Alice Faye Duncan: Memphis, Martin and me

In 2005 I searched for a children’s book about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I wanted to share it with students at a Memphis school. When I could not find one in the library, I sat down to write the book myself.

It took me 10 years to write MEMPHIS, MARTIN AND THE MOUNTAINTOP -- the Sanitation Strike of 1968. The children's book, beautifully illustrated by R. Gregory Christie, will be published in August.

Big dreams and important work can demand long gestation periods.

My book is about Lorraine Jackson, a nine-year-old girl who marches in the 1968 strike to support her father, a sanitation worker.

Lorraine Jackson’s story begins in a shabby rental home. Her father is a sanitation worker. Her mother is a maid. Both parents are the working poor.

I believe that place determined my purpose. I was born and raised in Memphis. 

Specifically, I grew up in South Memphis surrounded by names important to the strike that served the dignity of 1,300 black men while it also led to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968.

I grew up in a black neighborhood between South Parkway and Essex Avenue. My neighbors drove city cabs. They worked as janitors and nurses’ aides at the public hospital. 

Like both of my parents, some neighbors served as teachers and some served as principals. Other neighbors were historymakers and my mother made sure that I knew their stories.

Attorney George Brown lived on my street. He served as the first black judge on the Tennessee Supreme Court. 

Bishop J.O. Patterson Jr. lived two doors from my house. He was one of three black members elected to the first Memphis City Council. As a member of the council, Patterson helped to negotiate an end to the sanitation strike on April 16, 1968. 

My friend, Big Mayne, lived across the street. Ed Redditt was his father and he worked as a detective for the local police. On the day Dr. King was murdered at the Lorraine Motel, it had been officer Redditt’s job to trail King through the city streets, when the leader visited Memphis to support the strike.

South Memphis was my world. However, the landscape changed on Sunday, when my family worshipped in North Memphis at St. James AME Church. Our pastor, Dr. Henry Logan Starks, was tall and narrow like a tree. 

My mother sang his praises at the dinner table. She never let me forget that Starks fed striking families.  He marched with workers and helped the men devise strategies to advance their labor struggle.

In preparing to write my story, I interviewed the pastor’s daughter, Dr. Almella Starks Umoja. She was a teenager in 1968.  Almella was an eyewitness.

She marched with Dr. King when the protest turned into a Beale Street riot on March 28. Almella sang at strike rallies in a local choir. Her parents carried her to Mason Temple Church of God in Christ on April 3, that stormy night Dr. King surveyed his life from the mountaintop and preached his final sermon under the sound of pounding rain.

Lorraine Jackson, the character in my book, is not my life story.  She is not Almella’s childhood biography. However, Almella’s details from 1968 give the character bone and breath. My having known Patterson, Redditt and Starks gives Lorraine a child’s voice that is akin to my younger self. 

What wisdom will young readers gain from Lorraine’s story? Freedom is not free. With protest signs held high, Memphis sanitation workers forged ahead through rain, snow and a canopy of U.S. soldiers with rifles pointed at their temples. It cost something to apprehend freedom and it cost something to keep it.

Throughout the creative process, when forming right words drove me to quit, Memphis sanitation workers and Dr. King served as my models in fortitude.

I also received inspiration from a cloud of witnesses, when I remembered J.O. Patterson, Ed Redditt, and Henry Logan Starks. 

After 10 years researching and writing, Lorraine Jackson was born. My work is complete for now. I have seen the Promised Land.

Alice Faye Duncan and her books can be found at alicefayeduncan.com. "Memphis, Martin and the Mountaintop" will be published in August.