Viewing page 26 of 158

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[image - black & white photograph of four men]]
[[caption]] Among the elected public officials and friends who came to Atlanta to pay their respects were Eugene Nickerson, County Executive of Nassau, Benjamin Wright of New York, Manhattan Borough President Percy E. Sutton. [[/caption]]

[[image - black & white photograph of a man and woman]]
[[caption]] Mr. and Mrs. Harry Belafonte. [[/caption]]

[[image - black & white photograph of three men and a woman]]
[[caption]] Frank O'Connor, President of the City Council of New York, Commissioner and Mrs. William Booth of New York City Human Rights Commission, Gordon Parks world famed lecturer, photographer and author. [[/caption]]

Dr. Mays concluded his remarks by saying, "we can do something about this great loss by seeing to it that he did not die in vain."  Let us see to it that their town.  The boys are especially bitter because the Mayor whom they voted in could have settled the dispute by offering the worker a decent living wage.  Instead he chose to deal with them as one good white man who understood his 'darkies' and could not see why they should seek a union to get them a decent wage.  Garbage workers are paid twenty-one hundred dollars per year in Memphis, nine hundred dollars under the national median wage of poverty in the United States.

At the memorial ceremonies in Memphis, a Negro preacher said their committee had raised twelve hundred dollars to donate to the cause of the Garbage workers since King's murder.  Walter Reuther, after being introduced, presented a check for fifty thousand dollars and vowed to give more as long as needed to uphold his union endeavors for the garbage workers in Memphis.

And in the nitty gritty department–the folks making the trip to Memphis were told at the airport in New York that the ground rules for the March in Memphis forbad bulging packages on one's person.  Not even carrying a nail file was allowed.

When the contingent plane landed in the Memphis airport, the marchers were met by the local delegation at the runway;  hustled into four busses and driven directly to the staging areas of the march.  Jerry Wurf was magnificent in his ten second speech to the Mayor of the Town.


[[image - black & white photograph of two men talking]]
[[caption]] Commissioner Lawrence Pierce and Congressman Leonard Farbstien of New York. [[/caption]]

[[image - black & white photograph of people in the street]]
[[caption]] This picture was taken as the cortege passed the Georgia State Capitol Building. [[/caption]]