[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 2 (Friday, January 5, 2024)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     REMEMBERING ELMORE NICKLEBERRY

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. STEVE COHEN

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, January 5, 2024

  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay profound respect to 
Elmore Nickleberry, one of the last two surviving 1968 Memphis 
Sanitation worker strikers, who passed on Saturday, December 30, 2023, 
at 92 years old. Mr. Nickleberry and 1,300 other sanitation workers led 
the wildcat strike after two of their colleagues were crushed in a 
garbage truck compactor and their nearly unbearable working conditions 
shocked the nation. Their story so inspired the Reverend Dr. Martin 
Luther King Jr., then planning his Poor People's March on Washington, 
that he joined their cause and was ultimately assassinated on a Memphis 
motel balcony on April 4 of that year. The efforts of the strikers, 
with their iconic ``I AM A MAN'' placards, and of people of good will 
in Memphis, led to remarkable progress in race relations and labor 
equity, and forever changed my city for the better. The strike and its 
aftermath were a defining moment for Memphis and for the country. Mr. 
Nickleberry stayed on in the city's sanitation department until his 
retirement three years ago, attending a celebration of the 50th 
anniversary of the strike in 2018. He and the sanitation workers were 
inducted into the U.S. Department of Labor's Labor Hall of Fame in 
2011. His remarkable legacy will be studied as an important milestone 
in our nation's history.

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