On my office wall is a framed poster of a sign which reads "I Am A Man." It’s a reprint of the sign carried by protesting sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee 50 years ago — a poignant reminder of the moment which forever linked my hometown to the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., then and now the most well-known civil rights leader in the world. It was these protesting workers and their cause that drew King to Memphis in the first place.
Thirteen hundred black garbage workers carried that sign in 1968, striking the city for wages equal to their white coworkers and safe working conditions. They walked off the job after two of their own were killed in a gruesome accident — Echol Cole and Robert Walker were pulled into the giant bin of a malfunctioning rear loading truck where the internal packer blade chopped them to bits. It was a horror waiting to happen to black employees routinely assigned to decrepit defective equipment. Unlike white garbage workers, the job offered them no insurance protection. White garbage workers earned pensions and paid days off; black garbage workers did not. Worse, black garbage workers were vastly underpaid, earning so little they qualified for welfare. In challenging Memphis’ brutal segregation, these men risked all and stood to lose everything. Only after Dr. King was gunned down on the Lorraine Motel balcony, did city leaders reluctantly negotiate with the workers for a fair contract.
Fifty years ago, King came to the city on the Mississippi bluff to highlight both the deep-seated racism and the wide gap between the haves and have nots — both issues emblematic of his increasing focus on economic inequality. Troubling that despite civil rights laws and a communal shift toward racial and ethnic inclusion, there’s now an uptick in reported hate crimes and widespread incidents of racial animus. The kind of general toxicity that led a Cincinnati high school basketball team — just last week — to wear jerseys with racial epithets printed on the back. That coupled with an amped-up capitalism giving tax breaks for one percenters with wealth triple that of the average American. All the while, working people with two and three jobs still can’t make ends meet. I’m struck by how Rev. King’s words of a half century ago speak to today: “God never intended for one group of people," he said, “to live in superfluous inordinate wealth, while others live in abject deadening poverty.”
In the city where King made his last stand against economic inequality, gaps remain stark for people of color.
Rev. King would have been 89 years old today. Among the many observances planned around the world, there is one specifically designed to connect the the garbage workers' struggle of 50 years ago with the issues of today. It’s a mission-focused update to "I Am A Man" called "I Am 2018." Rev. King would likely be disheartened by the need to update the 1968 campaign, but as he noted many times, “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.”
