Editor’s Note: As The Tri-State Defender celebrates 73 years of publishing news and information for Memphis and the Mid-South, we’re looking back at key points in our history. This chapter covers the year that changed everything for Memphis.
By 1968, The Tri-State Defender had established itself as a hub of news and information for Memphis’ Black community. National news and local, recipes and recitals, commentaries and comic strips, the newspaper was growing into its own.
It was also living up to being the “defender” in its title, shedding light on incidents mainstream media simply wouldn’t. Case in point: “Women mistreated at P.O., says NAPE,” a Feb. 17 front page story about black post office employees complaining about low wages and being rounded up and “herded like cattle” to do some of the most demeaning work imaginable.
Elsewhere in Memphis, of course, another battle for better wages and working conditions was just getting underway — a labor movement that had been brewing for years, but took on new urgency when two people died.
It was a rainy day in early February 1968, when Echol Cole and Robert Walker were collecting garbage as their white co-workers rode in the cab. To get out of the rain, the two men took cover inside the compactor part of the truck — and were accidentally crushed to death.
You might think that all of Memphis would rally around the cause, but that wasn’t exactly the case. An earlier attempt at unionizing in 1963 — after a similar accident killed two other black workers — never gained broad support from Memphis’ black clergy and leaders.
By Feb. 12, 1968, sanitation workers had successfully organized and marched off the job, wearing their now iconic I AM A MAN! signs. But not going to work means not collecting a check. Those workers needed food and support — and that was a message the TSD could help spread.
In the Feb. 24 issue, The TSD reported about a local drive to support the sanitation workers, as well as a gathering at Mason Temple COGIC that brought 3,300 supporters out and distributed 150 meals to striking families.
“We are not concerned with the grievances these men have with the city and the issues involved, but we do feel that it is our Christian duty to see that none of them go hungry while the strike is on,” said real estate broker and committee chair. O.W. Pickett. “We would do this for any group deprived of food, regardless of the circumstances.”
The March 2 issue had comprehensive coverage of the strike, including what the strikers wanted, how clergy and the community had bought in, and what national media was beginning to say about the strike. There were even calls to boycott businesses and other newspapers that were not supportive to the strike.
Needless to say, the Tri-State Defender was supportive to the strike. The March 2 editorial, under the leadership of Editor McCann L. Reid, went straight at Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb:
“Loeb’s principles and justice won’t allow him to sign a contract that will give 1,300 men and their families dignity, justice and equality. He has caused many law-abiding citizens to abuse the law in order to keep our community apart and our sanitary workers from getting the dignity they deserve.”
Tensions continued to escalate — and so did police brutality from the majority white Memphis Police Department. TSD’s March 9 front page reported not only about more than 100 arrests related to the strike, but the harrowing tale of Lucy Tunstall, who had police invade her home, question her and arrest her — and then beat her up on the way to the police station.
Even before his final, fateful trip to Memphis in April, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was coming to Memphis, drawing huge crowds and shifting his focus toward economic empowerment and poverty. He also began speaking out against the raging Vietnam War.
“America has given the black man a check that has been bouncing all around, and I want it to be backed up with money from the Federal Reserve,” King said, according to our coverage. “Anybody with eyes can tell that there is something wrong with this nation. We are spending $50,000 to kill one Viet Cong and only $53 a person to fight poverty,” he said.
Less than two weeks after that story was published, King was dead by an assassin’s bullet. As it had become known for doing, The Tri-State Defender published comprehensive coverage of King’s death, funeral, and the ultimately successful strike that ended two weeks to the day after King’s murder.
Through it all, The Tri-State Defender was there to bear witness, to amplify the cries for justice, and to remind Memphis — and the nation — that this fight was far from over. Its legacy, cemented in these defining moments, is a reminder that journalism can be both sword and shield in the pursuit of freedom.
