The Power of Unions
and the historic blowback to their formation
OTD June 8, 1968, Scotland Yard arrested James Earl Ray at a London airport. He was trying to fly to Belgium, with the eventual goal, he later admitted, of reaching Rhodesia. Why there? Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe) was at the time ruled by an oppressive and internationally condemned white minority government.
James Earl escaped after assassinating African American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, in Memphis. King was fatally wounded by a sniper’s bullet while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Motel Lorraine. He had come to Memphis to support the Sanitation Workers strike.
One octogenarian, Elmore Nickelberry, still working for the Department of Sanitation in 2018 was interviewed by NPR describes that period.
He rode on the back of truck, jumping off to go into people's back yards to pick up garbage. It was a filthy, and often thankless job.
Nickelberry says the trash tubs would leak, dripping onto his clothes. Sometimes he would have to climb into the back of the truck to help load the garbage.
"And when I'd load the truck there would be maggots in my shoes," says Nickelberry.
Still wrestling with segregation, the city didn't let African-American workers shower at the site – they only allowed the white drivers to do this. During inclement weather the black workers had no place to take shelter in the rain. In early 1968 trash collectors Echol Cole and Robert Walker climbed into the back of a truck to escape a storm and were accidently crushed to death by its compactor.
After their deaths, workers organized to demand better working conditions and higher pay. Nickelberry says they had no respect. Then Mayor Henry Loeb rejected the workers' demands, refusing to recognize their union. They walked off the job. Nickelberry says they marched downtown every morning, wearing sandwich boards and carrying placards that declared "I Am A Man."
King broke away from his work on the Poor People's Campaign to travel from Atlanta to Memphis twice to help energize the strikers — his last cause for economic justice. I was a kid when all this happened. I was a kid in elementary school in the newly integrated school system so there was little to no talk about it. I sensed the emotional heaviness of the climate by the adults around me at home and church.
I remember the National Guard was called in during this time because of all the unrest brewing in black communities across the countries. On April 7, 1968, after Dr. King was assassinated, 1,000 National Guardsmen arrived in Memphis to join the more than 3,800 already on duty to maintain order in downtown Memphis where the memorial march was to be held Monday.
That was 57 years ago and today in 2025 the National Guard has been deployed on Los Angeles citizens by the President. Communities grappling with loss and grief for different reasons, but both become occupied territory. This occupation adds more trauma and fear.
In Los Angeles, David Huerta, president of SEIU California and SEIU-United Service Workers West, was arrested while witnessing a raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Friday, June 5, 2025. He was injured requiring hospitalization. He was released from the hospital but still detained by ICE.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is the fastest-growing labor union in North America. With 1.9 million members in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico, SEIU focuses on uniting workers in the service sectors to improve their lives and the services they provide. This administration and their most influential supporters are anti-union.
“This is about something much bigger” than his own arrest, said Huerta. “This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice.”
Sources:
Historic photos show MLK's final days in Memphis, community response to assassination
King's Assassination: A Timeline
James Earl Ray Extradited to the United States