Elmore Nickleberry, 92, sanitation worker during Memphis Strike in ’68, dies

Elmore Nickleberry, one of the last living participants in the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike of 1968, a historic strike that sought to win respect and equal rights for African American workers and that led Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King at their side, died on December 30 in Memphis. He was 92.

His death was confirmed by his wife, Mary Nickleberry.

Mr. Nickleberry was one of 1,300 sanitation workers who joined the 65-day strike, which culminated in a major civil rights and union victory, albeit at enormous cost – Dr. King was murdered while in Memphis to rally behind the strikers’ cause.

The sanitation workers, almost all black, protested against low wages, poor working conditions and degrading treatment. “Everyone called us ‘boy,’” Mr. Nickleberry said in an interview in 2014. “The counselors also called us ‘boy.’ You’d tell them, “I’m not a ‘boy.’ I’m a man.’ And they kept calling you ‘boy.’

Every day, Mr. Nickleberry and the other strikers marched silently through downtown Memphis, holding signs that read, “I AM A MAN.” Although he was not well known during the strike, Mr. Nickleberry, a thin, disarmingly friendly man with silver hair, has become increasingly famous over the past quarter century, speaking before youth groups, labor unions, civil rights organizations, TV interviewers and journalists. documentary makers.

Memphis sanitation workers in those years used round, 5-gallon plastic bins to transport waste from backyards to trucks on the streets. Like his colleagues, Mr. Nickleberry filled his bathtub with 30 or 40 pounds of waste and carried it on his back, shoulders or head.

“There were often holes in the tub,” he said, “and the waste and maggots would crawl down your back and into your clothes.”

No matter how dirty and sweaty they were, the waste collectors were not allowed to shower in the sanitary facilities. “We smoke a lot,” Mr. Nickleberry said. “Nobody wanted to sit with us” on the bus ride home. Instead, he usually ran the six miles. When he got there, he said, “I would take my clothes off in the backyard because I smell so bad.”

On February 1, 1968, two Memphis sanitation workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were riding in the back of a garbage truck to escape a downpour when a malfunction caused the compactor to suddenly spin. It crushed them to death. The tragic accident was a catalyst for the strike, which began on February 12.

The work stoppage was further fueled by frustration over the Memphis mayor’s steadfast refusal to recognize the workers’ union, which was part of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

When the strikers held their first march on February 23, police attacked them with batons and clubs. ‘The police started beating us’ Mr. Nickleberry told The Memphis Commercial Appeal in 2018. “I was hit hard.”

The strikers marched week after week, but the mayor, Henry Loeb, did not budge. He said it was illegal for city workers to strike and emphasized that he would not negotiate “with anyone who breaks the law.”

To pressure him, the strikers enlisted support from labor and civil rights leaders across the country. Dr. King saw his involvement as part of his Poor People’s Campaign, an effort to pressure Congress to create more jobs and housing for thousands of economically disenfranchised people.

At the time, Mr. Nickleberry, who had worked in sanitation for fourteen years, earned $1.65 an hour (just under $15 in today’s currency), just five cents above the then federal minimum wage. Forty percent of the waste pickers’ families fell below the poverty line; many qualified for welfare and food stamps.

Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, the day after he gave his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech in Memphis and four days before he was to lead a massive march in support of sanitation. As the nation was rocked by the assassination, President Lyndon B. Johnson intervened to settle the strike, by sending James Reynolds, the Assistant Secretary of Labor, to Memphis.

Mr. Reynolds managed to pressure city officials into a settlement that recognized the union and included wage increases and strict protections against racial discrimination, meaning black waste pickers could finally earn promotions.

“We got a good raise,” Mr. Nickleberry said. (He got a raise of 15 cents an hour, a 9 percent increase.) “We have showers. We got better working conditions. We got health benefits.”

Most important, Mr. Nickleberry said, was that workers gained dignity. “The union stepped in and we got respect,” he said. “They stopped calling us ‘boy’. They started calling us ‘A Man’. A sanitary man. ”

Elmore Egion Nickleberry was born on December 15, 1931 in Memphis to Earl and Ema Nickleberry. A great-grandfather was enslaved. Elmore dropped out of school after sixth grade and sometimes went cotton picking with his father. His father also worked as a street vendor.

Elmore Nickleberry served in the Korean War in the Army’s Eighth Armored Division, rising to the rank of corporal. However, he was dismayed at the way he, a war veteran, was treated when he returned to his hometown in 1953. “They treated me better abroad than they did in Memphis,” he said.

Because Jim Crow laws made it difficult to find work, he settled for a job in sanitation, starting at 75 cents an hour. He said he hated it when homeowners called him “garbage man,” as if he himself was garbage.

Mr. Nickleberry married Mary Lewis Ray in the early 1960s. In addition to his wife, he is survived by six children: Mitchell Cheryl Carr, Toyia Polk, Zakeyia Johnson and Terence E., Stanley and Tanya Nickleberry; 18 grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. Another daughter, Tondalaya, was murdered in 1999 at age 19 when a man she thought was a friend choked and stabbed her multiple times, according to The Memphis Commercial Appeal.

Mr Nickleberry said he continued working until he was 80 because the 1968 scheme left workers without pension benefits. “I had to feed my family,” he told The New York Times in 2017. “That’s why I stayed.”

He eventually retired in 2018 at the age of 86, making him the longest-serving city official in Memphis history. He retired only after Memphis reached a settlement with the fourteen remaining strikers, giving them each $50,000 to offset their meager retirement benefits.

Mr. Nickleberry remained a strong supporter of the union throughout his life. “If we didn’t have a union, we wouldn’t get anything,” he said in 2014. “We would be in the same shape as before. If you have a union that supports you, you achieve more.”