I Am A Man. ” Those were the simple words on the marks carried by many of more than 1,300 striking Memphis sanitation workers about all black during the spring of 1968. Trouble had been brewing for old ages. Among the lowest paid of metropolis employees, with no medical insurance, workers ‘ compensation, or overtime wage, the sanitation workers had
unsuccessfully tested twice before to acquire the metropolis to acknowledge their brotherhood. The slide toward a work stoppage had begun on February 1, 1968, when two workers seeking shelter during a torrential rainstorm hid inside the rear of a refuse truck. They were crushed to decease when a switch was by chance thrown. The metropolis refused to counterbalance the victims ‘
households, and other workers were infuriated. That calamity was compounded a few yearss subsequently when, in the thick of another storm, 22 black cloaca workers were sent place without wage. The white supervisors who had ordered them home went to work after the conditions cleared and were paid for a full twenty-four hours. Following a formal protest, the black employees received merely two hours ‘ wage. That prompted a work arrest on Lincoln ‘s
birthday, Monday, February 12. The demands were straightforward: All refuse and sewer workers wanted a new contract that guaranteed a fifty-cent-an-hour addition and the right to hold their brotherhood dues deducted straight from their payroll checks.
The work stoppage would hold had a different history if Memphis had non had Henry Loeb III as city manager. The forty-five-year-old Loeb, who was six-five with a flourishing voice, had been elected merely five hebdomads earlier. He was an inheritor to one of the metropolis ‘s wealthiest Jewishfamilies, and had converted to Episcopalianism merely after being sworn in. An opinionative
and obstinate adult male, Loeb, while non a racialist, had a plantation position of blacksi??he would see they were taken attention of since he knew what was best for them. That attitude ensured that in the recent election, forty-nine of every 50 inkinesss voted against him.
Now threatened with the sanitation work stoppage, Loeb adopted a difficult place. Since a work stoppage of municipal workers was illegal, he refused to negociate unless they returned to work, and in no instance would he let a payroll check tax write-off to the brotherhood, since that meant he would be the first major Southern city manager to acknowledge a black municipal brotherhood.
The twenty-four hours after the sanitation workers walked off their occupations, functionaries of the national brotherhood began geting to impart their support. Loeb announced Wednesday that if workers did non return to work the undermentioned twenty-four hours, he would fire them. On Thursday, merely four yearss after the walkout started, Loeb began engaging strikebreaker, and with a constabulary bodyguard they made limited
efforts at picking up refuse.
The racial overtones were apparent from the start. The majority of workers were black, and most white Memphians had small understanding for their cause. Initially, the lone support came from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ) and local black curates, led by James M. Lawson. Many of the strikers were members of Lawson ‘s Centenary Methodist Church. Lawson himself was a friend of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. , holding met him shortly after the successful 1956 Montgomery coach boycott. Thirty-nine old ages old, he had served three old ages as a missional in India, where he became a follower of Ghandi ‘s rules of passive resistance, and had spent 13 months in prison for declining to contend in the Korean War. Lawson, together with the Reverend H. Ralph Jackson, called for a meeting between Loeb and the Memphis
Curates Association. Loeb refused to speak to them.
On Friday, February 23, more than a 1000 strikers and protagonists crammed a meeting of the metropolis council ‘s Public Works Committee. The rumour was that the commission had decided to acknowledge the brotherhood and O.K. the payroll check tax write-off, but, one time the meeting started, the metropolis council dodged the issue and threw the work stoppage, as an “ administrative affair, ” back to Loeb. The reaction was fleet and ferocious, with work stoppage
leaders naming for an impromptu march down Main Street to Mason Temple, work stoppage central office. It was the first noncompliant black March in Memphis history. The constabulary shoved the work forces to the right side of the street, four abreast. After several blocks problem started. A constabulary auto came excessively close to the crowd and ran over a adult female ‘s pes. In a minute, immature black work forces were swaying the squad auto. Riot constabularies, clad in bluish helmets and gas masks, so swarmed into the crowds, randomly macing and clubbing protestors.
The violent constabulary reaction converted the work stoppage from the individual issue of better conditions for the sanitation workers into a symbolic racial conflict for better intervention of the metropolis ‘s black community. “ It showed many people, ” recalled Lawson, “ beyond the shadow of a uncertainty, that we were in a existent battle. ” That dark, work stoppage leaders met and elected a
scheme commission, Community On the Move for Equality ( COME ) . Lawson was president, Jackson frailty president, and Jesse Epps, an international brotherhood representative, an advisor. The following twenty-four hours, COME presented a five-point plan to all 150 of the metropolis ‘s black curates and their folds. The plan included fund-raising runs and mass meetings in churches, a boycott of all downtown concerns every bit good as companies with the Loeb name, and two day-to-day Marches through business district Memphis, the first for strikers, households, and protagonists, and the 2nd for pupils.
When the constabulary had attacked and maced the Memphis demonstrators, Martin Luther King, Jr. , was in Miami, at a curates ‘ retreat sponsored by the Ford Foundation. One of those go toing was the Reverend Samuel “ Billy ” Kyles, a tall, thin, magnetic curate of Memphis ‘s Monumental Baptist Church. Kyles, in his early mid-thirtiess, was a outstanding Memphis curate who, together with Lawson and Jackson, helped organize public sentiment in much of the metropolis ‘s black community.
“ The Miami constabularies begged Martin non to go forth the hotel because there were so many menaces against him, ” recalls Kyles. * “ So we stayed indoors. And we got about to speaking about the menaces. “ You merely sort of unrecorded with it, ” he said. “ I do n’t walk around every twenty-four hours scared, but I was truly frightened twice. ” Once was when the three civil rights workers were
killed in Mississippi. At a church mass meeting at that place, Ralph [ Abernathy ] and Martin were praying, and Martin said, ‘Oh Lord, the slayers of these male childs may be hearing us right now. ‘ And a large sheriff who was standing at that place to guard Martin said, ‘Damn right! ‘ The 2nd clip was when he had marched in Cicero, Illinois, back in 1966. He had ne’er encountered
that type of hatred, even in the South. Peoples lined the streets hurtling abuses and menaces at him. And when he walked along a street with trees, he said, “ From those trees, I expected any minute to acquire changeable. ‘ “
When Kyles called place, he learned about the constabulary onslaught on the demonstrators. His ain seven-year-old girl was among those maced. Later that twenty-four hours, “ I mentioned it off-handedly to Martin, that they had a March in Memphis and had been attacked. Possibly you have to come down and assist us out. ‘I may make that, ‘ he said. ”
By happenstance, a few yearss after Kyles had spoken to King, Lawson proposed that outstanding national figures be invited hebdomadal to beat up the strikers and their protagonists. Memphis newspapers and telecasting had given the work stoppage minimal coverage. Lawson hoped to coerce their manus by transforming the work stoppage into a national issue. Among those considered was Roy Wilkins, caput of the NAACP, Whitney Young of the National Urban
League, Bayard Rustin of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, and Dr. King. Wilkins and Rustin, the first approached, agreed to talk in Memphis on March 14. When King was invited, he was hesitating, stating that his physicians had late told him to acquire more remainder. “ All of his staff was against Martin coming, ” recalls Kyles. “ He was manner behind agenda for
the readying for the [ Poor People ‘s ] March on Washington [ scheduled for April 22 ] . ”
Most of King ‘s energies were traveling toward the Poor People ‘s Campaign. His proclamation the old November that he wanted “ moving ridges of the state ‘s hapless and disinherited ” to fall on Washington, D.C. , and remain at that place until the authorities responded with reforms had already caused many Whites to fear that the summer would be racked by major civil perturbations.
However, the sanitation work stoppage seemed a distinct issue of right or incorrect, and King and his staff relented, eventually switching a March 18 meeting of his Southern Christian Leadership Conference ( SCLC ) executive commission from Jackson, Mississippi, to Memphis.
The work stoppage, meanwhile, remained at a standstill. On Monday, March 18, King arrived shortly after 7:00 p.m. Lawson and Epps picked him up at the airdrome. He was tired, but the sight of a jammed auditoriumi??15,000 people at Mason Templei??revitalized him. There were people standing in the balks, in the dorsum, and on the sides. “ You fellows must truly hold something traveling on here, ” he told Lawson. A immense white banneri??not
by might, non by power, saith the Godhead of hosts, but by my spiriti??was draped behind the dais. King, a bestiring speechmaker who was best before big crowds, was in rare signifier that dark. Time and once more, he had the crowd on its pess. By the terminal of his talk, the three glistening refuse tins on the phase near him had over $ 5,000 in parts for the strikers.
“ Martin, we are holding day-to-day Marches, ” Lawson said to King on the dais. “ Why do n’t you come back and take a large March? You see how they receive you. It would be terrific! ”
Lawson had approached King at the right minute. Delighting in the exhilaration of the disruptive response he had merely received, King checked with two of his closest advisors, Andrew Young and Ralph Abernathy, both of whom agreed it was deserving returning. “ He said it was like the old yearss, ” says Kyles. “ It truly energized him. ” King pulled out his assignment book and checked for an unfastened day of the month. The crowd fell soundless as they saw him back at the mike. “ I want to state you that I am coming back to Memphis on Friday. I want all of you to remain place from work that twenty-four hours. I want a enormous work arrest, and all of you, your households and kids, will fall in me, and I will take you in a March through the centre of Memphis. ” That proclamation prompted a deafening response from the crowd. **
During the undermentioned yearss, the brotherhood leaders and curates prepared for the twenty-four hours Memphis would be shut down. King ‘s entry into the sanitation work stoppage exacerbated the division between inkinesss and Whites. Many Whites thought King was an intruder who had latched on to the work stoppage as a manner of buffing his ain image. They resented his engagement. Blacks, on the other manus, welcomed it. “ We ne’er viewed him as an foreigner, ” says
Kyles. “ We did n’t necessitate Martin Luther King to come and state us to be free, we merely needed him to come and assist us be free. ”
On March 21, the twenty-four hours before King ‘s return, a freak storm hit the country. It began snowing approximately 4:00 p.m. Snow is rare in Memphis, and about unheard of in March. “ I looked at it with wonder, ” recalled Lawson. “ I truly thought the material would halt, it wo n’t last, it ‘s excessively wet. ” It snowed, nevertheless, through the dark, and by morning a pes was on the land, on the manner to seventeen inches, the second-largest blizzard in Memphis history. Lawson telephoned King, who was scheduled to take a flight into the metropolis by 9:00 ante meridiem Everything was canceled, but they agreed on a new day of the month, Thursday, March 28. Many white Memphians, nevertheless, greeted the blizzard ‘s reaching with alleviation. “ Our supplications were
answered, ” says the married woman of the metropolis ‘s so patrol homicide head. Yet the tenseness among Whites merely temporarily lessened, since a new work arrest was merely six yearss off.
On Wednesday, March 27, about 1:30 p.m. , a middle-aged mani??slim, with dark brown hair, a thin olfactory organ, thick black-framed spectacless, manicured nails, and a skin color so pale it appeared he was rarely in the suni??walked into the Gun Rack, a Birmingham, Alabama, store some 240 stat mis from Memphis. “ I would wish to see your.243-caliber rifles. ” His voice had a somewhat high pitch, but was soft, difficult to hear. Clyde Manasco, the clerk, thought he recognized him and that he had been in the store before, ever entirely. He was the adult male with all the inquiries: What was the most accurate rifle? How much would a slug bead at one hundred paces? At two hundred? What rifle provided the flattest and longest flight? What range was the best, affording first-class spying with no deformation? He had even inquired about a Browning automatic.264 that had been written up in gun magazines but non yet shipped to shops.
On other occasions, Manasco, every bit good as the proprietor, Quinton Davis, had given the client some bookletsi??one on Redfield Scopess and another on Winchester gunsi??as good as referred him to books that contained makers ‘ proficient specifications. The inquiries did non strike Davis as odd, since he assumed the client might be interested in making his ain manus reloading of ammunition. At other times, Davis had taken guns off the rack and offered them to him, but the client ne’er handled them.
Alternatively he merely looked and studied.
Whenever Davis or Manasco talked to him, the adult male stared back. Both subsequently recalled his unusual visible radiation bluish eyes. Davis thought he might be a Southerner, and while he talked intelligently and was ever neatly dressed in a athleticss jacket, he someway seemed “ under a strain or somewhat mentally disturbed. ”
When the adult male walked through the front door that Wednesday, Manasco sighed. The Gun Rack did non acquire many clients every bit hard as him. Most knew what they wanted. But this clip, Manasco had a experiencing the adult male with the inquiries might be, as he subsequently put it, “ about ready to purchase a gun. ”
Manasco informed him he did non hold any Remington.243s in stock, and alternatively tried to involvement him in a Remington.30-06. “ No, it ‘s excessively expensive, ” the adult male said. Alternatively, he asked Manasco for a ballistic trajectories chart, but since he could non take it with him, he studied it for a few proceedingss before go forthing. At the kerb, he got into a white Mustang and drove away. The employees at the Gun Rack ne’er saw him once more.
* In this book, whenever a individual is quoted in the present tense, it reflects an interview conducted by the writer. The past tense indicates all other beginnings.
** James Earl Ray ‘s latest lawyer, William Pepper, contends in his book Orders to Kill that “ a squad of federal agents conducted electronic surveillance on Dr. King in his suite at the Holiday Inn Rivermont Hotel on the eventide of March 18. ” Pepper cites a beginning “ who must stay unidentified. ” The job, nevertheless, is that King really spent the dark of March 18 at his regular motel, the black-run Lorraine.