Recognizing Long Beach's unsung workers

On April 3, 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. visited striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn. He was assassinated the next day.

Last week, the 56th anniversary of King’s assassination, representatives of two Long Beach churches — St. James-Jerusalem Episcopal and New Life Church of Christ — visited the city’s Sanitation Department to offer the workers sandwiches, drinks, snacks, dessert and gifts, honoring King’s memory and the work he did on behalf of the Memphis workers.

City workers and drivers attended, seeing signs with photos of King and descriptions and quotes of what he stood for and the importance of the event.

At the end of the table of food, there was a laminated piece of paper, standing upright in the line of sight, with the history of what happened in Memphis. Workers stopped to read it before eating their lunch.

New Life Church of Christ, which has a mostly Black congregation, and St. James-Jerusalem Episcopal Church, which is mostly white, and their pastors, the Revs. Mark Moses and Susan Bock, respectively, have joined forces to honor the sanitation workers each April 4 since 2018, though they missed a year due to the coronavirus pandemic.