GREENE: On anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, don’t forget the sanitation workers who brought the Civil Rights leader to Memphis
SAM MELHORN/AP
Dr.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rev. Ralph Abernathy, right, lead a march on behalf of striking Memphis sanitation workers March 28, 1968.
"I AM A MAN"
It was raining hard in Memphis one day when a pair of sanitation workers sought shelter in an employee lounge.
But because they were black, and it was 1968, they were chased away, settling instead for a dry spot on the back of a smelly garbage truck.
Their names were Echol Cole and Robert Walker. They were killed when a mechanical malfunction caused the truck to crush them along with the waste and the refuge they had been carting all day.
More than 1,300 sanitation workers -- most of them black, and carrying signs that said simply "I AM A MAN -- walked off the job, setting in motion a chain of events that culminated in one of the darkest days in American History, the April 4 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Against the advice of even his closest advisers, King threw his support behind the lowly trash men.
`If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?' King said later.
Violence erupted as the marchers neared the downtown section where a rally in support of striking garbage workers was scheduled.
King dived in with both feet, leading a march just weeks after the workers' deaths. But the march turned violent after a militant youth group was blamed for breaking windows, damaging King's non-violent credibility.
King vowed to lead a peaceful Memphis march, but never got the chance.
"Like anybody, I would like to live a long life-longevity has its place," King told a crowd the night before he was gunned down at the Lorraine Motel.
"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. "And so I'm happy tonight; I'm not worried about anything; I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
Voters, especially black voters looking for a reason to cast a ballot in the absence of President Obama, need to remember those days as this election season heats up.
Plenty of people died for that precious right. Two of them worked on a garbage truck.
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