The "Sit-In"

The City Council's Committee on Public Works scheduled a public hearing for Thursday at 10 a.m. Some 100 people, including union officers, ministers, and sympathizers were present when the hearing began. Fred Davis, committee chairman, hinted that the union representatives might not be speaking from the viewpoint of the strikers. "We are going to pay particular attention to what the men themselves have to say on the issues," he declared. "We are concerned that the men as individuals have not been able to bring out their views."

With that, union officials called the Rubber Workers' Hall, where the daily rally of strikers was to begin at noon. In a short time, roughly dressed sanitation workers began to drift into the City Council's chamber. Soon the room, which has a seating capacity of 407, including chairs for councilmen, clerks and reporters, was crowded with about 700 people, mostly sanitation workers.

Chairman Davis insisted that the rank and file were being misrepresented. Officers of the union local insisted that they were the proper spokesmen, not some unlettered member chosen at random. Mr. Davis declared that due to overcrowding of the chamber contrary to fire laws, the committee would recess.

The workers and their leaders and friends said that they would.remain in the hearing room until they got satisfaction. Speaker after speaker exhorted the workers and voiced grievances of the strikers in particular and of Memphis Negroes in general. There was singing of spirituals, patriotic songs and the anthems of the civil rights movement. "The plush, red-carpeted council chamber," reported the Memphis Commercial Appeal, "was jammed with strikers who vaulted across the railing onto the dais reserved for city officials."

Since no one had eaten lunch, union leaders sent for bread, bologna, cheese, luncheon meat, ham, and mustard. The city attorney's table was appropriated for making sandwiches. "The usually immaculate carpet of the chamber," the Commercial Appeal complained, "soon became spotted with bread crumbs and tiny pieces of paper despite the small trash cans placed in each aisle for refuse."

Meanwhile, Inspector Sam Evans of the Memphis Police Department had 142 officers converge on city hall. They remained parked within a block, five to a car, with car motors running.

The committee eventually capitulated. It reopened the hearing and finally, about 5:30, agreed to recommend that the city recognize the union and agree to "some form of dues check-off." A newsman asked Councilman Davis what the mayor replied when told of the committee's recommendation. "He maintained a polite silence," said Mr. Davis. The recommendation was to be presented to the City Council in a special meeting at 2:30 p. m. the next day.

A cartoon published in the Commercial Appeal on Friday, February 23, after the sit-in at city hall on Thursday, silhouetted a fat Negro sitting atop a garbage can surrounded by a pile of rubbish and overturned receptacles. The garbage can was labeled, "City Hall Sit-in." Wavy lines indicated an odor rising from the garbage from the garbage heap and the black man. Above his head these fume-lines formed the legend, "Threat of Anarchy." The cartoon was titled, "Beyond the Bounds of Tolerance."

"Memphis garbage strikers have turned an illegal walk out into anarchy," said an accompanying editorial, "and Mayor Henry Loeb is exactly right when he says, 'We can't submit to this sort of thing!' . . . When the Council deals with the problem today it should not be intimidated or stampeded into imprudent decisions by yesterday's belligerent show of force." (Ironically, on Wednesday evening, scarcely twenty-four hours before that cartoon and editorial were published, Commercial Appeal Editor Frank R. Ahlgren had received a brotherhood award at the annual affair of the local National Conference of Christians and Jews.)