Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop: The Sanitation Strike of 1968

"In February 1968, two African American sanitation workers were killed by unsafe equipment in Memphis, Tennessee. Outraged at the city's refusal to recognize a labor union that would fight for higher pay and safer working conditions, sanitation workers went on strike. The strike lasted two months, during which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was called to help with the protests ... He was assassinated in his Memphis hotel the day after delivering his 'I've Been to the Mountaintop' sermon in Mason Temple Church. Inspired by the memories of a teacher who participated in the strike as a child, author Alice Faye Duncan reveals the story of the Memphis sanitation strike from the perspective of a young girl with a ... combination of poetry and prose"--