It rained in Memphis on Thursday, February 1, 1968.
I grew up in the South, so when I hear that “it rained in February,” I picture a sky the color of gray putty and the rain just falling. Not being whipped around by the wind, accompanied by bright flashes of lightning, and then the thunder, the sound of which can range from a low rumble to a loud bang, and if the thunder happened immediately after the lightning, you knew that the worst part of the storm was right over your head.
But in Memphis, Tennessee, as in all cities, the trash had to be collected. So two employees of Memphis’ Public Works Department, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, hopped onto the back of their truck and began their day’s duties.
The Public Works Department gave them no gloves, no uniforms, and no place to shower. The smell of rotting food, the slimy grease from restaurants and homes, and perhaps the decomposing corpora delecti of mice, rats, and other vermin clung to their clothes, their skin, and their hair.
By 4:20 p.m. on that Thursday, the rain had reached torrential status, with flooded streets and overflowing sewers. But Echol Cole and Robert Walker could not get off the truck to seek shelter. Historian/writer Taylor Branch, in his book At Canaan’s Edge, explained that after complaints about “unsightly picnics” by the Black sanitation workers, the city barred shelter stops in residential neighborhoods.
The only place Echol Cole and Robert Walker could go to protect themselves from the rain was into the back of the truck. So, into the back of the truck they went.
Cole and Walker may or may not have known that that specific truck was in bad condition. At least one fired sanitation worker, T.O. Jones, filed a complaint about the truck, asking it not be used. Instead, Memphis’ Department of Public Works - run by future Memphis mayor Henry Loeb - installed a new motor. To get the truck to work, workers had to jump start it and then let it run all day long.
What happened next isn’t certain. It’s possible that a shovel crossed over some electrical wires, causing the trash compactor to malfunction. What we do know is that the trash compactor started and pulled both Cole and Walker into it, head first.
Within moments, both men were crushed to death.
Echol Cole was 36. Robert Walker was 30. Both men were married. It’s not clear if Cole had any children, but Robert Walker left behind five of them, and his wife was pregnant with number six.
Their deaths made front-page news in next day’s Memphis Commercial Appeal, but not as a banner headline. The story, with the headline “Garbage Truck Kills 2 Crewmen” was crowded onto a front page dominated by news of the Vietnam War and, down at the bottom right-hand corner, the announcement of the birth of Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis Presley’s only child.
Cole had no life insurance. Neither did Walker. They couldn’t afford it. In fact, a sanitation worker’s pay was low enough to qualify them for food stamps. And since the City of Memphis classified them as hourly employees, their families received no workers’ compensation.
Henry Loeb, now the mayor of Memphis, approved a payment of $500 to each man’s family.
The cost to bury a body was $900.
Black residents in Memphis donated $100,000 to Cole’s and Walker’s widows. The United Auto Workers donated $25,000.
Ten days after Cole’s and Walker’s deaths, their union, Local 1733 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, met. Over 400 workers complained that the City of Memphis refused to provide decent wages and decent working conditions. The union wanted immediate action. The city said, “No.” (I wonder if they actually said something along the lines of General Anthony McAuliffe’s famous response to the German demand for surrender in December 1944: “Nuts.”)
On February 12, 1968, the sanitation workers of Memphis drew their line in the sand.
Of 1100 sanitation workers, 930 didn’t come to work. That included 214 of 230 sewer drainage workers. Of 108 garbage trucks, only 38 continued to move.
Ten days later, the Memphis City Council - after a sit-in of sanitation workers and other supporters - voted to recognize the union and to recommend a wage increase. Mayor Henry Loeb, however, rejected that vote. Only he, he said, had the authority to recognize the union, and he was not going to do it.
On February 24th - after enduring mace and tear gas attacks by the police on nonviolent demonstrators marching to City Hall, 150 local ministers formed Community on the Move for Equality (COME). A longtime ally of Martin Luther King, James Lawson, led COME. They determined to use nonviolence - as others had used in previous demonstrations - to fill Memphis jails and bring attention to the conditions of sanitation workers.
Reverend James Lawson addressed the strikers with these words: “For at the heart of racism is the idea that a man is not a man, that a person is not a person. You are human beings. You are men. You deserve dignity.”
Not long afterwards, men in the demonstrations began wearing placards with the famous slogan, “I AM A MAN”.
During these difficult days, Reverend Malcolm Blackburn composed and recited a prayer he called the “Sanitation Workers’ prayer:
Our Henry, who art in City Hall,
Hard-headed by thy name.
Thy kingdom C.O.M.E
Our will be done
In Memphis, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our Dues Checkoff,
And forgive us our boycott,
As we forgive those who spray mace against us.
And lead us not into shame,
But deliver us from Loeb.
For ours is justice, jobs, and dignity,
Forever and ever.
Amen.
FREEDOM!
Martin Luther King arrived in Memphis on March 18th, encouraging the strikers with the words, “You are demonstrating that we can stick together . . . that we are all tied in a single garment of destiny, and that if one Black person suffers, if one Black person is down, we are all down.”
King planned to return to Memphis on March 22 to lead a citywide protest. But that very day, a snowstorm hit Memphis (hiding the trash piles?). The protest was rescheduled for March 28.
On March 28, after marching for several blocks and singing “We Shall Overcome,” Black men, carrying iron pipes, bricks and signs, began smashing windows and looting in the stores. Police pounced with nightsticks, mace, tear gas and gunfire. At least 60 people, most of them Black, were injured, and 280 people were arrested. When James Lawson ordered the demonstrators to return to Clayborn Temple, the church that was their meeting place, police followed them, then released tear gas and began clubbing people.
During the chaos, police officer Leslie Dean Jones shot and killed a 16-year-old demonstrator, Larry Payne. Witnesses at the time said that Payne had his hands raised as the officer fired a shotgun into his stomach. (During a later federal investigation, Jones stated he saw a knife in Payne’s hand and shot him in self-defense. In 2011, the Department of Justice concluded that there was no evidence to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt that the subject willfully used excessive force when he fired his weapon at the victim.” Payne’s case was closed on July 5, 2011.)
After Payne’s funeral on April 2 (held as an open casket funeral in Clayborn Temple despite police pressure for a closed casket funeral held at the family home), sanitation workers marched peacefully downtown.
The next evening, Martin Luther King returned to Memphis. The speech he gave at the Mason Temple, we now know as the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech.
Who knew what was running through Dr. King’s mind? Did he somehow know that the end was near? That he would not see his wife or four children again? Did he confide his concerns and fears to anyone? Or did he keep his thoughts between himself and God?
On April 4th, Dr. King, the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, and others on King’s staff left room 306 of the Lorraine Motel. (Abernathy would later tell the House Select Committee on Assassinations that he and King stayed in Room 306 so often that it was known as the “King-Abernathy Suite”.) They were heading for dinner at the home of local minister Billy Kyles.
They would never make that dinner date.
At 6:01 p.m. Central Time, from a rooming house across the street, a man raised a rifle, checked carefully through his scope, then used his index finger to apply the proper amount of pressure needed to send a bullet straight into King’s body.
King had just told musician Ben Branch, scheduled to perform later that evening, “Ben, make sure you play, ‘Take My Hand, Precious Lord’ in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty.”
Then the bullet hit King’s right cheek, broke his jaw and several vertebrae, and severed his jugular vein before lodging in his shoulder.
He would die an hour later.
*****
Today, January 15, 2024, is Martin Luther King Day. I’m guessing that the two speeches that will be highlighted will be the iconic “I Have a Dream” speech and the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech.
The media will talk about how for many, this is a day of service. What better way to honor a man of service than to do an act of service in his memory?
His children, Bernice, Dexter, and Martin III (his fourth, Yolanda, died in 2007) will remember him, and will also remember how their mother, Coretta Scott King, worked with him.
I hope today, we’ll also remember why Dr. King went to Memphis that one last time.
He went there to reinforce the idea that yes, you do hard work, you do dirty work that few people would want to do . . . and you deserve to be treated like the men you are, with dignity and respect.
Robert Walker and Echol Cole deserved basic dignity and basic respect.
They got neither.
They were men.
MLK wanted others to know that they, too, were men. That they, too, were worth of basic dignity and respect.
We all are.
Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.
