Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike (1968) — Bunk History

One Night on the Mountaintop

Martin Luther King Jr. came to Memphis 50 years ago to help 1,300 black sanitation workers on strike. Ozell Ueal was one of them.

by Tonyaa Weathersbee via The Bitter Southerner on April 3, 2018

Demonstrators marching for a $15 minimum wage.

Memphis Sanitation Workers Went on Strike 50 Years Ago. The Battle Goes On.

Fast-food workers in the Fight for $15 movement are making the same demands sanitation workers made five decades ago.

by Cleophus Smith, Betti Douglas via The Guardian on February 12, 2018

The Strike That Brought MLK to Memphis

In his final days, King stood by striking sanitation workers. We returned to the city to see what has changed—and what hasn’t.

by Ted Conover via Smithsonian on January 1, 2018

Scene of Martin Luther King assassination, with people around King pointing to where the gunfire came from.

The Day Martin Luther King Jr. Died

In the first episode of ‘Voices of the Movement,’ King's associates recount their memories of April 4, 1968.

by Jonathan Capehart via Washington Post on April 4, 2019

MLK: What We Lost

50 years after King's death, his image has been transformed and stripped of its radicalism.

by Annette Gordon-Reed via New York Review of Books on October 18, 2018

Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Roy Wilkins, and Lyndon Johnson.

Misremembering 1968

Fifty years later, the legacies of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy still loom large.

by Robert Greene II via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on April 24, 2018

Martin Luther King Jr.: 50 Years Later

Activists today are taking up Dr. King’s mantle and reviving the Poor People’s Campaign.

by Michael K. Honey via The Nation on April 3, 2018

Woman wearing a VR headset.

The Future of History Lessons is a VR Headset

A conversation with the creator of a virtual reality experience that takes you inside the protests leading up to MLK Jr.’s death.

by Derek Ham, Ann-Derrick Gaillot via The Outline on February 21, 2018

Black Panther Party members demonstrating outside the New York County Criminal Court, April 11, 1969.

The Black Radical Tradition Can Guide Our Struggles Against Oppression

Uncovering a tradition of African American radicalism that was—and is—a crucial part of the American left’s history.

by Robin D. G. Kelley, Daniel Denvir via Jacobin on July 6, 2023

The Civil Rights Activist So Close to Martin Luther King Jr. She Was Thought of as His ‘Other Wife'

According to the recent discoveries, civil rights activist, Dorothy Cotton, and King had a close romantic relationship.

by Jason Miller via The Conversation on June 24, 2019

When King was Dangerous

He's remembered as a person of conscience who carefully broke unjust laws. But his challenges to state authority place him in a much different tradition: radical labor activism.

by Alex Gourevitch via Jacobin on January 21, 2019

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Meaning of Emancipation

He was a revolutionary, if one committed to nonviolence. But nonviolence does not exhaust his philosophy.

by Asad Haider via n+1 on January 18, 2019

Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists on the Olympic podium in 1968.

Be Realistic: Demand the Impossible

The revolutionaries of 1968 didn't succeed, but the world still needs turning upside down.

by Peter Linebaugh via Boston Review on August 1, 2018

Real Museums of Memphis

How the National Civil Rights Museum has obscured the ongoing dispossession of African-Americans taking place in its shadow.

by Zandria Felice Robinson via Scalawag on April 12, 2018

Martin Luther King: How a Rebel Leader Was Lost to History

Fifty years after his death, King is a national treasure in the US. But what happened to his revolutionary legacy?

by Gary Younge via The Guardian on April 4, 2018

Martin Luther King’s Radical Anti-Capitalism

As King’s attention drifted to the problems of the urban north, his critiques came to focus on the economic system itself.

by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor via The Paris Review on January 15, 2018

Coretta Scott King.

Why Coretta Scott King Fought for a Job Guarantee

She saw economic precarity as not just a side effect of racial subjugation, but as central to its functioning.

by David Stein via Boston Review on May 16, 2017

Musicians and producers around a soundboard listening to a recording.

How Stax Records Set an Example for America

Nelson “Little D” Ross talks soul and significance with music historian Robert Gordon.

by Robert Gordon, Nelson Ross via The Bitter Southerner on February 11, 2014

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