LABOR QUOTE OF THE WEEK “I AM A MAN”
Lawrence Smoot | Published on 9/27/2024
Bill Lucy became a member of AFSCME Local 1675 in 1956 at the age of twenty-three and then was elected its president in 1965 at the age of thirty-two. In 1968, at the age of thirty-five, Lucy worked on the historic Memphis sanitation workers’ strike.He coined the famous slogan, “I Am A Man!” that became the rallying call for the Memphis strikers. In the tumultuous aftermath of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination during the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike, Lucy helped maintain the labor-civil rights-community coalition that sealed the workers’ eventual victory and became the model used throughout the nation.
photo: Steve Schapiro, I Am A Man, Memphis, Tennessee, 1965; prints available
