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A Nation Awakes
Roy Wilkins, NAACP president and national labor and civil rights leader Bayard Rustin arrived in Memphis to lend their support and prestige tto the strikers. Speaking to a crows of 10,000 people on March 14, Wilkins berated Mayor Loeb for not paying a living wage to sanitation workers: "If I were mayor of this city I would be ashamed." Rustin added, "If you can't get a decent salary for men who are working, in the name of God how the hellare you going to get rid of poverty?" Rustin, bathed in sweet, led in the singing of "This Little Light of Mine".
Dr. King ArrivesThe strike continued and Reverend James Lawson, with support from other COME leaders, urged Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to come to Memphis. Although he was tired from recent travels, Dr. King viewed the sanitation workers strike as "an ideal scenario to eliminating poverty" and an opportunity to show America why he was organizing the Poor People's Campaign later that spring. The Poor People's Campaign aimed to bring 3000 protesters to Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress and other governmental agencies for an "economic bill of rights." King gave a riveting speech to 10,000 sanitation strikers and supporters in Mason Temple on March 18: "You are demanding that this city will respect the dignity of labor. So often we over look the worth and significance of those who are not in the professional jobs, in the so called big jobs, but let me say to you tonight, that when ever you are engaged in work, that serves humanity, for the building of humanity it has dignity and it has worth."
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"All Labor Has Dignity."
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