Memphis Sanitation Strike

Date: February 12, 1968 • Location: Washington, United States

This milestone marked the outbreak and beginning of this historic period, which spanned 1968–1969.

Following the deaths of two employees on the job, black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, began a strike that lasted more than two months.

Echol Cole and Robert Walker were sanitation workers who died accidentally in Memphis, Tennessee at the corner of Colonial Rd. and Verne Rd. on February 1, 1968. While working that day, the pair sought refuge from a rainstorm in the compactor area of their garbage truck. The two African American men were prevented from seeking shelter from the rain inside a building due to segregation laws. They were killed when the compactor accidentally activated. Their deaths were a precursor to the Memphis sanitation strike, during which the prominent civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.