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1992-08-29
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56 lines
April 26, 1968Posthumous Victory
The words spilled haltingly from the pulpit of Memphis's
crowded Clayborn Temple A.M.E. Church: "All those in favor of
ratification, stand." But the congregation's response was
anything but faltering. The big Negro church rocked with happy
cheers, the thud of stomping feet and the din of dancing in the
aisles. "And all those opposed?" persisted T.O. Jones, the
emotion-choked president of Public Works Local 1733, American
Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. In their
delighted and deliriously unanimous mood, the question was
neither heard nor heeded by Memphis' 1,300 striking garbage men.
The garbage men had reason enough to rejoice. Their
predominantly Negro union not only forced a form of recognition
from the cotton capital; its 14-month pact with city hall also
calls for some solid pocketbook gains, including grievance
procedures, a system of merit promotions and a 9% pay hike. Mayor
Henry Loeb, who bitterly branded the strike illegal when it began
ten weeks ago, even agreed to a dues checkoff; under a face-
saving scheme, a credit union will collect the money for the
sanitationmen's treasury.
Symbol of Revolt. Ironically, it was the violence of Martin
Luther King's death rather than the nonviolence of his methods
that ultimately broke the city's resistance. Loeb, 47, a wealthy
Southern patrician-turned-politician, relented on the critical
issue of union recognition only after the assassination and under
concerted pressure from the White House (through Labor Under
Secretary James Reynolds), civil rights and labor leaders, and
his own increasingly irritated local establishment. While many
white Memphians initially supported Loeb's stand, they soon
fretted over their city's fading image and the threat of more
Negro boycotts and street violence. Just before the strike's end
last week, King's successor, the Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy, played
on their fears by promising to treat Memphis to "the most
militant nonviolent steps ever taken."
Though the settlement wreathed King's final struggle with a
posthumous victory, it did not restore racial harmony to Memphis.
Negro leaders are already preparing other battles. COME (for
Committee On the Move for Equality), which mobilized Negroes
behind the garbage men, plans fresh boycotts and picketing in a
campaign to win more jobs, better housing, and improved
educational opportunities for Memphis blacks. The new labor-civil
rights coalition forged during the strike may soon flex its
organizing muscle on behalf of Memphis's Negro hospital workers
and Negro teachers. Memphis, in fact, has become so symbolically
significant to the Negro cause, that Abernathy hopes to use it as
a Deep South springboard for King's postponed Poor People's March
on Washington next month.