I Am A Man: Sanitation Workers Strike, Memphis Tennessee, March 28th, 1968, from the portfolio I am a Man

Ernest C. Withers galvanized the civil rights movement after Emmett Till’s murder in 1955. He subsequently photographed the Montgomery Bus Boycott and public school desegregation. The Sanitation Workers’ strike, which demanded better wages and working conditions, erupted in response to the death of two employees crushed within the barrel of their truck. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. supported this cause, visiting Memphis to give his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech on April 3, 1968, the day before he was assassinated. In the speech, King drew attention to the growing connection between local activism and universal human rights, a notion encapsulated in the signs held by the sanitation workers, reading “I AM A MAN.” Withers’s photograph highlights the unity among the workers. The power of his work, as stated in the mission of the Withers Collection and Museum in Memphis, is to “help heal the wounds of racism.”