Red Emma’s

In March of 1968, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. travelled to Memphis to support striking sanitation workers demanding union recognition and higher wages. The strike is perhaps best remembered as the precursor to King's assassination: on April 4, at the Lorraine Motel, in Memphis. But the Memphis Sanitation Strike is also a critical example of the power and fearlessness of black workers to stand up and demand recognition, and to win, against all odds. In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the strike, we invite you to join us for a screening of the excellent film At the River I Stand, a a talk by Austin Veale, a Baltimore resident who travelled to Memphis in 1968 as the president of the AFSCME State Workers Council to support the strikers. Moderated and introduced by local labor historian Bill Barry.