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FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE For
more information: CUIC/Sidebar Memphis
mayor sidebar MEMPHIS
MAYOR MEASURES HOW FAR CITY HAS COME MEMPHIS
- There are many ways to measure change in the three and a half decades
since Martin Luther King Jr.'s slaying helped end a garbage strike that
brought Memphis to its knees. None is more symbolic to Mayor Willie W. Herenton than the absence of a shotgun under his desk. Back
in 1968 Herenton was a teenage activist. In the famous, daily "I Am A
Man" marches, he protested outside a City Hall largely closed to
people of his
race. "When
I was young, for whatever reason, I always had a social conscience
that oftentimes got me into a little trouble," he recalled.
"But I
believed fervently in what Martin Luther King was doing and saying. And
I believed
in the rights of the sanitation workers. "In
those days Memphis stood squarely in the Old South, and all the segregation
and exclusivity that it stood for. I felt compelled to go downtown
and protest, so yes I was there outside
City Hall, waving one of those
signs." Inside,
Mayor Henry Loeb was "the man" but he also was embattled, embittered
and under seige. Although
he had stood behind the "right of law" and
had declared that the garbage would be picked up, the workers didn't budge.
Garbage putrefied in piles all over the city. An
infamous newspaper photograph was taken at the height of the garbage strike,
as Loeb continued to refuse to allow
the sanitation workers to vote on
whether or not to unionize. The photo showed him standing behind his desk,
a shotgun clearly visible on the floor beneath that desk. "I
was reviewing a documentary on all those events in our city recently,"
Herenton, who is the city's first black mayor, said. "It told all about
the garbage strike and the fight for a union. It showed Mayor Loeb refusing
to give in, and it showed that shotgun under his desk. That's when it
really hit me: back in 1968 I was outside protesting; today, right where I'm
sitting is where Mayor Loeb sat, with that shotgun under this desk. "Someone
might ask, 'Didn't you already know all that?' to which I would say,
'Yes, but at that moment (watching the video), I was confronted with the
span of history since those times and the changes in my life and in this city.'" Herenton
said in spite of the progress made in Memphis since 1968, the work
to bring equality and reconciliation among the races still goes on. "I
always thought Memphis should have a nationally-focused event or series
of events commemorating those times. Now, for these church groups from
all over the country to come to Memphis and to stand on that balcony to declare
that racism still is a problem and we should unite against it is so needed. "I
will be there on Martin Luther King Day, standing beside Andy Young, a
man I have great respect and admiration for, and remembering what it
means that I am a man." ### Editor's note: For more information on the January event in Memphis, contact David Brown of Conaway Brown, at 901-527-6163. |
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