The litmus test of anti-racism and authenticity remains shallow for black officials because their racial and ethnic backgrounds, in the opinions of many, automatically give them passing marks. The fact that black officials even exist, especially back in 1977, remains a source of pride and celebration among everyday folks, even if they disagree with many policies these officials pursue. This was understandable for a time, since black people had been denied power on any level for so long. In Jackson’s case, he was widely celebrated in the black community as fighting for more contracts and jobs for blacks in the construction of Atlanta’s airport, renamed Hartsfield-Jackson airport shortly after his death in 2003. So when black sanitation workers challenged Jackson for better wages and workplace conditions, attempting to change unequal economic social relations in the city, it constituted a real threat to his power. In turn, ordinary folks also saw it as an attack on the black community at large. This was not merely a struggle to rename a park or street after a heroic radical labor or black liberation figure, of which Atlanta is famous for doing. Rather it was a fundamental challenge to the power that black officials wielded against ordinary people in their workplaces and communities. This challenge was met with swift reprisal.

The events of April 4, 1977 are telling in the struggle between working folks and those who saw them as unruly individuals to be managed from above. On the ninth anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr., both striking workers and city officials used his memory to justify their actions. In a rally for strikers, Rev. John Bell invoked King’s memory and assassination nine years to the day in Memphis. He reminded folks that he came to the aid of striking sanitation workers. Bell believed King’s spirit would lead the striking garbagemen to victory. The crowd cheered, though with trepidation, as they knew hundreds of men were lining up for their jobs at that very moment as Jackson had fired them just three days earlier.[15]

At city hall there was a very different scene. Jackson called a press conference announcing that strikers would permanently be replaced with new hires beginning that very day. Jackson told the press his decision to fire striking workers was one of the most difficult decisions he had ever made. That comment proved quite empty, for he then reminded the press his actions enjoyed broad city support, from groups such as the Atlanta Business League, Chamber of Commerce, as well as from the Urban League, SCLC, the Atlanta Baptist Ministers Union, and the Citywide League of Neighborhoods among others. This show of unity among the “good ole boys” of the white business and civic community with new black officials and longtime civil rights establishment groups was really a first for Atlanta, showing a maturation of a new political and economic ruling elite.

The city’s major newspapers, the Atlanta Constitution and the black-owned Atlanta Daily World, both publicly supported Jackson’s firing of workers. It seemed all of Atlanta, black and white alike, were against the strike.[16] But the real kick to the stomach of the workers came later in the press conference when Martin Luther King Sr. spoke. He strongly supported the firings saying, “If you do everything you can [for the union] and don’t get satisfaction…then fire the hell out of them.” When asked if his support of Jackson’s tactics meant he endorsed strikebreaking, King responded, “We don’t like the word ‘break’ the strike.”[17] But that indeed was going on just as “Daddy King” spoke. Strikers did not take the strike busting tactics lightly, and fought with scabs at numerous hiring locations in the city.

But the writing was on the wall, for the AFSCME bureaucracy, itself nothing more than a loyal opposition to the Jackson regime, could not help the rank-and-file win popular support. The union also could not ideologically defeat the city bosses for Jackson had already painted them as run by greedy, white Northerners bent on driving the city bankrupt while making the city’s first black mayor look bad in the process. Civic pride among everyday black folks was a major reason they rallied around their mayor, protecting him against a perceived outside threat. This spelled doom for black sanitation workers seeking broad popular support.

By mid-April, morale among strikers was faltering. Many reapplied for their old jobs, forced into the humiliating position of standing in line with scabs. A few rallies were still held, with one on April 12th seeing garbage dumped on the steps of city hall, resulting in the arrests of a number of protesters. Picket lines continued to thin out that week, to the point where only 300 of the original thousand-plus workers stayed out. Though small in numbers, they continued to rally. Community support did exist in tiny numbers, even including a few prominent figures from the civil rights era. One was CORE co-founder James Farmer who served as director of the Coalition of American Public Employees at the time. Farmer had supported Jackson, but was perplexed by his tactics.[18] Another was Rev. James Lawson, a community leader in the 1968 Memphis strike. He compared Jackson to Henry Loeb. The Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) also supported the sanitation workers, chastising Jackson for using “Black workers as political pawns in his efforts to please a middle class black political constituency and satisfy the black establishment.”[19]

Despite their support, the strike folded on April 16th as nearly half the original striking workers were rehired. Nearly all those from Local 1644 who went out were rehired by year’s end, though some at lower hourly rates. Jackson and the new coalition of black and white political and business elites had won. Jackson’s popularity soared amongst many Atlanta residents, carrying him to reelection. AFSCME and organized labor in Atlanta took a major blow, as the preeminence of the black middle and upper classes in city politics took hold at the cost of the self-managing aspirations of working folks, of all backgrounds, in Atlanta.

Conclusion

Atlanta and other major U.S. cities like Detroit and Washington D.C., where black officials are in the majority, have entrenched a system of ethnic patronage that is fundamentally wrought under the weight of white supremacy. This system rewards elites of all ethnic backgrounds who preside over city councils, chambers of commerce, civic organizations, and union bureaucracies at the expense of everyday working folks. In majority black cities like Atlanta, it is black officials, in concert with the network of white business and civic elites, who see to it their social and economic plans for the city go forward with little or no challenge. When individuals or groups, like city sanitation workers did in 1977 Atlanta, struggle against those who would see them as little more than spoiled, misbehaving children asking for more than what little the bosses think they are worth, then all of official society works to shut them down.

In Memphis, sanitation workers were able to flip the table over on white supremacist social relations at work and in the community for a time. This was not the case in 1977 Atlanta, where just seven years earlier sanitation workers were supported by black civil rights establishment figures as upholding the legacy of Memphis sanitation workers in their workplace and community struggle against white supremacy. And yet those same establishment figures, now hailed as mayors, councilpersons, civic and union leaders, portrayed the self-activity of these Atlanta sanitation workers as a threat to the fabric of the community, endangering the gains of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements that made black officialdom a reality in the heart of Jim Crow. Figures like Maynard Jackson, Martin Luther King Sr., Andrew Young, and today’s officials like Shirley Franklin in Atlanta, Ray Nagin in New Orleans, Kwame Kilpatrick in Detroit, and countless others in official society at local, state, and federal levels continue to deny working folks a true voice in managing their workplaces and neighborhoods. This is done in the name of preserving supposed progressive governance, and continues receiving tacit to direct support from many working folks.

The 1977 strike demonstrates that, no matter the background of city bosses, working folks take a back seat to the social and economic interests of ruling and aspiring progressive elites. With few people and groups willing to challenge the power of today’s supposedly progressive overseers, the proud tradition of battle against white supremacy and workers self-management in places like Memphis, Atlanta, and throughout America during the Civil Rights and Black Power era seems like a fleeting memory.

This scenario continues to this day in Atlanta, where labor struggles by unionized and non-unionized workers in majority black workplaces must battle black corporate and government bosses. A good example is the organizing by rail and bus operators for Atlanta’s public transit system (MARTA) in 2005. They sought better pay and benefits, and more control of workplace conditions. Their demands were blocked at every turn by MARTA’s board, consisting predominantly of black corporate and civic figures, even some with ties to the old civil rights establishment that played a hand in crushing the 1977 strike. MARTA workers were eventually forced to accept a largely unfavorable contract, handed down by a judge, which saw many health benefits and workplace control sacrificed for a very modest raise.

Time will tell when everyday folks will finally be able to completely break through, tearing off the progressive veneer used by today’s coalitions of ruling elites to cover over the fundamental social, racial, and economy inequalities they carry on.

Notes

[1] See Godshalk, David Fort. Veiled Visions: The 1906 Atlanta Race Riot and the Reshaping of American Race Relations. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2005; Burns, Rebecca. Rage in the Gate City: The Story of the Atlanta 1906 Race Riot. Cincinnati: Emmis Books, 2006; and Bauerlein, Mark. Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906. San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2001.

[2] At the River I Stand. Dir. David Appleby. DVD. 1993. San Francisco: California Newsreel, 2004. 56min.; Beifuss, Joan Turner. At the River I Stand. Memphis: St. Luke’s Press, 1990; Green, Laurie B. “Battling the Plantation Mentality: From the Civil Rights Act to the Sanitation Strike.” In Battling the Plantation Mentality: Memphis and the Black Freedom Struggle. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2007, 251-287; Honey, Michael K. Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.

[3] Beifuss, Joan Turner. At the River I Stand. 40.

[4] Ibid, 25.

[5] “City Employees in Atlanta Vow to Escalate Strike.” New York Times (22 March 1970): 29.

[6] “1,400 Striking City Employees In Atlanta Discharged by Mayor” New York Times (21 March 1970): 20, and McCartin, Joseph A. “‘Fire the Hell Out of Them”: Sanitation Workers’ Struggles and the Normalization of the Striker Replacement Strategy in the 1970s.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 2.3 (2005): 70.

[7] Reed, Jr., Adolph. “The Jug and Its Contents.” In Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. 5. See also Reed’s “Why Is There No Black Political Movement?” In Class Notes. New York: The New Press, 2000. 3-9.

[8] Bell, Chuck and Jay Lawrence. “City Workers Take Day Off.” Atlanta Constitution (8 February 1977): 10-C, and Lawrence, Jay and Valerie Price. “Garbage Workers on Strike.” Atlanta Constitution (9 February 1977): 1-A, 1-F.

[9] Lawrence, Jay. “Garbage Workers Back; Question Is, Who Won What?” Atlanta Constitution (15 February 1977): 8-B.

[10] Matthews, Tom and Vern E. Smith. “Atlanta: The Strikebreaker.” Newsweek (25 April 1977): 29.

[11] “The Mayor and the $28 Million. A Mystery Story.” Atlanta Constitution (8 April 1977), and New York Times (27 March 1977).

[12] McCartin, 85, and Martin, Lyn. “Protestors Dump Trash At City Hall.” Atlanta Constitution (13 April 1977): 1-A, 10-A.

[13] Numerous books document the history of radical community and national groups being normalized into positions of governance. See Komozi Woodard’s A Nation Within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics about CAP in Newark.

[14] Reed, Jr., Adolph. “The Jug and Its Contents.” In Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era. 8-9.

[15] McCartin, 67.

[16] “Fire the Strikers.” Atlanta Constitution (30 March 1977): 4-A, and Atlanta Daily World (4, 7 April 1977).

[17] Lawrence, Jay. “City Strikers Clash With Job Applicants.” Atlanta Constitution (5 April 1977): 2-A, and “Strike is Criticized by Dr. King’s Father.” New York Times (5 April 1977): 5.

[18] Matthews, Tom and Vern E. Smith, Newsweek (25 April 1977): 29.

[19] McCartin, 86.

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