Taylor Rogers: "We Took A Stand"
Memphis
In 1968, Taylor Rogers was a trash collector in Memphis, Tenn. -- "just another guy" with eight children to support and a mortgage to pay off.
He became a part of history.
Disgusted by racism and poor working conditions, Taylor and 1,300 fellow African-American sanitation workers in Memphis launched a strike to win recognition as a union -- and as human beings. Their pro-test signs said it simply: "I am a man."
The strike succeeded after 64 days, but it exacted a terrible toll: Workers were beaten, gassed and jailed.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. paid the ultimate price: He was assassinated while in Memphis to support the strike.
After the strike, Rogers rose to become president of Local 1733, which today is multi-racial and has some 3,500 members. Today, at age 71, he is retired and the grandfather of 16. He is working to establish an AFSCME retiree unit.
On the 29th anniversary of the landmark strike, Taylor Rogers remembers the bad old Memphis of 1968 and how his union, AFSCME, helped make it better.
"I went to work on a truck in 1958, carrying a big tub into backyards and loading up. We had no union, no vacation, no benefits, no pensions, no overtime. The pay was 94 cents an hour. We had to do whatever they told us to do, and if you were hurt on the job, you got nothing.
"In about 1964 we started trying to organize. We formed AFSCME Local 1733, but they wouldn't recognize us. We'd hold meetings, and if the boss found out about it you got fired. One rainy day the boss sent us home without pay while the white workers got paid. Then two of the guys were killed in a compactor and their families got nothing. We said, 'This is enough,' and we voted to strike.
"We didn't only want decent pay and working conditions. We wanted dignity -- not to be treated like second-class citizens. But the mayor [Henry Loeb] told us the strike was illegal."
After the city brought in replacements, "The president of AFSCME [Jerry Wurf] and his assistant [Bill Lucy] came down to look the situation over. Once they saw how bad things were and how stubborn we were they put the International union behind us.
"We started marching every day from Clayborn Temple to City Hall. Some [workers] got beat up pretty bad [by police].
"The strike really brought the black community together. They donated food and took up collections. We got help from other unions, from black churches, and from white religious groups.
"[By March] morale was getting low. We had to convince some to keep up the fight. That's when [the union and others] got Dr. King involved. He put everything aside to come help us."
King led one march, but outsiders got out of hand and started a riot. Determined to lead a non-violent protest, King scheduled a second march, and hours before it began he was assassinated.
"It was just like losing your father and mother. But the entire country began bringing pressure on the city to settle the strike. I don't think we could have won without King.
"We were trying to do something for ourselves, but it turned out we helped a lot of others. We got recognition, better pay and benefits. Jobs in Memphis opened up for blacks. Today Memphis has a black mayor and a majority of the city council are black. The black community has dignity, and the white community has awareness.
"Nobody seemed to realize how bad things were [for blacks in Memphis] but us. We took a stand. Someone has to take a stand. We had to be united to get where we wanted to go. The union helped us do that."
By Chuck Schultz
