sanitation workers strike, memphis, tenn., 1968

"Recounts the 1968 Sanitation Workers Strike in Memphis, Tennessee, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his final speech to strikers the night before his assassination, and details the perseverance of strikers before and after his death"--OCLC.

In February 1968, two African American sanitation workers were killed by unsafe equipment in Memphis, Tennessee. Outraged at the city's refusal to recognize a labor union, sanitation workers went on strike. The strike lasted two months, during which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was called to help with the protests. While his presence was greatly inspiring to the community, this unfortunately would be his last stand for justice. He was assassinated in his Memphis hotel the day after delivering his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" sermon. Inspired by the memories of a teacher who participated in the strike as a child, author Alice Faye Duncan reveals the story of the Memphis sanitation strike from the perspective of a young girl with a riveting combination of poetry and prose.

Chronicles events in the last days of Martin Luther King, Jr. Features quotes, a timeline, photographs, and further resources.

Recounts the events surrounding the 1968 public-employee strike in Memphis that paralyzed the city and led to a complete overhaul of the city's plantation mentality that set the predominately African-American public workers apart from their upper-class white counterparts.

Examines the link between the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike and the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., discussing how the strike, the media, politics, the civil rights movement, and the labor protests all laid the foundations for what many consider to be King's greatest speech, given just days before he was killed, and how that speech and King's death influenced the end of the strike.