Item details Handmade item Materials rubber, soft enamel Memphis sanitation workers, the majority of them African-American, went out to strike on February 12, 1968, demanding recognition for their union, better wages, and safer working conditions after two trash handlers were killed by a malfunctioning garbage truck. As the strike dragged on through March, with the Memphis mayor refusing to negotiate, it gained national attention. As they marched, striking workers carried copies of a poster declaring “I AM A MAN,” a statement that recalled a question abolitionist posed more than 100 years earlier, “Am I not a man and a brother?” Martin Luther King Jr.