A new historical marker installed in Schlater memorializes the participation of one of its natives in the 1968 Memphis sanitation strike.
Family members of the late Baxter Richard Leach gathered on Saturday to witness the unveiling of the marker, which can be found by passing through Schlater on Mississippi 442.
Leach, who died in 2019, was born in Schlater in 1939 and was one of 13 children. He moved to Memphis in 1959 and started working with the city sanitation department two years later.
Dr. Clarence Christian, a social historian, called the sanitation strike that began in 1968 “a pivotal moment in the history of the United States civil rights movement.”
Sanitation workers, most of them Black men, had suffered low wages, poor working conditions and abuse for years before the strike started.
On Feb. 1, 1968, two garbage collectors were killed in a malfunctioning garbage compactor. Days later, sanitation workers around Memphis decided to strike, demanding better working conditions. Marches of nonviolent demonstrators were met with violence from law enforcement.
The strike caught the attention of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who traveled to Memphis to march with the workers and lend his support. It would be the final cause in which the civil rights leader was involved before he was assassinated in Memphis on April 4.
Leach marched with King, and the sanitation workers successfully bargained for higher wages and recognizing a union. Leach would retire from the department in 2005.
Christian said Leach’s story must be told. “If we don’t tell our children, they certainly won’t know,” he said. “Today, he is hailed.”
Leflore County District 3 Supervisor Anjuan Brown said he hadn’t known Leach’s story but jumped at the opportunity to be involved in the marker ceremony once he started researching.
“I’m so grateful to be able to stand on the shoulders of another person that allowed us to be what we can in this great country that we’re in,” he said.
Leach’s widow, Jimmie Mae Cotton-Leach, told the assembled crowd she was grateful.
The two had six children. In addition to Leach’s work at the sanitation department, he and Jimmie operated two soul food restaurants.
“Just don’t know how much I appreciate it,” she said. “I thank God for my husband and for what he did. He was a man.
“As the shirt says, ‘I am a man,’ and he was that man.”
- Contact Kevin Edwards at 662-581-7233 or kedwards@gwcommonwealth.com.
