At dawn, 58-year-old Tommie Davenport gets out of his bed to face the day. While the average person is asleep, Davenport makes his way to the Memphis Solid Waste Management Service Center. For 25 years, he has come into work at 7 a.m., preparing to collect filthy trash, all with a gleaming smile on his face.
“Back when I was a little boy, I just never wanted to be a garbage man,” Davenport said. “The type of labor then was different. Many of the sanitation workers had to go into a person’s back yard just to get their trash. Now everybody knows the routine. If you want your trash picked up, you drag it to the street whenever your pickup day is. Not much is too excessive for us these days.”
Davenport said he has more black coworkers than white, but he does not see it as a race issue.
“A lot of black people were just willing to do this type of work,” Davenport said. “They had to put up with a lot of disrespect from white people just to maintain a living.”
It seemed as if this was more evident than ever on Feb. 1, 1968, when two African-American sanitation workers named Echol Cole and Robert Walker were killed due to a defective garbage truck in Memphis. The two men were seeking shelter from the rain when the garbage compactor of the truck crushed their bodies. This was not the first time sanitation workers were killed by faulty machinery.
The sanitation department decided they would not replace the malfunctioning equipment. This was the last straw for many sanitation workers. On Feb. 12, 1968, many of them decided not to go to work. Instead, they chose to meet at Memphis Labor Temple to discuss what needed to be done to get the respect they felt they deserved.
“Now we have mechanics who are there to fix our trucks if need be,” Davenport said. “Most of the times, the trucks work fine compared to King’s time.”
In 1968, an estimated 1,300 black men employed by the sanitation department decided to go on strike. One of the first ways of getting their message across was to march to the City Council chamber to express their grievances. They were met by Memphis police. Henry Loeb, then mayor of Memphis, began his term in January of that year.
Loeb refused to pay the sanitation workers any overtime. He also decided he would not replace any trucks not fit for use. Workers would have to make do with what they had.
“Back then, if they were getting overtime pay, it wasn’t enough to count,” said Davenport. “The wages were like $1.50 or $1.75 back in the day. That was nothing to live off of, especially in those conditions.”
With sanitation workers on strike, trash in Memphis started to rise at a noticeable rate. The amount of garbage stacking up was becoming a nuisance to the people of Memphis. Without any workers to dispose of the waste, the severity of the strike became more apparent as time progressed.
“There was so much that had to be done in this city,” said Jeremiah Davis, a junior who worked as a compost manager at the University of Memphis. “For them to not get paid the money they deserve for dangerous labor, that stuff is not easy.”
The strike could have ended at an earlier date because the City Council was willing to vote to recognize the sanitation workers’ union, but Loeb rejected this. Because he was the only one with the authority to approve a union, there was nothing more that could be done except the continuation of a protest.
“I think that it’d be very hard to trust a leader like that, who disregards the safety of workers who should trust him and depend on him,” said Landry Starks, whose father works as the manager of corporate security at MLGW. “I think once that trust is breached, you’ll never get that back. To be over people, you have to have their respect.”
King arrived in Memphis on March 18, 1968, to speak to an electrified group of about 25,000 people. People came out in droves to hear King show support for the strikers and speak about the injustices they had to face.
“You are demonstrating that we can stick together,” King said in his speech. “You are demonstrating that we are all tied in a single garment of destiny, and that if one black person suffers, if one black person is down, we are all down.”
King left the next day, but would return to Memphis on March 28, 1968, for another protest. Unfortunately, the peaceful protest took a turn for the worst. Tempers were already at a peak, so onlookers agitating the strikers only to overwhelming frustration. Violence ensued, and the key message was soon lost in the chaos. As a result, 16-year-old Larry Payne was killed by a police officer.
The day afterwards, more than 200 strikers continued to protest while holding signs that read “I Am a Man.” This message was so simple, yet it carried so much weight. For sanitation workers, just trying to achieve a simple livelihood was an ordeal. These fights to obtain better workforce benefits are not uncommon today.
“We don’t have a pension,” said Davenport. “The only thing we have is a 401k. Our union has been trying to get us a retirement benefit, but so far it hasn’t happened.”
King returned to Memphis for a third time on April 3, 1968. He knew if a nonviolent protest would be beneficial for the culture, then it needed to be done sooner rather than later. During this visit, he would go on to give one of the most historical speeches of all time: “I’ve been to the Mountaintop.” King spoke to the crowd before him with a hint of sorrow yet a powerful conviction in his voice.
“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life — longevity has its place,” King said in the “Mountaintop” speech. “But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”
In hindsight, this chilling speech was more of a moment of clarity for the people in attendance, including the sanitation workers. To know a man of such significance could feel his mortality, it became harder for them to accept the reality of what was happening to them.
It was hard enough to put their lives on the line just to make a barely passable living, especially knowing how significant the job is. If there was ever a time to soak in a message, that was the moment. King was shot and killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel the next evening.
Thanks to King’s efforts, the Memphis City Council agreed to the sanitation workers having a union. They also promised to increase their wages. The strike officially ended on April 16, 1968. Since then, they have much more to look forward to there. An integral part of the job now is working together in unison.
“I love my coworkers,” Davenport said. “I don’t have a vehicle, so one of my coworkers will pick me up and take me to work. Some even bring me home. We take care of each other on and off the job. We all look out for each other.”
People participating in the Sanitation Strike photo re-enactment raise their signs in the air for a drone to photograph. The daughter of Ernest Withers, who took the original iconic photo, took this shot of the re-enactment.
