Going Down Jericho Road

Going Down Jericho Road:
The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign
By Michael K. Honey
Norton, $35, 619 pages, 2007


By 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had seen passage of his Civil and Voting Rights acts. His famous March on Washington had secured the former and his Selma to Montgomery March secured the latter.

As passionate as King was about civil and voting rights, he was as passionate about economic justice for the poor, especially poor African Americans who had worked at poverty wages due to segregation. He planned a Poor People’s Campaign to call attention to the plight of the working poor.

Memphis was the perfect place for King to begin his final campaign. City officials were insensitive when two black sanitation workers were crushed to death by a trash compactor.

Sanitation workers sought to improve their work conditions via a union. City officials rejected their call for a union and the workers went on strike. It made national news and caught King’s attention.

Memphis officials and news media called King a communist and a radical when they learned he was coming to march for economic justice in their city. “King’s radicalism stemmed from his understanding of Christianity as a moral belief system that called upon people to apply uncompromisingly the egalitarian teachings of Jesus to the work around them,” Honey writes.

A political power struggle between King and younger blacks resulted in a bloody riot in Memphis in late March 1968. He returned April 3 to conduct a peaceful march for worker rights. On that night, King gave his famous “Mountaintop” speech to thousands of eager marchers. Twenty-four hours later he was assassinated.

After King’s funeral, Memphis officials agreed to a union for sanitation workers. The strikers were victorious.

Honey successfully captures the spirit of the era. He has written an authoritative account of the labor/race struggle in Memphis. This book is a moving testament to Dr. King’s compassion for the poor.

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Jim Patterson, an economist and journalist, is a member of the National Book Critics Circle.