Memphis in 1968: Sanitation Workers, Martin Luther King Jr., and a City in Crisis
In February 1968, 1,300 black sanitation workers in Memphis walked off the job to protest unsafe conditions and poverty wages. Their placards read ‘I Am a Man.’ When Martin Luther King Jr. came to support them, he was assassinated. Drawing on primary sources—newspaper reports, speeches, and worker testimonies—this article reconstructs how contemporaries experienced the strike, the violence, and the hope that briefly united a city in crisis.