drmstream[writing]

San­i­ta­tion Work­ers Assem­bling for A Sol­i­dar­ity March by Ernest Withers

Step out from behind your counter and walk to the door to take in the brisk after­noon air of this gloomy Spring day. You always look down Beale toward the river, where the sky is lighter. It’s been a slow morn­ing, been a slow day, been a slow month, the city on edge since the san­i­ta­tion work­ers walked off the job that rainy week in February.

You don’t want to look uptown. You don’t want to look at all. You’ve seen them all morn­ing, sham­bling down the streets in dribs and drabs, dressed up in their suits and good sweaters, dirty hats on their heads. They’ve got some­thing wrong with them, the way that they are walk­ing, like they are try­ing to squeeze through a thicket with­out muss­ing them­selves. Folks have come in to talk about it, say that there’s a big crowd gath­er­ing, but you know that and don’t want to know that.

At last you turn, take one look before you go in. There’s a trim, well-dressed negro stand­ing in the mid­dle of the empty street, a cam­era held up to his face, point­ing down the cen­ter line to the gnarled and tan­gled crowd that has taken root on the pave­ment out­side of the Clay­born Temple.

There’s no telling any one of them apart, or telling what the crowd is really, they are as inter­twined and indis­tin­guish­able as swamp clots. Each one holds a white plac­ard with big black let­ters printed on it.

“I Am A Man.”

Can they be men? They can be a dif­fer­ent kind. They do work no other man would do and are good at it, the bone-breaking, mono­tu­ous work of dig­ging ditches or pulling cot­ton or lug­ging garbage. They have their ways, their place, and make good of it.

Isn’t that what a man does, take his due and make what he can out of it? A man doesn’t reach out to grab what isn’t his, to get some­thing that he hasn’t earned. A man doesn’t look to impov­er­ish another for his own enrich­ment. A man fol­lows the path that he’s got and stays in it.

The negro pho­tog­ra­pher claps his hands and all eyes turn up the avenue. You are con­fronted with hun­dreds of eyes, white-yellow and sweat-rimmed. The plac­ards look like the bristling white teeth of a giant maw about to clamp down.

You go back in the store, tired.

You wouldn’t be sur­prised to hear what is next: thou­sands of men will tromp past your store on their way to town. A rowdy will smash in your win­dow. A cop will fire a shot, oth­ers will wield their clubs. You’ll run to the stock­room and bar the door, lis­ten­ing the resound­ing cracks of wood splin­ter­ing and con­crete bruis­ing. They’ll pound on the stock­room door like rocks rolling along in the flood waters.

You’ll be taken out of the city cen­ter that night by a young Guards­man. Your wife will be wait­ing in the kitchen lis­ten­ing to the radio for news when you get dropped off at the curb. Your sons will be play­ing on the big oak tree. Old Ella will meet you at the door to take your coat. Her dark eyes will be red and strained.

“Did you see my Jethro, Mis­ter?” she ask. “My lit­tle boy went in to that march. Did you see him?”

You can learn more at the Ten­nessee Ency­clo­pe­dia entry on the San­i­ta­tion Work­ers Strike.