Fifty years ago, African-American sanitation workers in Memphis stood up for dignity, striking to demand recognition of their union — and their humanity.
The strike pitted over a thousand sanitation workers, who as public-sector workers in the right-to-work state of Tennessee had no legally protected right to collective bargaining, against an entrenched white power structure that held African-Americans in contempt and loathed unions. The workers’ determination to fight for their rights drew support from the African-American community in Memphis, young people, the national labor movement and eventually, the nation’s most well-known civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was tragically murdered while in Memphis supporting the workers’ struggle.