. The police arrested 280 people. 60 were injured. A
16-year-old boy, Larry Payne, was shot to death. The state legislature
authorized a 7 p.m. curfew and 4,000 National Guardsmen moved in. The
next day, 300 sanitation workers and supporters marched peacefully and
silently to City Hall -- escorted by five armored personnel carriers,
five jeeps, three large military trucks, and dozens of Guardsmen with
bayonets fixed. President Lyndon Johnson and AFL-CIO President George
Meany offered their help in resolving the dispute, but Mayor Loeb
turned them down.

King came back to Memphis on Wednesday, April 3 to address a rally to
pressure city officials to negotiate a compromise solution to the
strike. That night, at the Mason Temple -- packed with over 10,000
black workers and residents, ministers, white union members, white
liberals, and students -- King delivered what would turn out to be his
last speech. He emphasized the linked fate of the civil rights and
labor movements:

"Memphis Negroes are almost entirely a working people. Our needs are
identical with labor's needs -- decent wages, fair working conditions,
livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures,
conditions in which families can grow, have education for their
children and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support
labor's demands and fight laws which curb labor. That is why the
labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed
creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor
propaganda from the other mouth."

The next day, James Earl Ray assassinated King as he stood on the
balcony outside his room at the Lorraine Hotel.

As _Time_ magazine noted at the time: "Ironically, it was the
violence of Martin Luther King's death rather than the nonviolence of
his methods that ultimately broke the city's resistance" and led to
the strike settlement.

President Johnson ordered federal troops to Memphis and instructed
Undersecretary of Labor James Reynolds to mediate the conflict and
settle the strike. The following week, King's widow, Coretta Scott
King, and dozens of national figures led a peaceful memorial march
through downtown Memphis in tribute to King and in support of the
strike. Local business leaders, tired of the boycott and the downtown
demonstrations, urged Loeb to come to terms with the strikers.

On April 16, union leaders and city officials reached an agreement.
The City Council passed a resolution recognizing the union. The
14-month contract included union dues check-off, a grievance
procedure, and wage increases of 10 cents per hour May 1 and another
five cents in September. Members of AFSCME Local 1733 approved the
agreement unanimously and ended their strike.

The settlement wasn't only a victory for the sanitation workers. The
strike had mobilized the African American community, which
subsequently became increasingly involved in local politics and school
and jobs issues, and which developed new allies in the white
community.

Like the civil rights movement of the 1960s, there is a growing
movement in the United States today protesting the nation's widening
economic inequality and persistent poverty.

One of the most vibrant crusades is the ongoing battle to raise the
minimum wage. Since 1968,  the  federal minimum wage has lost half
of its purchasing power. It was $1.60 at the time, which,  adjusting
for inflation, would $14.18 today. But it has been  stuck at $7.25
since 2009 because Republicans in Congress have refused to act.

Over the past two decades, coalitions of unions, community
organizations, faith-based and immigrant rights groups have 
successfully pushed cities and states to adopt higher minimum wage
laws.  Early this year,  voters in Long Beach, California approved
Measure RW, guaranteeing hotel workers in the city the highest minimum
wage in the nation. The measure, which raised Long Beach hospitality
workers wages to $23 an hour this July 20, includes an escalator that
will reach $29.50 an hour by the 2028 Olympics.

Workers for fast-food chains,  big box retailers – including ,
janitors, security guards, day laborers, baristas, and others --
 have successfully  pressured  employers (like Walmart, Starbucks,
and McDonalds) to raise starting salaries and benefits.

A recent Data for Progress poll
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that 64% of all Americans, and even 45% of Republicans, think that
Congress should raise the minimum wage to $17 an hour.   And a
new Gallup  poll revealed
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Americans approve of labor unions, while only 23% disapprove – a
huge increase over the number of supporters in 1965, when it first
began asking that question. 

In recent years, 14 states –including New York, New Jersey,
Illinois, Oregon, California, Nevada, Connecticut, Massachusetts,
Hawaii, New Mexico, and Virginia – as well as the cities of Seattle,
Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia –have adopted different
versions of the Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights that provides new
protections for nannies, babysitters, senior care aides, housekeepers
and others -- primarily women and many of them immigrants -- who are
excluded from federal labor protections.

Thirteen  states -- including California, Connecticut,
Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Washington,
Colorado, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Oregon, as well a
number of cities and counties -- have mandatory adopted paid family
leave laws.

These laws require employers to pay workers' salaries if they take
time off from work to care for a new child following birth, adoption,
or foster placement, to recover from a pregnancy or childbirth-related
disability, and/or to take care of sick family members. This is a
right that workers in most other countries already take for granted.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," King wrote in
his _Letter From Birmingham Jail_. "We are caught in an inescapable
network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever
affects one directly, affects all indirectly."

Just as King helped build bridges between the labor and civil rights
movements, today's union activists are forging closer ties to the
immigrant rights, women's rights, and environmental justice movements,
as well as to struggles to reform Wall Street and to challenge the
proliferation of guns and the mass incarceration of people of color.

In his final speech at Memphis' Mason Temple on April 3, 1968, King,
only 39 at the time, told the crowd about a bomb threat on his plane
from Atlanta that morning, saying he knew that his life was constantly
in danger because of his political activism.

"I would like to live a long life," he said. "Longevity has its place.
But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will.
And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I've looked over,
and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I
want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised
land."

We haven't gotten there yet. But King is still with us in spirit. The
best way to honor his memory this Labor Day and every day is to
continue the struggle for human dignity, workers' rights, living
wages, and social justice.

_PETER DREIER Is the __E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of
Politics and Founding Chair, Urban & Environmental Policy Department
at__ _Occidental College and is author of several books
including Baseball Rebels: The Players, People, and Social Movements
That Shook Up the Game and Changed America
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published in April, 2022.

* Labor Day
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* Martin Luther King
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* Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike
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