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Honor King: End Racism!
Memphis: Allied Printing, [1968]. Poster on heavy paper, 21.5” x 14”. CONDITION: Very good, some scratches, soiling and minor stains. A rare example of the sign carried by striking sanitation workers in Memphis following the assassination there of Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4th, 1968, from the collection of civil rights activist Samuel Walker. The Memphis sanitation workers’ strike began on February 12th, 1968, after years of low wages, hazardous working conditions, and discriminatory treatment of the city’s predominantly Black sanitation workforce. The immediate catalyst was the February 1st deaths of Echol Cole and Robert Walker, who were crushed inside a malfunctioning garbage truck. Some 1,300 workers walked out under the leadership of T. O. Jones and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), demanding union recognition, safer equipment, and better wages. Mayor Henry Loeb refused to recognize the union, and police repression of peaceful demonstrations helped rally Memphis’s Black churches, students, and civil rights organizations behind the strike. The workers became nationally identified with the stark placards “I AM A MAN,” an assertion of dignity and equality that connected their economic grievances to the broader civil rights struggle, and “HONOR KING, END RACISM,” associated with the movement’s continuation after King’s assassination and linking support for the workers with the larger struggle against racial discrimination. Martin Luther King, Jr. regarded the Memphis strike as an important expression of the economic justice he hoped to address nationally through the Poor People’s Campaign. He first addressed some 25,000 supporters in Memphis on March 18th and returned to lead a march on March 28th, which descended into violence despite his commitment to nonviolence. Determined to return and complete the campaign, King came back on April 3rd and delivered his final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” declaring that the struggle in Memphis had to be carried through to its conclusion. He was assassinated the following evening at the Lorraine Motel. On April 8th, Coretta Scott King joined civil rights and labor leaders in leading an estimated 42,000 people in a silent march supporting the sanitation workers. Continued pressure, together with federal mediation, finally produced an agreement on April 16th recognizing the union and providing improved wages, although workers had to threaten another strike several months later to get the city to honor its commitment. Samuel Emlen Walker (b. 1942) was a senior at the University of Michigan when he answered the call of Robert “Bob” Moses of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee for volunteers to bolster community organizing and voter registration efforts in Mississippi during the famous Freedom Summer of 1964. After graduating in December, Walker returned to Gulfport in January of 1965, where he stayed until the fall of 1966, to continue working with the Mississippi Freedom Project on community organizing, voter registration, and, in 1966, the Head Start program. Following his work with the SNCC, Walker earned an M.A. and a Ph.D., and, a decade after his first summer in Mississippi, began his career as a professor of criminal justice, first with a focus on police-community relations and, later, on police accountability. In addition to compiling an archive of materials relating to his service with the SNCC, Walker gathered other materials relating to the Civil Rights Movement and African Americana more generally. A rare survival of one of the most tragic moments in the struggle for civil rights. REFERENCES: “Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike” at Stanford’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute online. PROVENANCE: Samuel Walker, a Mississippi Freedom Summer activist.
Item #10074
Price: $15,000.00
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