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Hebrew Scripture Reading-Deuteronomy 24: 14-15
It had reached a point where the white leaders of the city felt that “race relations” were good.[i] Progress had been made. The city had come a long ways from where it had once been. But if those up high had looked down below, below the professional jobs and the technical jobs, below the clerical jobs and the sales jobs, below the poverty line in fact, they might have seen something else. They might have seen those who were unemployed as well as those who worked two or more jobs trying to keep their families afloat.
To be sure, those at these lower depths were at times the object of charity. They received clothing that would have been otherwise thrown away. But to be an object of charity is not to really be seen, and few of those who lived up above spent much time considering those down below. The city with this peculiar but ordinary arrangement was Memphis, and the year was 1968.
Even for a local black minister like the Rev. H. Ralph Jackson, the plight of poor blacks in Memphis often passed underneath awareness.[ii] Moreover, in the South, Memphis would have seemed to some a less likely city to become a powder keg. The city had largely desegregated its downtown area. Blacks were becoming active voters with influence. A year earlier three black politicians had gained seats on the city council. The city did not seem to have the problems that other cities like Birmingham, Alabama had.[iii]
Yet, if one awoke at 7 am in the morning and looked out one’s window, one might have caught a glimpse of an ordinary part of life that often went overlooked.[iv] If one lived in a house, for example, one might have seen a black man carrying a large tub on his head and shoulders to and from the backyard. As was customary, one would have had a 50-gallon drum in the backyard full of garbage. This garbage would be transferred into the man’s tub for him to carry back to a garbage truck. The tubs often leaked their contents over the carrier and his clothes.[v]
If one were to have followed around this man for a day, one might have overheard this full-grown man called “boy” by whites.[vi] One might have realized that he was never given time for bathroom breaks and that his lunch hour was cut short. One would have followed this man around non-stop for 10 to 12 hours despite his being paid for only 8 hours at an hourly rate of $1.65.[vii] If one followed him around on payday, one might have found that he didn’t even receive all of these wages. Eighty hours of work would suddenly become sixty hours.[viii]
Such conditions of racial exploitation of course would seem a far cry from today. I mean we have a black president after all. There is a huge uproar is someone uses the word Negro. Only some egregious bigot would call a black man “boy.” All would seem well in the world of race. Or is it? What happens when those of us who are up above begin to look down below? I am reminded of a story told by Kim Bobo, a member of a UCC church in Chicago who is the national director for an organization called Interfaith Worker Justice. I once worked for this organization and had the opportunity to meet her. Kim is undoubtedly someone who is attune to workers of color being exploited, but even she was surprised to hear someone claim that not far from her house in Chicago was a garment factory with workers making less than minimum wage. Along with a group of religious leaders, she decided to investigate this rumor. On a cold morning, 25 of them visited this factory in what was largely a residential neighborhood. The door was unlocked, so they went inside and walked around.[ix] Upstairs on the second floor, they entered into “a large high-ceiling room full of Latina immigrant women huddled over sewing machines.”[x] None of them looked up. The religious leaders searched around for the manager. When they finally found her, the manager was quickly taken aback before she then shooed them into the lobby. In the lobby, the clergy began their questions:
“What do you pay these workers?” they asked.
“I pay them the minimum wage, $5.15 per hour,” the manager replied.
“But this is Illinois; the minimum wage is $6.15, not $5.15,” the clergy noted.
“Why didn’t they tell me?” exclaimed the manager.[xi]
The questions continued. Earlier one of the religious leaders had sought to use the bathroom only to have a worker jump up from her seat to give her a few pieces of toilet paper. When they asked the manager what the deal was with the toilet paper, she explained that there had been a problem with toilet paper being stolen by the workers, so the workers preferred to bring their own.[xii] One wonders what else one might have discovered if one had followed around a worker for a day. What Kim Bobo later learned is that these workers were sewing through a subcontractor for Cintas, the nation’s largest industrial laundry company.[xiii] Eventually, the workers would recover over $209,000 in back wages and penalties.[xiv]
One might think that the problems of sweatshop workers, however, are again a distant occurrence only to be found in places like LA or Chicago, but as it turns out they’re not. Wage theft-the failure to pay workers their full wages if they are to be paid at all-is in fact common. Employers responsible for wage theft range from Wal-Mart and McDonalds to federal, state, and local governments.[xv] One study found that nearly half of day laborers have had their wages stolen, another study found that 60 percent of nursing homes stole wages, still another reported that 78 percent of restaurants in New Orleans stole, and then there is the study that reports 100 percent of poultry plants were guilty of stealing.[xvi]
In the end, the Memphis of 1968 might not be so distant. For the black sanitation workers of the city, a tipping point was eventually reached. On the day they decided to go on strike, they had been sent home without pay as the rain poured down on them and as their white peers continued to work at full pay.[xvii] Not long before, a garbage compactor had gone haywire and crushed two black workers to death. In the wake of this tragedy, the workers went on strike demanding recognition of their union along with an adequate response to their grievances. They picketed and marched on a daily basis. A preacher among the workers came up with the idea of a “new slogan to honor” the two fallen workers.[xviii] The slogan would later become famous in the photos of black sanitation workers holding white placards with large black letters that read “I AM A MAN.”
Although the strike started off strong, eventually the spirits of the workers sagged. It was at this point that Martin Luther King, Jr., was persuaded to visit. In a speech that rejuvenated the workers, he denounced their “starvation wages” and declared that “genuine equality” requires “economic equality.”[xix] This peak, however, was short lived as King later returned to Memphis for a failed march that was marred by youth vandalism, police violence, and an ensuing chaos. Determined not to fail, King returned a week later to march again. On April 3rd at a church rally, he delivered the famous speech in which he declared, “I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight we as a people will get to the promised land.” The next day King was shot dead.
Looking back, the echoes of Moses and the Israelites were strong in that final week before King’s death. Indeed, our scripture reading today comes from Deuteronomy, a book in which Moses speaks to his people not long before his death and before their entry into the promised land. In this speech, Moses lays down laws designed to ensure that the Israelites would live in a society defined by justice and good will. As our text shows, one of those laws demands the full payment of wages to workers regardless of whether they are Israelites or not.
While this certainly sounds good, I don’t know about you, but I find something rather depressing about this text. I mean it is hard enough to acknowledge that maybe in some ways we haven’t really come all that far from the civil rights movement 40 years ago. It’s a lot harder to acknowledge that we haven’t come all that far from the days of Moses a few thousand years earlier. I mean when are all these employers going to learn their moral arithmetic and give their employees what they’re due. Moreover, if you look closely at the text it seems to suggest that foreigners might have had an especially hard time getting paid their just wages. It seems like throughout history there have always been people who have been marked as different and marked as the other and who have not gotten their full wages. If that’s the case, what hope do we have?
Well, what I have come to realize is this: if the tricks of oppression from yesterday have not changed all that much, then assuredly the God of yesterday hasn’t changed all that much either. This past week I read some interviews done with former black sanitation workers a number of years after their strike in Memphis. They clearly testify that their lives got a lot better after their union was eventually recognized in the wake of King’s death. After they were recognized, they started getting paid more. They started getting benefits and vacation. Grievance procedures were put in place. The former workers also testify that their strike was a watershed event in Memphis. People started to believe in the power of collective action. They discovered that in unions and churches they had the vehicles to bring about change. Eventually, this led to the transformation of the entire racial and economic landscape of Memphis, with blacks getting unionized and gaining employment up and down the economic ladder.[xx] I am sure if someone had interviewed the former Israelite slaves after they arrived in the promised land, they too would have said their lives had gotten a lot better.
What this tells me is that regardless of how bad things get sometimes, one can still find a God coming up from below. One can still find a God surfacing amid exploitation and degradation. One can still find a God popping up out of nowhere amid greed and racism. One can still find a God appearing amid oppression and injustice saying, “That’s not right. Those slaves deserve to be freed. Those workers deserve to be paid.” For this firm, unyielding, steadfast, and adamant God of justice, let the church say Amen! Say it again! Say it again! In the year ahead, let’s keep striving for the promised land and let’s keep believing in a God that comes from below. Amen.
[i] Michael Keith Honey, Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 286.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid., 291.
[iv] Ibid., 304.
[v] Ibid., 294-295.
[vi] Ibid., 287.
[vii] Ibid., 304, 305.
[viii] Ibid., 305.
[ix] Kim Bobo, Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid – And What We Can Do About It, (New York: W.W. Norton, 2009), 3-4.
[x] Ibid., 4.
[xi] Ibid.
[xii] Ibid., 4-5.
[xiii] Ibid., 5.
[xiv] Ibid., 6.
[xv] Ibid.
[xvi] Ibid., 7.
[xvii] Honey, 290.
[xviii] Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 731.
[xix] Honey, 292.
[xx] Ibid., 314-315.
