Jesse Epps News Today

 This is part five of a 10-part series on the first tenant movement in Memphis. Read part 4 here. Children work on erecting a playground using

This is part three of a 10-part series on the first tenant movement in Memphis. Read part 2 here. The Texas-East McLemore rent strike in 1968 drew Memphis

<p><em>Sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, had been on strike since February 12, 1968, and negotiations with city officials were at a dead end. When Dr. King announced his intention to march with the strikers as part of his new Poor People’s Campaign, thousands rallied to the cause. But the deepening divide in the civil rights movement between supporters of nonviolence and supporters of direct action was about to be exposed in a city with a long history of troubled ra...

Jesse Epps was instrumental in the fight for social and economic justice. He helped organize the sanitation workers' strike and negotiated wages.