In
the early days of April 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. traveled to
Memphis, Tennessee, to join in a protest with 1,300 city sanitation
workers who had gone on strike after two of their colleagues were killed
on the job.
Their
demands were, by any reasonable standards, modest: a safe workplace,
fair wages, and to be treated with dignity and respect.
Dr.
King would not have much time to participate in the demonstrations. On
April 4, 1968, he was killed by an assassin’s bullet at his Memphis
motel. But Coretta Scott King recognized how important the sanitation
workers’ cause was to her late husband and led a march for the workers
only four days after his death. And just two weeks later, the sanitation
workers’ union, AFSCME Local 1733, reached an agreement with the city
for safer working conditions and higher wages.
Now,
almost 50 years later, the Supreme Court will hear a case that could
fundamentally turn back the clock on the movement for civil rights,
labor rights and economic justice in America.
Source: Yahoo News
No comments:
Post a Comment