What did Martin Luther King Jr do in Memphis TN?

Answer 1

Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis1968

King arrived in Memphis in late March to support the city's garbage collectors in their strike for higher wages. His idea was to lead a march of people, including the garbage collectors, down the city's main street - just like he'd done in those media-sensationalized civil-rights marches. Though this time about 150 to 200 black youths had planned beforehand that once the procession of marchers reached the city business district (where white people had their businesses), they were going to charge into the businesses and loot and burn them. King had told his people before the march to "ratchet it up".

For those who want to believe this march led by King was about "civil-rights" or "equal rights," both contentions are simply inaccurate. Regarding civil-rights, since blacks were not seeking compulsory integration into a white male group, then civil-rights cannot be an issue here. Blacks were the overwhelming majority of the sanitation workers in Memphis, and they weren't complaining about that fact. As for the "equal rights" assertion, it is impossible to nail down just what this actually refers to. Memphis sanitation workers were being paid more than the federal minimum wage. But that's not to say that their pay wasn't low. They were paid only $1.80 per hour (the federal minimum wage was $1.60). However, one has to be aware that sanitation workers were at the bottom of the pay scale - and for good reason. Their job requires no skill and no educational requirements. The ones who do this work likely cannot qualify for any other job - public or private. The most these strikers could have hoped for through this strike would have been maybe a 5% to 10% pay raise. However, their union was demanding a whopping 30% wage increase.

There was also an issue raised about unsafe working conditions for the garbage men. This issue came about because two black males were killed on the job a few weeks prior to the strike. However, a closer examination of this incident shows that the fault should fall directly on the two workers. When it rained or became too cold it was common practice among city sanitation workers for the two workers on the back of the truck to sit inside the hopper. Naturally, this is an extremely dangerous thing to do. If the compactor would somehow engage while they were in the hopper, they would literally be chewed to pieces. On a cold and rainy day in January, two black sanitation workers were riding inside the hopper, then... Well, you know.

As for the mayor, he believed the garbage collectors , like the police and firemen , could not legally strike; and he was not going to give them a pass on that. There was also one other aspect to this strike that could not possibly have escaped the mayor's reasoning; or the city council ( 3 of the 9 council members were black). Since the sanitation workers were at the bottom of the pay scale, if they were to get a raise then whatever pay raise they received that same percent pay raise would be expected by every other city department. In fact, everyone working for the county, as well as the city, from the bottom up, would also be expecting a pay raise.

These were the public issues. The real crux of the strike - that is if one cares to read between the lines - concerned the sanitation worker's union, American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME, which was run entirely by blacks), and its desire to get the mayor and the city council to agree to a checkoff provision attached to the sanitation workers' contract (a checkoff would allow for automatic payroll deductions made directly to the union). Evidently, the sanitation workers, for a variety of predictable reasons, were constantly in arrears with regard to their union dues. A checkoff would eliminate this problem for the black union; and it would also mean official recognition of the union from the city. However, the mayor and the city council were opposed to this checkoff provision (not the union itself).

In other words (and despite how many will characterize this sanitation worker's strike), the strike - and King's ultimate presence - was NOT about gaining collective bargaining rights. The garbage men ALREADY had those rights. It was solely about the black union wanting a guaranteed payday from the city (through a checkoff provision), rather than having to collect those union dues themselves from the workers.

By March, more than two weeks on strike, the sanitation workers - and the union - still had made no progress. The support for the strikers had grown at this point to include the NAACP and all the black ministers in the area.

For the blacks, apparently any issue now where whites appear on one side and blacks were on the other , and the white guys weren't knuckling under to their demands, it then had a tinge of suspect racism attached to it. And if the specter of racism wasn't there, blacks were more than willing to invent it. When a black march through Memphis' business district on February 23rd was beginning to descend into yet another black male looting and burning episode (Memphis had endured a black male looting and burning less than a year earlier), the police interceded immediately and maced the marchers. Evidently some of those maced were black ministers. However, the ministers seized this opportunity to imply racism on the part of the police by telling the media that they believed it was a deliberate attack on them - because they were black. Since the late 50s, urban blacks had won virtually every issue where they employed the tactic of marches, usually led by black ministers. But these marches were ostensibly for denied "rights." Black ministers and the NAACP organizing and leading blacks in marches because black sanitation workers wanted higher wages ... and their union a checkoff provision , obviously, is a horse of a completely different color. Workers do not have a legal right to have a higher wage; nor does a union have a right to a checkoff provision. Blacks it seems had gotten used to winning though; and, apparently, they weren't going to settle for anything but winning here. They (the NAACP, black ministers and black union representatives) sent black children into the streets - telling them to skip school - and saw no problem with it. They created an illusionary racism issue by implying that working conditions were unsafe because the sanitation workers were mostly black ; and by implying that police maced the crowd, including ministers, because they were black (what white minister[s] ever marched for higher wages for white workers?). They led marches (with almost entirely black participants) down the streets of Memphis' business district. They even urged blacks to boycott white-owned city businesses, even though these businesses had nothing to do with the strike.

However, even with these bully tactics the mayor and the city council were not caving in.

Black ministers and the NAACP clearly saw they were losing here and they were getting desperate. They still had one final card to play though: Martin Luther King.

On March 3rd, the pastor of Centenary Methodist Church, James Lawson, who was not only a longtime acquaintance of Martin Luther King but was also chairman of the strike committee, pleaded to King to come down and help the "cause" of the strikers. King agreed and made arrangements to come in mid March.

As part of a last ditch effort by the mayor, on March 16th (the strike began on February 11th) offered the union a compromise, suggesting the voters should approve official recognition of the union (and by so doing give or refuse them their checkoff provision). The black-run union turned it down. The stage was set now for King. On March 18th, King arrived in Memphis and gave a speech before a predominantly black audience and promised to return at the end of the month to lead a march.

No one at this particular time should have been surprised that King would want to get involved in this issue - which had had nothing to do with forced integration. King in 1968 was essentially a man in search of an new purpose for himself and his SCLC organization. His civil-rights agenda had been basically usurped by the Democratic Party, with only one issue from all his civil-rights demands still remaining: integration of the residential communities of the white population. However, King probably lost much of his desire to pursue this issue using his established method of marches. Back in early March of 1966, he and his black followers (no whites would join him on this one) were bombarded with bottles, bricks and rocks in Marquette Park, Ill. , while marching in a white neighborhood demanding whites practice race-nullification with regard to their living arrangements. Afterwards, King commented about his treatment in Marquette Park, saying he had "never seen as much hatred and hostility on the part of so many people." The reality here, however, was that King was now marching through a residential neighborhood, not down main street. And why shouldn't white males feel threatened by this act of King? Hadn't black males over the previous two years looted and burned thousands of white businesses across the country? Hadn't they attacked and even murdered white people solely because they were white? Hadn't over one thousand blacks less than seven months earlier in Chicago , completely unprovoked by the police or white people, rioted , which included throwing Molotov cocktails at white police officers? White people it seems had every right to be suspicious of blacks at this point. Who's to say they wouldn't charge into white peoples' homes and perpetrate that same feral behavior? To white males, the Marquette Park march was a deliberate attempt to threaten their wives and children. And, last but not least, most whites also believed they elected political representatives to deal with this type of grievance.

To virtually every white male in Marquette Park, King had gone too far this time (whites were still maintaining that blacks could build their own homes, communities, etc.; and still entirely perplexed as to why this male group had to be "allowed in" everywhere white people went: schools, work place and, now, their residential community). King did lead one more compulsory integration housing march through Cicero, Illinois, on September 4th; however, this time he had several thousand National Guardsmen protecting him. Since no more marches were conducted by King on this issue after Cicero, and none planned, it seems that King was just trying to send a message to the white community, as if saying, "See, you didn't scare me. You didn't win. I'm back." But clearly, King got the message in Marquette Park.

With the housing issue proving too dangerous for King to continue to pursue, his abundance of free time now was concentrated on his new project : the Poor People's Campaign, which was to entail another march on Washington D.C (being a full-time or even part-time pastor apparently no longer interested King). Pastor Lawson's plea for help in early March was likely only seen initially by King to be a brief diversion from his project. But certainly as the days pasted, King and/or his inner circle of associates had to see the "profitable" potential in this workers' strike. If King could end this strike to the union's satisfaction, he would not just be a hero to the union in Memphis. This could be the beginning of a whole new line of business for him and his organization (SCLC). Every strike, anywhere in America, King could offer his services - for a substantial fee, of course. What city, what company, what corporation wouldn't knuckle under to King if he could threaten them by summoning thousands of his people to march down main street, to disrupt businesses and community life, or even calling for a boycott of products or services? Yes, no one should question that ML King was in the beginning stage here ... of setting up a bully force; a shakedown organization.

Martin L. King arrived back in Memphis - as he promised - on March 28th.

The Martin Luther King Jr. Riot … began on March 28th and lasted throughout the day. About 1000 - mostly blacks - participated in the toward, and through, the city's [white] business district. Once the young black males reached the business district of the city they unleashed their prearranged plan, which was to break into the stores and loot them. One 16-year-old black male looter was killed by police. And though this black-initiated riot lasted only a few hours, black youths still managed to loot and/or burn 150 white-owned businesses.

On the evening of the 28th King made a quick apology for the riot then promptly left the city. However, he vowed to return to finish the job.

On April 3rd King arrived back in Memphis and was immediately served a federal restraining order at his motel, preventing him from participating in any marches without a court order. The democrats, who ran the local gov't., wanted nothing more to do with King's immature tactics.