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I Am A Man" Protest Placard — Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike, 1968

Description

A thin cardboard placard, 13¾ by 21¼ inches, reading simply "I Am A Man" in bold black ink and bearing an Allied Printing union bug, carried by striking Black sanitation workers during the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike (Antiques and The Arts). A buttonhole punched at the top matches period press photographs of marchers who affixed placards directly to their shirt buttons, and "Black Power" is scrawled in red ink on the reverse. Per Hake's Americana Director Scott Mussell, the wear — creasing and staining — reflects "honest wear from hard use, commiserate with the struggle at hand," while remaining "eminently displayable and powerful" (Antiques and The Arts).

Significance

The Memphis strike began after sanitation workers Echol Cole and Robert Walker were crushed to death in a malfunctioning garbage truck, and it became the campaign that brought Dr. King to Memphis, where he delivered his final speech, "I've Been to the Mountaintop," on April 3, 1968, the night before his assassination (Britannica). The strike ended April 16, 1968 with union recognition and a wage increase (Wikipedia). The "I Am A Man" slogan itself echoes the abolitionist-era question "Am I not a man and a brother?", directly linking 1960s labor and civil rights organizing back to 19th-century antislavery rhetoric (Gilder Lehrman Institute). The "Black Power" annotation on this specific example is a rare piece of physical evidence of that ideological shift being written in real time, on the object itself.

Key Notes

  • Useful for teaching the causes and resolution of the 1968 Memphis strike, the throughline from abolitionist rhetoric to Civil Rights-era slogans, and — for collectors specifically — the market distinction between an original strike-carried placard like this one and later mass-produced commemorative reproductions: a 1968 red-and-white "I Am A Man, Memphis" dorm-style poster by Emerson Graphics separately set its own auction record at just $6,500, less than an eighth of this sale ( Antique Trader ) — a useful benchmark for teaching buyers how to price originality and direct provenance to an event, not just age or slogan.

Sources Referenced

Provenance

Consigned to Hake's Anti-Slavery to Civil Rights Auction, a 366-lot sale curated by Hake's Americana Director Scott Mussell alongside the Rex and Patti Stark ceramics collection, which closed June 23, 2026 and totaled $472,118 across all lots ( Auction Daily ). Detailed chain of custody prior to consignment is not publicly disclosed in the catalog notes.

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