About AFSCME

Dignity as an Issue

Negro citizens' complaints against police and the newspapers were only a part of the problem in Memphis. The attitude of public officials was the common denominator of the preachers and the garbage collectors in their struggle. If one were required to say in a word what the strike and the marches and the mass meetings in Memphis were all about, that word would have to be dignity. One can read in the narrative of events of those days in Memphis a chronicle of indignities suffered by Negroes at the hands of the Public Works Department, of the City Council, and of the mayor. Early in the strike, the people began calling him "King Henry."

Dr. Ralph Jackson was by his own admission a conservative minister. But he happened to be marching in support of the strikers when the police broke up that march and his ministerial standing meant nothing: he was gassed with all the others. Preaching at one of the mass meetings, he let it be known that the Mace had opened his eyes:

I have a confession to make. For thirty years I have been training to hold myself in check. I couldn't understand what made some people lose control of themselves and fly off the handle. I never thought it would happen to me. But I lost thirty years of training in just five minutes last Friday!

A union official said, concerning negotiations for a settlement of the strike, "I don't think Mayor Loeb has any objection to seeing the men get more money. But he wants them to continue in dependency. It's a strange social system he is trying to preserve."

Jesse Epps, another official of the union who is a young man, looked out over the rally of more than a thousand black men at the Rubber Workers' Hall. Most of them were in their upper thirties or older. "We have to win this one," he told them. "This is the last chance for many of us to be men." The willingness of the men to hold out so long when they could have settled for better wages, grievance procedures, and everything else except the dignity of collective bargaining with the mayor, suggests that they agreed with Mr. Epps.

Jesse Epps is the AFSCME's staff man in charge of the southern region. Highly capable, he is a union organizer who recites poetry ("Heaven is not reached at a single bound . . . .") and quotes the Bible accurately. In one of those quiet, two-men-in-a-room conversations that do not lend themselves to posturing, he said matter-of-factly and with a far-away look, "I don't think I've ever been so hurt as I was when the City Council walked out last Friday afternoon without hearing the people." This was Jesse Epps the man, the black man, talking -- not Jesse Epps the union organizer. "The basic issue," he continued, "is not pay, but recognition of the union. There has never been the unity in the Negro community of Memphis that there is now, and the reason is that recognition of the union involves recognition of the workers as men. The mayor wants to say, 'Go on back to work and then we'll do right about your complaints; you know our word is as good as our bond.' Just as if Memphis were a Delta plantation."

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