Memphis Faith and Labor School

The Memphis Faith and Labor School and the Southern Faith, Labor and Community Alliance Conference were held in July 2006 in Memphis, TN.

(School participants outside of Liberation Community Church)

The focus of the Memphis School was “Faith and Labor,” and we remained anchored in the history of the Sanitation Workers strike of 1968, during which Martin Luther King Jr. was killed.

Through Bible Studies and Courses (listed at right), a diverse group of faculty taught, insprired, and challenged us on themes of race, class, gender, money, work, and community.

Site visits around Memphis included the National Civil Rights Museum, the former Lorraine Motel where Dr. King was assasinated; the Matthew R. Davis Community Center in the New Chicago neighborhood of north Memphis, which still suffers from the closing of a Firestone Fire plant years ago (pictured at right); and the local American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees office, the union that eventually represented the Santitation Workers in 1968.

As part of the Southern Faith, Labor, and Community Alliance Conference, the week culminated with an action at the Quebecor plant (one of several non-unionized plants operated by the second largest printing company in the world) just across the state line in Mississippi, where low-income workers (predominately African American) have been harassed for trying to organize a union to obtain better pay and safer working conditions (action pictured above).

In various panels we learned about current living wage campaigns in Memphis and elsewhere; examined the ongoing injustices stemming from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans; and heard from veterans of the 1968 santiation workers strike (pictured at right, Rev. Frank McRae, Taylor Rodgers, Hattie Jackson, and Ezekial Bell, photo Commercial Appeal).

This year the School had two additional parts which were co-sponsored by the Benjamin Hooks Institute for Social Change: a midweek, day-long academic symposium on labor and globalization; and a weekend conference focusing on building ties between Black churches and the trade union movement.

Overall some 200 persons attended these overlapping events during the week, including more than 40 young adults. Two thirds of the participants were from the Southeast, 60% were persons of color, and a dozen trade unions were represented from both the AFL-CIO and Change to Win labor federations. (a small group meeting pictured above)

Musicians Ange Smith and Charlie King and poets Jim Perkinson and Tiffany Gray highlighted the many cultural contributions, and we heard powerful preaching from Alexia Salvatierra and J. Herbert Nelson as well as Nelson Johnson and John Mendez from North Carolina. In the closing worship service an “altar call to commitment” inaugurated a Southern Faith, Community and Labor Alliance . We hope this network will help promote and deepen collaboration between people of faith and struggles for economic and labor justice throughout the Southeast and beyond.
(Tiffany Gray and Mike Boucher pictured above)