So why was MLK in Memphis in the first place?

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.

MLK Day . . . what to say?

Is there anything I can say about Martin Luther King, Jr. that has not already been said? 

I have seen/listened to the “I Have A Dream” speech, and I encourage others to see/listen to all of it. Not just the repetition of “I have a dream”.

I know the line of judging people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. 

I have seen the line, “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is a burden too great to bear.”

I have also seen the line, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”

I’ve been to the King Center, and I’d like to go again because I think when we went there, Matthew had not even been conceived yet. (He turns 24 next month.)

So today, I’m going to address the question: If I had been old enough to remember Martin Luther King’s assassination, or if I had been an adult at the time of his death, what would my reaction have been?

I was born in 1963. It was not until relatively recently that I realized that in my hometown of Harlan, Kentucky, it’s very likely that my mother pushed my baby carriage past “Whites Only” and “Coloreds Only” signs. The Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the 24th Amendment, outlawing poll taxes were passed in 1964 and 1965. 

Today, most of us see these events as necessary, and some of us wonder, why did it take 100 years after the Civil War for Blacks to gain basic rights — the right to vote, the right to stay in any hotel they wanted, the right to not be discriminated against in job seeking and hiring, the right to live where they wanted  . . . 

And some, as Martin Luther King wrote about in Letter From Birmingham Jail, thought that Blacks were moving “too fast” and wanted them to slow down. 

MLK died on April 4, 1968. 

Not long after his death, according to a January 17, 2022 article on CNN.com, 31% of Americans polled believed he’d brought his assassination upon himself. 38% said they were sad. 5% said they were angry. 

Where would I have fallen if I’d been old enough to understand who King was and what had happened to him, and why? 

Given that I lived in a small town in southern Kentucky in 1968, with conservative parents in a conservative community, it’s very possible that I would have fallen into the majority that was neither sad nor angry that he had died. And perhaps I would have believed “he brought it on himself”. 

I might not have cared. After all, I’m not Black. Why should I care about the Civil Rights Movement? It doesn’t affect me.

Sixty-four years later, I’m only beginning to realize the injustice perpetuated towards Blacks in the USA. 

One of my FB friends posted, “My travel is different because of the work you did on the road! Thank you! #MLK”.  

The friend who posted that status is Black and he is currently traveling.

Before the Civil Rights Act was passed, it was legal for hotels to refuse services to Blacks, and Blacks couldn’t do a thing about it. I didn’t know until the 2018 movie Green Book was released that there was a guide, called The Negro Motorist Green-Book, written by Victor Hugo Green, which listed places relatively friendly to Blacks, places they knew they could stay and places they could go without possibly being harassed. I hadn’t thought about it: if you can’t stay in a motel while you’re on the road, where do you sleep after a long trip? Where do you get a meal if you’re hungry and the local restaurants have signs announcing “Whites Only”? 

I wouldn’t have thought about that in 1968, in Kentucky, if I were old enough to understand what happened to MLK. 

What would you do if a White person thought a Black person had “disrespected” you by not saying “ma’am” or “sir”, or by not getting out of the way of a White person fast enough, or by not following a White person’s orders? Well, look at Emmett Till. Or the thousands of other murders/lynchings of Blacks who didn’t “know their place”? 

Would I have become one of those White people, thinking that “these people don’t know their place”? 

Would I have regularly incorporated a particular racial slur into my vocabulary? 

Today, I live in a mixed neighborhood; in fact, at the moment, I think we are the only White, English-speaking family in our cul-de-sac. Most of my neighbors are Mexican and I have seen some Blacks and Asians, and some Whites. One year, my son was the only White child in his class. 

I attend a mixed church, as opposed to the nearly all-White church I attended as a child. I don’t know the percentage of Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and others in my current church. 

Would I be here, and even be willing to be here in this neighborhood, if I’d been one of those people in 1968 who wasn’t sad or angry that MLK had been killed? 

Would I be a racist? Or at the very least, patronizing to Blacks? 

I think about a scene from Driving Miss Daisy, where, on the way to a dinner where Martin Luther King is speaking. Miss Daisy talks about how wonderful it is that things were changing . . . and then her chauffeur, Hoke, points out that she hadn’t even thought to invite him to the dinner until they were on their way to it. 

I worry that this is how I think: that I’m glad things are changing, that I’m glad things have changed . . . but that I metaphorically don’t invite Hoke to the dinner until he’s in the car driving me there. 

I’m glad I can invite a Black couple to dinner without fear of retribution. I have heard a story about MLK and his wife being invited to a dinner party by a Jewish couple (I think it may have been the rabbi and his wife of The Temple in Atlanta.) They got lost and Martin sent Coretta to the door of a White household to ask for directions, saying, “It’s safer for you because they’ll think you’re the maid.” 

But while I’d love to think that I’m not a racist, that I’m not patronizing to Black people, that I treat all people equally . . . do I? I can honestly say that I am not a blatant racist. I am not a member of the Klan, and I find Jim Crow abhorrent. I am still discovering ways that Blacks have been and are still being treated that make me angry and that make me ashamed to be White. 

And yet, sometimes I have the “those people” mentality when it comes to Black people. There’s the temptation to look down at non-Whites and say, “I’m better than you.” Just like Scout Finch described Bob Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird:  “All he had that made him better than his nearest neighbors was that, if scrubbed with lye soap in very hot water, his skin was white.” 

If my skin color is the only thing I have that makes me better than others, that’s pretty pathetic.

On this MLK Day, perhaps I have more to say than I think. 

I struggle with prejudicial attitudes towards people who are not White. I grew up in an all-White neighborhood and only went to school with Blacks because of mandatory busing. I have had Black friends, Black roommates, go to church with Black people, live in the same neighborhood as Blacks and other non-Whites . . . and I struggle with prejudice. It is wrong. My prejudicial attitudes are wrong. 

Like my preacher has said on one occasion, I want to see our society not as “color blind” but as “colorful”. 

I need to hear the stories of those without my privilege. 

I do not want to be the person I may have become in 1968, thinking that “MLK brought it on himself”. 

I do not want to be a patronizing, holier-than-thou White person that either thinks she’s better than White people or that wants to just show off how “woke” she is. 

So that leaves me with the challenge: Am I willing to put in the work involved in deconstructing my racist attitudes and at least attempting to see the world through eyes that are not mine? 

On this MLK Day, I am willing to start. 

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.