I Am A Man

Artist Ernest C. Withers (American, 1922 - 2007)

Publisher Panopticon Press, Tony Decaneas, Waltham, MA

Datephotographs: 1956-1968; portfolio: 1994

Dimensionssheet: 15 15/16 x 19 13/16 in. (40.5 x 50.3 cm)
image: 11 11/16 x 18 13/16 in. (29.7 x 47.8 cm)
Sheet, according to WAC form: 11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6 cm)

MediumPortfolio with letterpress text and ten gelatin silver prints.

ClassificationPhotographs

Credit LineMrs. George W. Stevens Fund

Object number

2003.46A-J

Not on View

DescriptionPortfolio with letterpress text and ten gelatin silver prints.

Label Text“…we were trying to find something we could put on a sign that could say it all. It must have been almost midnight, and we'd been struggling, and we had a sign that said "I AM A MAN"…With that sign we changed the idea that these garbage workers were gluttons making unfair demands. It was clear that these were men whose dignity and respect and manhood was being preyed upon.” --Jesse Epps, 2004, who, as a labor official, helped with the strike in 1968 Spurred by the accidental deaths of two men in a faulty compactor and citing a history of unfair treatment, more than 1,000 Memphis sanitation workers (most of them black) went on strike February 12, 1968. Local black leaders organized national support, bringing in Martin Luther King, Jr., who led the “I Am a Man” march for economic equality. A few days later, on April 3, King delivered his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech to the striking workers. The next day, he was shot and killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. After King’s assassination, the Federal government intervened in the union negotiations, and the strike was resolved on April 16.Published Referencescf.: Pictures Tell a Story (Norfolk: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2000) cf.: Let Us March On! Selected Civil Rights photographs of Ernest C. Withers, 1955-1968 (Boston: Massachusetts College of Art, 1992)Exhibition HistoryArkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, Arkansas. 2007.