Honoring Black Ancestors : Taylor Rogers

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1968 sanitation striker Taylor Rogers dies

By Linda A. Moore
Wednesday, November 16, 2011


In 1968, when African-American men were often expected to walk with heads bowed, Taylor Rogers joined a movement and walked, head high, into history.

Mr. Rogers was one of more than 1,300 city of Memphis sanitation workers who walked off the job and onto a picket line, demanding dignity, fairness and workplace safety.

Mr. Rogers died Saturday at Methodist University Hospital. He was 85.

"He came home and he told us," said daughter, Patricia Rogers Morman of Memphis. "He said, 'We may have it hard for a while but it's time for us to take a stand.'"

One of the workers' demands was union recognition of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

Mr. Rogers joined the city in 1958. In 1968, he and his wife had just bought a house.

Morman says her father never spoke of being worried about what might happen on the picket line.
"What he did talk about was being afraid of the job itself because it was not safe," she said.

Before the strike started, two sanitation workers had been crushed to death on a garbage truck.
Mr. Rogers also worried about paying for his house.

"Naturally, I was frightened that I was going to lose it," he told The Commercial Appeal in 1993. "I had eight kids I was trying to support. But yet and still, we had made up our mind that we just weren't going to take no more."

But with help from the union, friends and fellow members at Gospel Temple Baptist Church, the family got by....

continued here: http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2011/nov/16/1968-sanitation-striker-taylor-rogers-dies/?print=1

 

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Uploaded by McKPR on Apr 14, 2008​

In 1968, Taylor Rogers was a trash collector in Memphis, Tenn. -- "just another guy" with eight children to support and a mortgage to pay off. He became a part of history. Disgusted by racism and poor working conditions, Taylor and 1,300 fellow African-American sanitation workers in Memphis launched a strike to win recognition as a union -- and as human beings. Their protest signs said it simply: "I am a man." The strike succeeded after 64 days, but it exacted a terrible toll: Workers were beaten, gassed and jailed. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. paid the ultimate price: He was assassinated while in Memphis to support the strike. During a roundtable discussion at SEIU headquarters, he discusses how the strike came about.

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