Legislative Action

In the state capitol at Nashville, meanwhile, Senators Joe Pipkin and Hugh Stanton of Memphis had introduced three bills aimed at the strike. The bills were rushed through the Senate committee system and scheduled for a vote in only three legislative days.

One bill, passed by 21-10, provided a five-year prison sentence for persons disrupting public communication with police and fire departments. (There had been some talk in Memphis of tying up police and fire department telephone lines.)

The other two bills would have outlawed strikes against police, fire, and sanitation departments and prohibited union dues check-offs from government paychecks. Little opposition had been expressed to them, perhaps because of the speed with which they were sent through the legislative machinery. Then, on the night of the 26th, according to the Nashville Tennessean, "Organized labor ... descended on the legislative halls ... and appealed to each senator." Matt Lynch, president of the State Labor Council, said "all elements of organized labor" opposed the two measures. The bills were defeated, in effect, by referring them to a committee.

Thus, in the first two weeks, a pattern was set which was not in significant degree to change through subsequent meetings of the City Council, protest confrontations of strikers and their sympathizers with police, and negotiating sessions with city officials. In effect, the Negro community, unified as probably never before around the issue of the garbage strike, met and became increasingly aware of stubborn resistance from the city's top official, and less stubborn but vacillating and ineffective response from the City Council, this accompanied by abrasive encounters with police and harsh criticism from the press. A measure of support unprecedented in the South had come from white union members who marched some 500 strong with the strikers on March 4. But beyond that, the other elements of white power, including clergy and businesses, the latter hard-hit by the boycott, had not effectively entered the crisis on either side, a not unusual situation in the South. With each passing day of inability of the city (and beyond it, the state and the nation) to deal realistically with the simple terms of the strike and the larger issues of Negro rightful demands, tension in Memphis mounted.

By March 7, such whites as Baxton Bryant, who had played a valuable role as a trusted intermediary between the Negro community and the city, began to doubt the utility of their function. It seemed to them that the city officials retained the imperturbable, immemorial southern charm and willingness to discuss the problem, but that in fact they were not yielding an inch. Perhaps he should cease walking through open doors which led only to closed minds, Bryant suggested to the Reverend Starks, president of the black Interdenominational Ministers Alliance, over breakfast that morning. "Oh, no," responded Starks. "Somebody's got to talk to them; some channels have got to stay open. And we can't do it. We've got nothing to say to them any more."

But a man as positively disposed toward life as Reverend Starks has difficulty in persuading himself of his own counsel of despair. He decided to join Bryant and a reporter in interviews with the mayor and Downing Pryor. In both interviews, Bryant tried to convey his sense of the dangerously escalating hostility between the solidified Negro community and the city officialdom. He cited the report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Memphis was becoming a perfect example of two alienated, antagonistic communities tensely confronting one another, he said. The mayor responded with great personal warmth, repeated his unalterable opposition to dues check-off, now the crux of the conflict. In the large, beautifully appointed, softly shaded office, the anguish expressed by Bryant and reflected in the tense face of Starks, seemed incapable of passing to the other side of the executive desk.

But if the mayor was unmoved, he was not inactive. He wanted so much to "keep talking" to the Negro leadership and he was so happy Starks had come. Could he not return later; the mayor would be happy to clear his calendar. Was it not of the utmost importance "that we keep talking to each other?" The group was rising to leave, but it looked as if Starks were rising alone. He drew himself up to his full height and said, "No, mayor. I cannot come to see you. Our community has taken a position and I stand with them. You have to talk to all of us." There was no sign that the mayor had heard the death knell of plantation politics for the duration of this crisis.

Downing Pryor tried to express his personal concern, and the helplessness of the Council. Any action by the City Council would require six weeks to hurdle a mayoral veto -- surely that was too late? But Starks did not let him off so easy. A pro-union resolution by the Council would not only hearten the Negro community, but show them that there was now an independent agency at city hall, capable of redressing their grievances. Pryor evaded this challenge, describing instead the bold new fair employment resolution promulgated by the Council: increased hiring of Negroes until their number in city jobs equals their percentage in the population, accompanied by the necessary placement and training services. It sounded like a serious piece of legislation and there was little doubt that it had been hastened, if not inspired, by the mobilization of the black community behind the sanitation workers.