Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King'

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review.
Although many people know Martin Luther King Jr. died in Memphis, few know what he was doing there, observes labor historian Honey in this moving and meticulous account of the sanitation workers' strike in Memphis between January and April 1968. Marrying labor history to civil rights history, the University of Washington professor fluently recounts the negotiations that ensued after black sanitation workers revolted over being sent home without pay on rainy days, although white workers were paid. While showing how their work stoppage became a strike, then a local movement, before coalescing in the Poor People's Campaign, Honey also reveals King's shift in emphasis "from desegregation and voting rights to the war and the plight of the working class." He also vividly captures many dramatic moments, including marches and sermons as well as King's assassination and its violent aftermath. While familiar villains, famous civil rights activists and King himself often take center stage, the rank-and file workers, whose lives are revealed here, remain the story's heroes and martyrs. Honey's passionate commitment to labor is undisguised, making this effort a worthy and original contribution to the literature.

"The definitive appreciation of the Memphis garbage strike, one of the pivotal human-rights moments in late twentieth-century America."
--David Levering Lewis

Memphis in 1968 was ruled by a paternalistic "plantation mentality" embodied in its good-old-boy mayor, Henry Loeb. Wretched conditions, abusive white supervisors, poor education, and low wages locked most black workers into poverty. Then two sanitation workers were chewed up in the back of a faulty truck, igniting a months-long public-employee strike that would shake the nation. With novelistic drama and rich scholarly detail, this "first-rate chronicle" (Seattle Times) relates the riveting story of the 1968 strike that shook Memphis—and claimed Martin Luther King's life. 16 pages of illustrations.

Michael K. Honey is a professor of African American and labor studies and American history at the University of Washington, Tacoma, and the author of two prize-winning books on labor and civil rights history. He lives in Tacoma.