Memphis Sanitation Strike

A line of Black protestors wearing "I am a man" signs walk along a city sidewalk. Driving down the street next to them is a tank driven by white National Guardsmen. — **Memphis sanitation strikers marching down Main Street while National Guardsmen in an armored personnel carrier patrol alongside, March 1968.**
Courtesy of University of Memphis Libraries/Special Collections/Memphis Press-Scimitar

The “I Am a Man” signs carried by the striking Memphis sanitation workers on March 28, 1968, are emblematic symbols of the struggle for civil rights and economic justice. The strike began on February 12 after two sanitation workers were killed on the job, and Black workers began to protest unfair and prejudicial work policies.

Support for the strikers in the Black community grew, and Memphis leaders invited the involvement of Martin Luther King, Jr., who was planning the Poor People’s Campaign. In the later 1960s, the targets of King’s activism were often the underlying poverty, unemployment, lack of education, and blocked avenues of economic opportunity that confronted Black Americans.

King was assassinated in Memphis several days later on April 4, 1968, as leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) were negotiating non-violent strategies in support of the strikers and the Black community.