Good morning, Memphis! The 50th anniversary of the historic sanitation workers’ strike is remembered this week, a Pulitzer Prize winning author visits to speak about innovation and we get to hear the first declaration of “Play Ball” this year by an umpire at FedExPark. Oh, and don’t forget the waffles.
It was 50 years ago Monday that Memphis sanitation workers went on strike following the death of workers Echol Cole and Robert Walker, who were crushed in a truck’s trash compactor. The strike quickly became much more than a labor dispute, drawing national attention and the presence of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. On the 50th anniversary of the start of the strike, Rev. William Barber, the leader of a new Poor People’s Campaign, will be the featured speaker at a 3 p.m. rally at Clayborn Temple, 249 Hernando St. Barber is the Goldsboro, North Carolina, minister leading the larger Moral Mondays movement that began as protests in North Carolina’s state capital of Raleigh in 2013. King was organizing a Poor People’s Campaign protest in Washington, D.C., at the time of the strike and his assassination on April 4, 1968. Monday’s rally will also include calls for a $15 minimum wage.
See more at Memphis Daily News.