On Elmore Nickleberry

When people are denied basic dignity, how they respond is a measure of character. Few met that measure as well as this brave Army veteran from Memphis who stood up for men like him everywhere...

Dear Friends,

My lovely wife Valerie got me a subscription to “The Economist” so I can stay better informed. In continuous publication since 1843, it gives a weekly overview of all the news of the world in a magazine format, mixing breaking stories with deeply reported features, along with culture and science. If there was one publication I would recommend to improve your understanding of the news, this would be it.

At the end of every issue is an obituary. Sometimes the figures are major world leaders, other times they are lesser known people who had an impact on the world.

Elmore Nickleberry died on December 30, 2023. His obituary was published in the January 20, 2024 issue of “The Economist.”

Most people don’t know his name, but the iconic photo of him holding up an “I Am A Man” sign is a reminder of just how recently the fight for equal human dignity was being fought in the United States, as well as how far we’ve come.

Nickleberry and the rest of the striking sanitation workers are memorialized at the National Civil Rights Museum, which now occupies the Lorraine Motel.

I Am a Man - Diorama of Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike - National Civil Rights Museum - Downtown Memphis - Tennessee - USA by Adam Jones

Sanitation work is hard, but it was even harder for black men in Memphis. Long hours, unsafe conditions, low pay, and terrible working conditions were the norm back then.

This was not the future he’d imagined for himself. When he was given honourable discharge from the army, where he served in Korea driving a GMC 6x6 truck and rose to corporal, he thought he might get a job at Firestone, the tyre company. He was 21, and eager to work hard. But there weren’t too many jobs in Memphis for black men. Eventually he took to standing outside the gates of the parking lot for sanitation trucks, until a white man inside said “You looking for a job, boy? Come on in.” The next day, he started.

By 1968 his pay was $1.65 an hour for a nine-hour day. He and Peggy already had three children, and you couldn’t feed a family on that. Fully 40% of the sanitation workers were on welfare and food stamps. So he also became a hustler, as his daddy was, in the good sense of doing any job he could find and could fit into his hours. Sometimes he picked cotton, sometimes chopped wood or pruned trees. (In the elegant white parts of the city, homeowners assumed that he could tidy their gardens as well as collect the trash.) School had been no big thing for him, and he left after sixth grade; he learned instead to be flexible. His father had managed to provide for 17 children, but in that respect at least he didn’t follow him. He stopped at seven.

But worse than the working conditions were the way that black men were treated as less than for the color of their skin. In society that valued politeness, rudeness to black men was a way of keeping them in their place. Not only did they work long hours to haul trash, they were called “boy” regularly by white folks who expected respect but refused it in return.

Bolstered by the national attention on Memphis in the wake of Dr. King’s assassination, Nickleberry and the other striking workers won improvements to their working conditions and being treated like men instead of boys.

“You get what you expect and you deserve what you tolerate.” -Mark Graban

What we learn from dignity based peaceful protest movements is that when people stand up together and expect to be respected, when they refuse to tolerate the disrespect, when they set firm boundaries and expectations, they are more difficult to oppress.

May Mr. Nickleberry’s memory be a blessing to his loved ones, and his story an inspiration to a new generation seeking justice.

Yours truly,
Nick