Organizing Can Shape History
By Jimmie Turner
Taylor Rogers, former sanitation worker, has seen decades of change brought about by union activism.
Memphis, Tennessee
In this city, famous for the blues, union organizing has drastically changed the lifestyles of impoverished working-class people and left an indelible mark on American history.
It was here, in 1968, that several hundred sanitation workers — making less than $1 an hour and eligible for welfare — decided they'd had enough of poor wages, lousy working conditions and an anti-union mayor. So they went on strike. Marching on city hall, those men, their families and other supporters were attacked by police.
It was also here that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated — gunned down at the Lorraine Motel while in town to support the protesters in their fight against oppression.
Through his eyes
Taylor Rogers, now a spry 76, retains close ties to AFSCME. In 2001, he helped organize sanitation workers in Richmond, Ind. In addition, he regularly attends International conventions.
Rogers remembers the Memphis organizing events as if they happened yesterday. In 1964, Rogers and his co-workers figured that if they had to pick up other people's garbage, they were going to be respected for doing it. So they began to organize.
In those segregated times, African Americans in the South who stood up and demanded justice were ridiculed and harassed. Mayor Henry Loeb and the city council, with the backing of the white community, ignored the workers' union representation with AFSCME.
In February 1968, a crisis erupted: The accidental activation of a packer blade in the back of a garbage truck fatally crushed workers Echol Cole and Robert Walker. "That's when the men said, ‘We're tired and we ain't going to take anymore,'" recalls Rogers. "If you bend your back, people can ride it. But if you stand up straight, people can'tride your back. And that's what we did.
"We stood up straight."
An untimely death
The strike started on Feb. 12 and lasted two months. Along the way, workers and supporters marched daily to pressure the mayor and city council to recognize the sanitation unit under AFSCME Local 1733. The men wore signs that read: "I Am a Man," a slogan that still surfaces in civil rights campaigns. Their struggle for economic justice also became a fight for racial equality, dignity and respect.
On March 28, King led a march to city hall. A riot erupted and police attacked the demonstrators with Mace, tear gas, nightsticks and gunfire. A 16-year-old boy was shot and killed.
King, a crusader for non-violent activism, vowed to go back to Memphis and run a peaceful rally. He returned April 3, but city officials enforced an injunction preventing him from leading a march. That night, the reverend delivered his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech at Mason Temple. Rogers witnessed the oration and sensed that an eerie calmness had come over King: "You could kind of get the feeling that he knew something was going to happen." King was assassinated the next day.
Although the workers won collective bargaining rights about two weeks after King's death, the victory was overwhelmingly bittersweet. "We were proud of what we had gained, but we were sorry about what we had lost. That was part of Dr. King's life, however, and I felt that he felt justified by dying for the best cause he could think of: for men who were on the bottom of the ladder.
"He came to see about us, and that makes me think about him as being one of the greatest men ever," says Rogers.
In August of this year, accompanied by a Public Employee reporter, he toured the National Civil Rights Museum on Mulberry Street in Memphis. The museum owns the Lorraine Motel and the rooming house across the street where the fatal bullet was fired. It was Rogers' first time at the motel since the reverend's death. While walking the balcony and viewing King's room, the gospel song, "Precious Lord," played over the speaker system. Rogers put his hand over his mouth, and it took all of his strength to stop the tears from flowing.
Organizing proves contagious
The success of the sanitation strike inspired thousands of other city employees to stand up and demand collective bargaining. Rogers, who served as Local 1733's president for 20 years, says workers from the Memphis schools, hospital, courts, power commission, housing authority and elsewhere joined the union. "After we organized and got the strike settled, people knew that they had to fight for what they wanted," he says.
Because of right-to-work laws, a hamstrung National Labor Relations Board and increasing anti-union sentiment today, Rogers says, "organizing only makes sense. It gives you political power and just representation. You can tell what it did for AFSCME because of how the union has grown over the years. AFSCME is over a million members strong, and that's all from organizing. I guess other unions are organizing, but nobody is doing it like AFSCME."
More importantly, he notes, organizing builds solidarity among union members. "Most people in management don't want to hear you by yourself. You by yourself don't mean much to them.
"But if you have people behind you and people who can represent you, that makes them give you respect."
