Remembering Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Memphis Labor Strike

April 4, 1968, about 6:01pm. We should always remember that time. It has now been a half century years since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. He was moving conceptually and in his actions in a more radical direction combining antiracist, broader anticlass, and antiwar efforts—which efforts likely had much to do with his assassination.King (Photo: Wiki-images)

I remember the day vividly, like it was yesterday, and can still remember the time of day when one of my students at the University of California called me to tell of the terrible event, and I can still remember well my and his very distressed emotional labor and our cognitive labor (who did it? why did it happen? etc) as we talked about the shooting. (We did not know Dr. King had died at that time.) He was one of the few African American students then at that university and as one would expect was completely devastated by the event, as I was too.

In some ways, King’s assassination marked the apparent end of much of the black civil rights movement in the 1960s, not necessarily a coincidence. One does not have to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder about this historical timing — or to wonder where this country would be if thinker/leaders like Dr. King and Malcolm X had lived to lead an ever renewed rights and racism-change movement.

The events leading up to Dr. King’s assassination need to be taught everywhere. In late March 1968 Dr. King and other civil rights leaders participated in and supported the local Memphis sanitary works employees, black and white, who were striking for better wages and working condition.

Conditions in Memphis, as elsewhere, were very oppressive for workers, in both racial and class terms, as this brief summary makes clear:


King gave his last (“I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”) speech at a rally for the workers at the Mason Temple in Memphis.

This is the famous section near the end of his prophetic speech, where he reflects on death threats he had often received:


Let us remember him well, and especially his prophetic antiracist, anti-capitalistic, and antiwar messages, and his commitment to long-term efforts against white racism, on this day, April 4, 2018.