Publisher's Weekly Review
Although many people know Martin Luther King Jr. died in Memphis, few know what he was doing there, observes labor historian Honey in this moving and meticulous account of the sanitation workers' strike in Memphis between January and April 1968. Marrying labor history to civil rights history, the University of Washington professor fluently recounts the negotiations that ensued after black sanitation workers revolted over being sent home without pay on rainy days, although white workers were paid. While showing how their work stoppage became a strike, then a local movement, before coalescing in the Poor People's Campaign, Honey also reveals King's shift in emphasis "from desegregation and voting rights to the war and the plight of the working class." He also vividly captures many dramatic moments, including marches and sermons as well as King's assassination and its violent aftermath. While familiar villains, famous civil rights activists and King himself often take center stage, the rank-and file workers, whose lives are revealed here, remain the story's heroes and martyrs. Honey's passionate commitment to labor is undisguised, making this effort a worthy and original contribution to the literature. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Labor scholar Honey examines the intersection between issues of race and economics in the U.S. in the 1960s from the perspective of the Memphis garbage workers' strike, Martin Luther King Jr.'s last campaign. In rich detail, Honey lays out the background for the strike: the appalling working conditions and feudalistic plantation mentality of the white business and government sector, led by racist mayor Henry Loeb. Honey also profiles the garbage workers of Memphis, everyday men who toiled for little money, mostly former rural workers come to the city to earn more money. He details the complexities behind local politics and economics, the forced alliances between civil rights movement and local groups, the tensions between the two political parties as the issue of civil rights shifted loyalties, and the power of local white citizens' groups. Honey explores King's expansive view of how racism was woven into the economic fabric of the nation and his frustration at the difficulty of devising strategies that would lead to economic justice as well as civil rights. --Vanessa Bush Copyright 2007 Booklist
Choice Review
Ethnic studies professor Honey (Univ. of Washington, Tacoma) uses the Memphis garbage workers' strike of 1968 as a springboard to examine in exhaustive detail Martin Luther King's Poor People's Campaign "and the plight of black workers struggling for union rights in the Mississippi Delta region" during the tumultuous civil rights years, 1955-68. By 1968, the earlier solidarity of King's nonviolent mass movement had begun to disintegrate into factions that promoted violence--or at least violent self-defense--against the entrenched white power structure. Honey, a young labor organizer in the 1960s, traces King's struggles to keep the spirit of the earlier movement alive in Memphis and, by extension, across the Deep South, partially by inflecting the message of the Civil Rights Movement in more economic terms. The strike was bitter and violent; King was assassinated in Memphis in April 1968. Yet it ultimately "opened people's eyes to the injustices of poverty and racism." Much of Honey's research relies on critical first-person accounts and oral history. Photographs and an extensive bibliography accompany the text. A solid complement to Branch's biographical trilogy of King (Parting the Waters, CH, Jun'89, 26-5831; Pillar of Fire, 1999; At Canaan's Edge, CH, Jul'06, 43-6736). Summing Up: Recommended. Most levels/libraries. K. Edgerton Montana State University at Billings
Library Journal Review
In 1968, Memphis sanitation workers went on strike for 68 days against the plantation-like city government run by reactionary mayor Henry Loeb. Martin Luther King, exhausted and demoralized by challenges to his authority by a growing militant black faction and by the FBI's attempts to destroy his credibility, still inspired the workers who ultimately won a contract that made them the highest-paid sanitation workers in the South. Honey (ethnic, gender & labor studies; history, Univ. of Washington, Tacoma; Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation) presents a dramatic narrative of the strike that led to the spread of unions throughout America, a triumph that King did not live to see. Honey excels at describing the sanitation workers' plight, portraying the strike's leaders (notably black union head T.O. Jones and white American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees officials Jerry Wurf and P.J. Ciampi), and recounting how the strikers, with the support of students and black women, fought to escape the hell of poverty and racism. This stunning combination of impeccable scholarship, enhanced by fascinating oral histories and a page-turning style, results in an important contribution to labor history and to the literature of Martin Luther King. Highly recommended for most public and all academic libraries.-Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
