MEMPHIS, Tenn. — As the nation remembers the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Thursday, April 4 — the 66th anniversary of the day the civil rights icon was gunned down in Memphis — many may not know or remember why King visited Memphis in early 1968.
King traveled to the city to fight for garbage workers who were on strike due to poor working conditions.
More specifically, King was there to be a voice for the men who drove and worked on the big rigs that picked up the city’s trash.
The night before his assassination in April 1968, King told a group of striking sanitation workers in Memphis that “We’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We’ve got to see it through.”
On Feb. 1, 1968, two Memphis garbage collectors, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed to death by a malfunctioning truck.
Eleven days later, 1,300 Black men from the Memphis Department of Public Works went on strike.
After several tumultuous days of strike events, King was getting ready for dinner on April 4, 1968, when he was shot and killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.
A complete account of King’s journey to Memphis can be found online at Stanford University’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute.
Born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and raised in East Texas, John Worthen returned to his home state to attend college in 1998 and decided to make his life in The Natural State. Worthen is a 20-year veteran of the journalism industry and has covered just about every topic there is. He has a passion for writing and telling stories. He has worked as a beat reporter and bureau chief for a statewide newspaper and as managing editor of a regional newspaper in Arkansas. Additionally, Worthen has been a prolific freelance journalist for two decades, and has been published in several travel magazines and on travel websites.
