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ORDERS TO KILL -- THE TRUTH BEHIND THE MURDER OF MARTIN LUTHER KING |
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Chapter 3: Memphis: The Sanitation Workers Strike: February 1968-March 1968 Beginning in February 1968, Dr. King had received regular reports from his friend, Memphis clergyman James Lawson, pastor of Centenary Methodist Church, about the sanitation workers' dispute in that city. Ninety percent of the thirteen hundred sanitation workers in Memphis were black. They had no organization, union or otherwise, to defend their interests and no effective means to air grievances or to seek redress. However, to most of the citizens of Memphis, black and white, a strike against the city was nothing less than rebellion. In a bitter and frustrating setback for the black community, Henry Loeb, who had been the mayor from 1960 to 1963, defeated incumbent William Ingram, who was regarded as friendly to black Memphians, in the mayoral election. Considering the new mayor's history and reputation, there was no reason for black workers to hope that their working conditions or salaries might improve. The grievances were many. Salaries were at rock bottom, with no chance of increase. Men were often sent home arbitrarily, losing pay. Much of the equipment was antiquated and poorly maintained. In early 1968 two workers, thirty-five-year-old Echole Cole and twenty-nine-year-old Robert Walker, were literally swallowed up by a malfunctioning "garbage packer" truck. These trucks were over ten years old and in the process of being phased out. There was no workmen's compensation and neither man had life insurance. The city gave each of the families a month's pay and $500 toward funeral expenses. Mayor Loeb said that this was a moral but not a legal necessity. After the deaths of Cole and Walker, talk of a strike was widespread. Maynard Stiles, who was second-in-command at the Memphis Public Works Department, told me, years after the event, that T. O. Jones, the head of the local union, called him the night before the strike with what Stiles regarded as a very reasonable list of demands. Stiles said that Jones wanted him to go along to the union meeting scheduled for that night and announce the city's agreement with the terms. An elated Stiles called Loeb to advise him that a settlement was at hand on very reasonable terms. Loeb ordered him not to dignify any such meeting with his presence and insisted that no terms be accepted under any circumstances. The union meeting went ahead that evening without Stiles. The next day the strike was on. The national office of the Association of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) sent in professional staff to handle the negotiations, which the mayor insisted on conducting in public, giving neither side any opportunity to change position. With no solution in sight, an interdenominational group of clergy intervened but made no progress. The deadlock led to a protest march on February 23, which got out of control in the face of heavy police provocation. Ultimately, the police used Mace on men, women, and children-marchers and bystanders alike. Afterward, a strike strategy committee was formed with the Rev. James Lawson as its chairman. Rev. Lawson had been one of the founders of the SCLC and had worked with the organization for a decade. Dr. King regarded him highly. Meanwhile, Dr. King was closing a leadership conference in Miami. While knowing that most of his audience disagreed with the Poor People's Campaign, he insisted that the nation had to be awakened to the issues of poverty and hunger. The shantytown he planned to erect in Washington would ensure that the plight of the American poor would be foremost in the consciousness of the people of the nation, even the world. "We are Christian ministers and ... we are God's sanitation workers, working to clear up the snow of despair and poverty and hatred. ..." he told them. In Memphis, a city injunction against the strike intensified the black community's support for the sanitation workers, and consumer boycotts and daily marches through the downtown area were organized. The director of the Memphis police and fire departments, Frank Holloman, who had agreed that he would allow the marches if they were peaceful, withdrew many of the visible, uniformed police. Holloman had been a special agent of the FBI for twenty-five years. For seven of those years (1952-1959), he had been in charge of director J. Edgar Hoover's Washington office. In Memphis he had no support from the black leaders. Internally he relied heavily on his chief, J. C. MacDonald (who in 1968 was close to retirement), a group of seven assistant chiefs, Inspector Sam Evans who was in charge of all Special Services, and Lieutenant Eli H. Arkin of the police department's intelligence bureau. *** The growing involvement of young blacks, particularly high school students who were being organized by the Invaders and their parallel organization, the Black Organizing Project (BOP), brought an increased volatility to the strike. During a boycott of local merchants, these young people harassed blacks who made purchases in downtown stores. The militants made themselves heard throughout the dispute, and various Invaders were arrested for disorderly conduct, for trying to persuade students to leave school, and for blocking traffic. In retrospect, the Invaders' actions seem mild in comparison with those of other black power groups in other parts of the country. Community on the Move for Equality (COME), a coalition of labor and civil rights groups spearheaded by an Internal Committee of local clergy, which was now running the strike, sought national as well as local publicity, scheduling nationally prominent leaders to speak in Memphis in support of the workers. The local NAACP chapter asked Roy Wilkins to come; the local union sought to bring in longtime civil rights leader Bayard Rustin; and the Rev. Lawson raised the possibility of bringing Dr. King to Memphis. Wilkins and Rustin finally agreed to come on March 14. Lawson, who had been keeping Dr. King abreast of developments, approached him in late February when the civil rights leader was close to physical exhaustion. It was around this time that his doctor had ordered complete rest. *** At first King had been reluctant to become directly involved. He had delivered speeches in Memphis but had never headed any civil rights activity there aside from leading the so-called "march against fear," which was organized in response to the Mississippi shooting of James Meredith, the first black to enroll at the University of Mississippi. But even though some SCLC executive staff wanted to stay away from the strike, Dr. King came to see it as being directly relevant to the national campaign. What group could be more illustrative of the exploitation he sought to dramatize than these lowliest nonunion workers who daily took the garbage away from the city's homes? King's involvement was potentially a high-profile activity (though with some risks) that would lead naturally into the Washington Poor People's Campaign. Because Memphis contained a small, militant, black organizing group (the Invaders) as well as the more conservative, southern black congregations, it was, in his view, a microcosm of the nation, with all of the attendant problems and obstacles to the development of a successful coalition. How could he turn his back on the real, current struggle of the Memphis sanitation workers? In early March the Rev. Lawson made the announcement that the city had been waiting for. The SCLC had transferred a March 18 staff meeting scheduled for Clarksdale, Mississippi, to Memphis, and on that evening Dr. King would address a gathering of strike supporters.
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