Talk:Memphis sanitation strike

Photo

U.S. President Barack Obama talks with participants from the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike during a meeting in the Map Room of the White House, April 29, 2011.

This photo does not represent the Sanitation Strike in 1968 since it was taken in 2011. If someone wants to add a section about what happened in 2011, the photo would be appropriate there, but not in the lead section. USchick (talk) 03:27, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Here are better photos, but I'm not sure I know how to upload them. [1] [2] [3] The copyright permission is at the bottom of each photo. USchick (talk) 03:57, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Move with lower case letters

Google N-gram shows that Memphis Sanitation Strike with upper case letters is the predominate form for this article. I have no problem deferring to Google N-gram to determine the proper form for a title. Upper of lower case. Mitchumch (talk) 07:18, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)

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Well, the real truth would help here. The sanitation strike was not about gaining collective bargaining rights. The garbage collectors ALREADY had those rights. It was solely about the black union, AFSCME, wanting a guaranteed payday from the city - through a checkoff provision - rather than having to collect those union dues themselves from the workers. If the mayor and city council agreed to the checkoff provision, that would give official recognition to the black union. However, The mayor refused the checkoff provision. It was within his right to do so. But that did mean that the black union could not represent the sanitation workers.

The mayor believed the garbage collectors , like the police and firemen , could not legally strike; and he was not going to give them a pass on that.  Which brings us to another aspect to this strike that could not possibly have escaped the mayor's reasoning, or the city council (3 of the 9 council members were black). Since the sanitation workers were at the bottom of the pay scale, if they were to get a raise then whatever pay raise they received that same percent pay raise would be expected by every other city department. That is,  everyone working for the city from the bottom up would be expecting a pay raise - a 30% pay raise. This was ridiculous. 

Sanitation workers in Memphis in 1968 earned $1.80 per hr. Federal minimum wage was $1.60. They were being paid more than the fed. minimum. As for the two black workers deaths... When it rained or became cold, it was common practice among the city sanitation workers for the two workers on the back of the truck to sit inside the hopper. Naturally, this is an extremely dangerous thing to do. If the compactor would somehow engage while they were in the hopper, they would literally get chewed to pieces. And the workers certainly knew the risk. On a cold and rainy day in January, the two black sanitation workers were riding inside the hopper, when...You know. King had no business getting involved in this strike. It had nothing, obviously, to do with civil rights or equal rights. The Martin Luther King Jr. Riot … began on March 28th and lasted throughout the day. About 1000 - mostly blacks - participated in the march toward, and through, the city's [white] business district (King had instructed his people to "ratchet it up"). Once the young black males reached the business district of the city they unleashed their prearranged plan, which was to break into the stores and loot them. One 16-year-old black male looter was killed by police. And though this black-initiated riot lasted only a few hours, black youths still managed to loot and/or burn 150 white-owned businesses. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.95.238.140 (talk) 20:12, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Federal investigations questioned the accuracy of the allegation that Payne didn't have a knife on him

Please don't call Justice Department and PBS Frontline sources "unreliable sources." Someone erased them on the Killing of Larry Payne article and falsely described them as unreliable, and I feel that the sources will be erased again due to an unwillingness to accept them as fact. I know the sanitation workers strike is a sensitive piece of civil rights history, but that is no excuse to describe the sources as unreliable. Hopefully, they be accepted. One source noting that a notice was issued to close the Larry Payne file and was written by Civil Rights Division official Karla Dobinski specially states that "The autopsy report also noted gunpowder flecking on the elbow of the victim’s left arm. In addition, the subject’s left hand incurred gunpowder burns, indicating his hand was near the end of the shotgun barrel when he fired the shotgun. This physical evidence is consistent with the subject’s claim that Payne’s left arm was reaching up and that the subject was reaching for Payne with his left hand in order to restrain Payne, when the subject unexpectedly perceived the need to fire the shotgun held in his right hand"[4][5]Speakfor23 (talk) 07:06, 10 November 2023 (UTC)