Lumber & Martin Luther King

                April 3. This day moves me to tears every year. Of the billions of April 3rds, only April 3, 1968 moves me. On this date, Martin Luther King gave his I’ve Been to the Mountaintop speech in Memphis. Today, April 4, marks when the symbolism of the speech became reality. As I’m wont to do, I now want to examine the life of MLK and the aftermath of his assassination through the prism of lumber. Often these connections make up the setting, serve as the backdrop of the main story, but I like to bring them out and weave a story out of them.

                The real point of most of these types of articles is to show the prevalence of lumber and to show how central lumber is to everyday life. It isn’t to say that lumber caused action or lumber molded MLK’s life… well maybe if the evidence shows it… Rather, I find it interesting how lumber is everywhere. 

                In Going Down Jericho Road by Michael Honey, the emotions running through Memphis on April 4 and 5, 1968 can be summed up by “He died for us, and we’re going to die for him.” The release of a broken dream swept through the city of Memphis. In the middle of the fiery outburst, O.W. Ferrell Lumber Company became engulfed in the literal flames of discontent. Supposedly, flames 100 feet high raged as Memphis and other cities were teetering on being “burnt down.”  Much has been written on the “riots,” and it is worth a read to understand the many reactions and emotions following the death of MLK (Honey, 443).

                What happened to Ferrel’s company can be interpreted as why MLK was there in Memphis to begin with. Memphis was caught in a worker’s strike along mostly racial lines. The appointed meditator,  Frank Miles, owned a lumber company, E.L. Bruce, that was mostly staffed by African-American workers. The sanitation strike threatened to empower his workers, and more importantly, he was concerned that any release would cause his lumber company to burn. Real fear. Real issues. Real segregation. This is why MLK was there. People had their own interests. Miles was afraid if the negotiations went south his lumber would be ash (Honey, 444). It always amazes me how people could never go the next step and say if I know this anger exists, why?

                So once again, lumber had no real role in the Memphis strike or riots, but Memphis had many stockyards and lumber companies, as did the South in this time. The problem in Memphis's lumberyards was that machines were making manpower expendable. Therefore, there was more competition for jobs and a need for better job protection.  Lumberyards can serve as a case study into the problems plaguing the South during the 1960s and the lumber industry in general.

            The primacy of Clinton’s sawmills seems to have ended in the beginning of the 20^th century, and the shift slowly but surely went to the South. Southern lumber camps were not free of the segregation and racism that existed in the South. In fact, Coretta Scott’s dad owned a sawmill in the South, and during the Depression, the whites burnt his sawmill to the ground (Honey, 25).  A story in Africana edited by Gates, talks about how Obadiah Scott saved enough money working for a white sawmill to buy his own. This supposedly caused resentment, and as a result, it is alleged that whites burnt down the sawmill and the Scott’s home (Gates, 234).  Another story relates that Obadiah wouldn't sell his mill to a white man, so the town burnt down the sawmill.

         To show the extent of the sawmills in the South during the nadir period of race relations, MLK’s grandfather lost a thumb working in a sawmill (Honey, 24). In the Papers of Martin Luther King Jr, MLK’s father, here named Sr., talks about how as a young boy Sr. saw the brunt of racism in the sawmills. As a young boy, Sr. went out to get milk for his mother. Coming home, he passed a sawmill. The sawmill owner demanded that Sr. go get water for his men. Sr. declined and the white owner beat the young boy and destroyed the milk bottle.

           What comes next shows the power structure of the South. Enraged, Sr.’s mother attacked the mill owner and his father threatened to kill him. Sr.’s father realizing the dangers of stepping out of the prescribed lines hid in the woods for a few months as white men that night and for many nights hunted him. Sr. also talked about witnessing a lynching at the sawmill, even though there is no record of one happening (Carson, 21).

             What one has to be careful about though is many, seemingly all, African-Americans bounced from job to job or were employed in three or four different jobs at once. It was all about economic opportunity. While the whites were able to build and build and build, the affordability was caused by the working conditions and opportunities of the mostly African-American, or Latino, staffed mills. The association isn't with lumber but rather the conditions of the South. 

             This journey, in my fifth week, has really opened up a lot of questions, and I am enjoying everything falling into place. Even better is how often Clinton, or rather the lumber barons, keep creeping up in the quest. Who knows what the next post will be, but I know I need to get some science on this here blog.