On this day, 28 March 1977, over 1,300 nearly all Black sanitation workers in Atlanta walked off the job for a 50 cent an hour pay increase. The city’s first Black mayor, who had come to power on the back of the civil rights and Black power movements and to whom the workers looked for support, sacked them all, with the support of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Sr (not to be confused with MLK Jr, who was assassinated while supporting a strike of sanitation workers).
It was an early lesson that having representatives of colour doesn’t necessarily benefit working class people of colour.
This is an account of the struggle: https://libcom.org/library/disgrace-god-striking-black-sanitation-workers-vs-black-officialdom-1977-atlanta
Pictured: A protester being dragged away outside City Hall. https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1386106574907822/?type=3