Department of Labor Honors 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers

Hilda Solis:

Many Americans know Dr. King’s famous speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.”  They know we lost one of our nation’s great leaders for justice in Memphis. But many do not know why he was there, or who he was marching with—sanitation workers who said, “Enough is enough.”

So what was at stake in Memphis? Let me quote Dr. King himself: “Whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity, it has dignity. And it has worth. It is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages.”

The story of the sanitation workers deserves to be retold.  In February of 1968, this group of ordinary American workers took an extraordinary stand for workplace justice. It was a century after emancipation, but the shameful Jim Crow era was alive and well. In Memphis, African-Americans were shut out of jobs that paid an honest wage. For many black men, sanitation work was the only job they could get. They did the work, and they did it proudly.

The working conditions were hard. And they were unsafe. When the sanitation workers tried to organize to improve their working conditions, they were ignored. When they kept trying, they were attacked and brutalized. So they went on strike.

They took a stand for human dignity with four simple words: “I AM A MAN.”

Click here for video of the event.