Sanitation Workers Picket Line

Last week Pat and I were blessed to visit the National Civil Rights Museum at the Loraine Hotel in Memphis, TN. It was the history of the civil rights movement from the time of first slave ship to assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 and beyond. It was a fascinated place with history speaking a loud and clear message: there was no progress without direct action by the people.

It also confirmed what I have been told and experienced: the civil rights movement slowly faded away after the death of Martin Luther King Jr. The establishment of power structure did not allow another black leader, like King, to arise.

This squashing of black leaders still goes on today in Milwaukee. Black leaders who are not part of the establishment, like former acting Mayor Pratt to Nate Hamilton are demeaned and marginalized by white establishment.

The Sanitation workers of Memphis whose strike Dr. King came to support, developed a slogan “I am a Man.” They were seeking equal rights and equal pay for sanitation workers. The Poor People’s Campaign that King and others were planning was going to demand jobs or payment for basic needs to all people in need. A year before he was killed Dr. King said “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

After King was killed in 1968 the spiritual death of the civil rights movement and nation began. Nowadays young adult African American males are marginalized by society and the US military budget is the greatest ever. Instead of economic equality we got can an African American President and ‘endless wars’.
In the Stax Museum of American Soul Music one of the key players in the museum describe how Martin Luther King Jr.’s death was the beginning of the end for Stax recording studio. I wondered what he meant by that remark but soon came to see. Soul Music, which was at the heart of the civil rights movement, also began to fade.

In future postings I hope to explore this thought of the pivotal place of King’s assignation to the civil rights movement but for now I just want to say we must “keep the faith” and “keep hope alive”.

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