Memphis garbage man (76) still living MLK's legacy (This is where they threw gas on us," 60 injured)

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5670303.html

By JASON GEORGE
Chicago Tribune

MEMPHIS, TENN. — Elmore Nickelberry has guided his grumbling garbage truck down Memphis' alleyways and avenues for 54 years, picking up not just trash, but a remarkable life story along the way.

March marked 40 years since Memphis and its sanitation workers took center stage in the nation's civil rights struggles. While time has tempered this city's downtown district — gone are the protests, curfews and bloodshed of '68 — the memories of that period live on within Nickelberry.


Elmore Nickelberry, 76, has seen many changes in his 54 years as a Memphis sanitation worker, beginning with the city's approval of the union 12 days after King's assassination.
MILBERT O. BROWN: CHICAGO TRIBUNE


"This is where they threw gas on us," the 76-year-old points out as the truck passes the Clayborn Temple, where Martin Luther King Jr. led a thousand mostly African-American striking sanitation workers on a march.

"I got hurt in the arm, Mace thrown on me," Nickelberry remembers, rumbling down Main.

"We sang We Shall Overcome," he adds softly.

The Clayborn Temple march that night ended not with the victory of a sanitation union, but with 280 arrests, 60 injured men and 4,000 National Guardsmen deployed to impose martial law. A week later, King was dead — shot several blocks away on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.

Today, after four decades, Memphis' Department of Solid Waste Management still employs about 30 people from the '68 era, and Nickelberry is the oldest. It is in him, and in the sanitation department as a whole, that one clearly sees a legacy of the '60s and the civil rights movement.

FULL story at link.

Sometimes we forget what people suffer to gain a union. I am very proud my union AFSCME was at the front of this fight. I'm honored to be Elmore's union brother.

OS

[lonestarnot]

1. Elmore Nickelberry!

:applause: