The sanitation workers’ strike without a name

Near the end of the 19th century, Memphis found itself in an unenviable position. A series of yellow fever outbreaks had killed thousands of residents and caused tens of thousands more to flee the city. Efforts to rehabilitate Memphis’ tattered reputation rested not in the hands of city officials but the sanitation workers charged with cleaning up the streets.

Poor Black people had taken over the unskilled labor base that maintained the city’s local infrastructure, including garbage collection. This takeover reflected a broader trend across the region: In a 1930 study, historians Carter G. Woodson and Lorenzo J. Greene remarked that “in the South, such work was practically in the hands of Negroes.”

Each morning at 7, Black employees in the city’s health department mounted a fleet of mule-drawn carts and garbage trucks. Over eight-hour shifts, they visited homes, apartments and businesses across the city, emptying cans of dry trash, food waste and ashes. From there, these garbage cart drivers took their cargo to either city-owned dumps or to three municipal “crematories” where a majority-Black workforce burned trash with incinerators. During the dry summer months, workers in the city’s Department of Streets, Bridges and Sewers used mule-drawn carts and streetcars to sprinkle roadways with water to prevent dust clouds from being stirred up by the cars and wagons traveling over the unpaved roads. 

Standardized garbage collection and street cleaning helped to prevent future epidemics and reshape the city into a modern metropolis. Businessmen and politicians began to brag about Memphis’ clean streets in publications designed to attract investors and tourists. 

At the same time, these mostly Black workers were treated like they were invisible. Despite the importance of their work, they were repaid with racism, economic exploitation, and neglect for their health and family lives. 

But, the garbage collection system couldn’t always keep up with the amount of waste produced each day. Each building was supposed to receive a pickup two or three times per week, but citizens often complained in local newspapers that cans sat untouched for days or weeks on end. These complaints were so common that residents would sometimes offer drivers tips to pick up their trash ahead of schedule — until city officials forbid drivers from accepting them.

Garbage cart drivers and street sprinklers made around 30 cents an hour (or $5.35 an hour today), while crematory workers made around $2.65 a day (or around $5.91 an hour today). On August 1, 1919, the Memphis News Scimitar reported that between 70 and 80 workers refused to start their shifts. They demanded a raise to $3.50 a day, which would be slightly above today’s federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. 

Word of their request reached Memphis’ commission government — led by Frank L. Monteverde, the city’s fourth mayor in as many years. In response to the walkout, commissioners claimed they couldn’t raise wages for garbage and street workers without raising them for all city employees. The cost of raises would require a tax increase that commissioners were unwilling to consider.

City officials tried to downplay the walkout in the press. But over the following days, it grew into a full-blown strike. Garbage cart drivers, crematory workers, street sprinklers and other laborers formed a united front. A week later, 200 city employees had joined. Street improvement projects came to a halt as complaints piled up in city hall. “The fetid fumes of neglected garbage smite the nostrils of downtown flat dwellers,” wrote the News Scimitar, “as well as suburban bungalow owners and commuters.” When the city brought in “scabs” (a term for workers hired to replace those on strike), the strikers confronted them, convincing some to join their cause.

Strikers risked violent retaliation from law enforcement and white citizens. The memory of Ell Persons’ brutal lynching two years earlier was still fresh, while white supremacist terror attacks were sweeping the country during the so-called “Red Summer.” The Memphis Police Department vowed to track down the strike’s organizers and sent officers to guard the crematories. Health department officials with the power to make arrests escorted new cart drivers along their daily routes. City officials claimed that strikers were influenced by “outside agitators,” a common narrative during times of labor unrest. It’s unclear how many strikers were jailed by MPD; the press did not record their names.

Eventually, the workers’ efforts fell apart under this pressure. City officials also took advantage of a white-led railroad strike happening at the same time, which delayed the delivery of materials used for street improvements. Two weeks in, garbage cart drivers and crematory workers decided to return to work without a pay raise, while many laborers in the streets department were permanently replaced. By mid-August, newspapers declared that the strike was over. 

As historian Darius Young writes in “An Unseen Light: Black Struggles for Freedom in Memphis, Tennessee,” “Memphis was the only city in the region that had a substantial Black professional class” during the early 1900s. Beale Street was a symbol of Black prosperity. Banker and landowner Robert Church Jr., son of the South’s first Black millionaire, rose to prominence in the NAACP and Republican Party. But this forgotten piece of local history presents a different side of Black life in the city. 

Between the two World Wars, low-wage Black workers repeatedly fought their own battles for dignity and fair treatment. They were often excluded from more traditional trade unions, struggling against bosses, police and coworkers. Nevertheless, they staged bold and dramatic actions, formed unusual alliances and disrupted the city’s economy. 

After the 1919 strike, garbage pickup in Memphis changed management, switched to motorized trucks and expanded to accommodate the city’s growth. But, the daily racism and exploitation that Black workers experienced was never resolved. As Chamber of Commerce publicist Sam Fuson wrote a year later, the city recommitted “to collect the most garbage with the greatest regularity for the least money possible.” By 1968, when sanitation workers fought for union recognition, safer jobs and a living wage, many of their conditions hadn’t changed at all. The strike that shook the world echoed the one that came before it — the one that Memphis forgot.

Justin A. Davis is a freelance journalist, music critic and former grassroots organizer. He’s covered politics, pop culture and history for outlets like Scalawag magazine, Waging Nonviolence, Post-Trash and Science for the People. He lives in Memphis.

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