Transportation Protests: 1841 to 1992
Reading by Julian Hipkins III and David Busch
The struggle for the desegregation of transportation has a long history in the United States. This timeline outlines some key individuals and organizations who took a stand against segregated transit.
At the River I Stand: The 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike and the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Reading by California Newsreel
The documentary film At the River I Stand skillfully reconstructs the two eventful months that transformed a strike by Memphis sanitation workers into a national conflagration, and disentangles the complex historical forces that came together with the inevitability of tragedy at the death of Martin Luther King Jr.
Nonviolence vs. Jim Crow
Primary Document by Bayard Rustin
This essay, based on an experience Rustin had in 1942, is one example of the countless challenges to Jim Crow and the use of non-violence as a tactic that predate the traditional 1954 start date for the Civil Rights Movement.
Remembering the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike: A Collaborative Mural
Lesson by Patty Bode and Stephanie Schmidt
An art lesson designed to introduce the complexity and role of ordinary people in the Civil Rights Movement. The addendum provides a practical guide to drawing images of people for murals.