Remembering Memphis Workers

“The Memphis sanitation workers were not revolutionaries,” Bill Lucy told a rapt lunchtime audience Friday packed into the Gompers room at the AFL-CIO. “They were 1,300 men who’d been through the wringer, 1,300 stories of trial and tribulation and lifetimes of deprivation. The film’s central image of a black man carrying a sign saying ‘I Am A Man’ in front of a tank graphically shows us the extent to which the state is prepared to go to keep that from happening.” Lucy – founder and President of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and the Secretary-Treasurer of AFSCME – riveted the audience at Friday’s DC Labor FilmFest screening of “At The River I Stand” with his first-hand account of the 1968 Memphis strike, which he was integrally involved with as a native Memphian and AFSCME staffer. Lucy  worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the strike until the civil rights leader's assassination. Friday’s screening was the first in a new monthly series of movies about work and workers, organized by the DC Labor FilmFest and the Labor Heritage Foundation (click here for LHF’s full film and video catalogue, including “At The River I Stand”). Made possible by the generous support of American Income Life. Photo by Chris Garlock