Race,Gender,and Labor in 1960s Memphis: “I am a Man” and the Meaning of Freedom

Abstract

“I AM A MAN,” the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike slogan, has become emblematic of African Americans’ quest for equality during the civil rights movement; however, its complex meanings in the 1960s have rarely been analyzed. The sanitation strike emerged amidst a groundswell of agitation among the urban South’s most marginal black workers—both men and women—confined through racist practices to service and laborer jobs. Emerging largely after the 1964 Civil Rights Act, this labor-civil rights militancy indicates that “freedom” to these workers, was not resolved by that legislation’s equal rights guarantees, but extended to complex, gendered issues of power and identity framed by the urban South’s proximity to the“plantation.”