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Museum exhibit with worker figures holding signs that say "I am a man." Text on the wall reads: Dignity and decency for out sanitation workers.
Diorama of Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Adam Jones)

Sanitation strike in Memphis.

1968

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Diorama of Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Adam Jones)

After two Black sanitation workers are crushed to death by a broken garbage truck, 1,300 Black men from the Memphis Public Works Department go on strike, calling out the city's pattern of neglect and abuse of its Black workers.

Sanitation workers in Memphis at the time are mostly Black men, and are paid so poorly that most of their families are on food stamps. Calls for a strike and work stoppage across the city lead to 22,000 students skipping school in solidarity. Southern civil rights organizers, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., work alongside the striking workers.

King is in Memphis preparing to speak to the striking workers when he is assassinated. President Johnson charges the city with negotiating an end to the strike. These federal demands, along with silent marches that both honor Dr. King and the striking workers, lead to increased wages and a formal recognition of the new sanitation union.