The February 23 March

On Friday afternoon, so many people showed up for the Council meeting that it was moved to a municipal auditorium. (The Memphis Press-Scimitar estimated one thousand. An observer sympathetic to the strikers estimated two thousand. Estimates of crowds at meetings and marches by the two Memphis dailies were, with notable consistency, about half those of Negro leaders.)

In view of what ensued, the Negro ministers and union leaders wondered why they bothered. The meeting was called to order at 2:30 p.m. with the traditional cry of the sergeant-at-arms: "Oyez, this honorable City Council of the City of Memphis is now in session. All persons having business to transact or matters to bring before the City Council draw nigh, give attention, and ye shall be heard." The Public Works Committee's resolution was never heard. Another resolution, obviously prepared and discussed by the councilmen in advance, was substituted and passed by a vote of nine to four. (The four opposed were three Negro councilmen and one white man who thought the recommendations too compromising.) The substitute resolution suggested concessions by the mayor on all points, except the vital issues of a signed contract recognizing a union and a system of union dues check-off. After passage of this resolution, Council Chairman Downing Pryor announced that members would not, at that meeting, hear citizens -- and the Council was adjourned at 2:45.

This had an electric effect on the assembled strikers and their leaders. As on Thursday, union officers and community leaders, including some recognized even by the white press for their "responsibility," got to their feet to express anger and resentment. T. 0. Jones, president of Local 1733, was quoted by the Press-Scimitar as saying, "We are ready to go to their damned jail." Dr. Vascoe A. Smith, Jr., a Memphis dentist and NAACP leader, was reported in the press to have said, "Don't let them hoodwink you. You are living in a racist town. They don't give a damn about you...."

A march along Main Street was quickly organized after the meeting and an understanding was reached with the police that marchers would stay on the west side of the street.

For several blocks all went smoothly. Then, in the marchers' version, a police cruiser edged over the center line, bumping and nudging the marchers, crowding them closer to the curb. The Tri-State Defender reported that the car stopped on a woman's foot and that marchers tried to push it off. Other accounts were that it ran over the woman's foot, and in anger, marchers tried to shove it back over the center line. The white press questioned whether the car even touched the woman's foot. Whatever the case, marchers were under the impression that it had; there was pushing of the police car.

Indeed, in the police version it was claimed that (for unspecified reasons) an attempt was made to overturn the squad car. Officers quoted one marcher as yelling, "Let's turn the patrol car over," and said that men then started rocking the car. At any rate, five policemen jumped from the cruiser and, joined by other officers, began spraying the marchers with Mace, a new tear gas-like chemical causing temporary blindness and severe facial discomfort. They sprayed not only the men in the immediate vicinity of the squad car, but other marchers up and down the block. In the ensuing confusion, they gassed a number of bystanders and even fellow officers.

Jacques Wilmore, staff director of the regional office of the U. S. Civil Rights Commission, whose office is in Memphis, saw the police grab a man in the crowd, pulling him toward the curb. According to Wilmore, "a third policeman came up and just cracked the man across the head. I walked up to them and pulled out my identification. That's when they squirted me two or three times directly in the eyes with Mace." Bobby Doctor, another employee of the Civil Rights Commission, and Baxton Bryant, Executive Director of the Tennessee Council on Human Relations, were with Wilmore at the time and were sprayed in the same sweeps of the gas canister.

Gerald Fanion, director of Shelby County Community Relations Commission, a Negro, said he was helping a woman out of the ruckus when a policeman walked up to him and squirted him in the face. "I told him who I was and that I was acting as liaison for the county and he squirted me again," said Fanion.

P. J. Ciampa, white field director for the striking union, was sprayed repeatedly. On the following Monday he still had raw, peeling skin under his left eye. He was treated for abrasions and bruises inflicted by the police. "I've never seen such brutality," said Ciampa.

The Tri-State Defender, a Negro-owned weekly, published a page of photographs of the fray. One showed a policeman sprinting directly toward the camera, club in hand. The cameraman reported that a few seconds after he snapped the picture, the policeman yelled, "Gimme that camera, nigger," and chased him into the crowd.

The lead editorial in the Press-Scimitar on February 24, the day after police broke up the march, lamented that "leaders of the union have shown no respect for Tennessee law . . . " It continued:

On the other hand, Memphis can take deep pride in the prompt and efficient way its law enforcement officers handled the volatile situation. Police were on the job as the strikers and their leaders boiled out of the meeting and started a march on Main Street. 

They had guns, but they didn't shoot.

They had Mace, the new irritant gas which incapacitates but does not permanently injure -- and they used it. They went into action as soon as fired-up marchers attacked a police car . . .

How much better to do it this way than to be late and soft as were police in Detroit and other places . . . letting disturbances grow into full-scale rioting. 

The use of Mace and billy clubs by the police resulted in unprecedented unity among Memphis Negroes. According to residents, Negro ministers who in other years were often leaders of divisive factions were virtually unanimous in calling for support of the sanitation workers and the union.

The ministers cancelled a demonstration scheduled for Saturday and had a strategy meeting instead. Next day they went into their pulpits and called for a boycott of (1) all downtown stores; (2) the two daily newspapers*; and (3) every establishment doing business under the name of "Loeb." (Mayor Henry Loeb's brother, William, owns a chain of barbecue and fried chicken restaurants, and a laundry chain.) They also announced downtown marches in support of the strikers and the boycott for both Monday morning and Monday afternoon, and a mass meeting at Clayborn Temple AME Church on Monday night.

The action of the police greatly strengthened the strikers. It made the preachers mad, and preachers still have influence among Negroes in the South. One of them, still furious on Monday night, urged the boycott of all Loeb businesses in this manner: "Somebody tried to explain to me that William Loeb who owns the cleaning places is just Henry Loeb's brother. I don't care if it is his brother or his sister or his mother or his father or his uncle or his auntie or his cousin -- if it says 'Loeb' on it, you stay out of there! If it says 'Loeb' on the sign or on the front of the store or on the back of it, on the side or on the top of it or on the bottom of it -- you stay out of there!"

The boycott was effective, and again the actions of the police had helped. Downtown streets and stores were virtually empty throughout the next week. Clerks straightened and restraightened stock, arranged and rearranged window displays. Negroes apparently were supporting the boycott. Speculation was that white people stayed away from town out of fear of another melee.

* Memphis has two daily newspapers, the Commercial Appeal and the Press-Scimitar. Both are Scripps-Howard publications. At a mass meeting, Dr. Ralph Jackson dubbed them "lying newspapers" and called upon the people to cancel their subscriptions. "Anybody who buys an insult to himself is a fool. Let it be known that we are not fools! Maybe they don't know it," he explained, "but all the Hambones are dead."

This was in reference to a single-panel cartoon that the Commercial Appeal has been printing for decades. Titled, "Hambone's Meditations," and authored by J. P. Alley, it depicts a caricature of a Negro, balding, wearing baggy pants, and sometimes a defeated-looking hat. Hambone is always engaged in some menial activity, such as bringing in an armload of wood or sweeping and dusting. He utters pithy sayings. "Kun'l Bob says hit lak dis," he said recently, "--de top man ain't necessary alluz de bes' man!!" On another day: "Ef tomorrow evuh do come, I reck'n ole Tom gwine be de busies' man in de whole worl'!!!" Mayor Loeb, in a meeting with Negro leaders, expressed puzzlement at their being offended by Hambone.