♪♪♪ (man) Yo u know when you drive a truck at night for the city, you see different things going on.

I see a lot of stuff.

A lot of stuff going on downtown.

My name is Elmore Nickelberry.

And I've been working all my life.

(Elmore) I drive a truck for the sanitation department.

I've been doing it for fifty-four years.

My route is downtown.

I got two peoples working with me.

A young fella named Mr. Caldwell.

He's about 71.

And then I have a young lady named Alura.

Still working, yeah.

(Elmore) Hut one, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

(man) I have a great father.

A great father.

I wouldn't give him up for the world because he's taught me to survive.

He's taught me how to live, how to take care of family.

Nick!

Come on!

All right.

(Terence) He gets up early in the morning and gets all of his work out -- (Terence) that's how he taught us.

He gets in, he gets the job done.

(Terence) I don't recall any bad times, any hard times.

And at that time, with all the racism going on in the South, I don't remember any of it.

We never knew anything about it.

That's how my daddy shielded us, to make sure we were taken care of.

(Elmore) Most time, I hardly want to talk about it, cause I had went through some things.

And back there you don't hardly want to talk about things like that, but now I talks about it.

(man) This is a story in Memphis, Tennessee involving average working people.

They have not been recognized, I think, because of the type of work that they did.

(William) Elmore Nickelberry, really, he and others like him changed the course of history.

They fought and they fought and fought and fought -- until they got what they wanted.

(Terence) They opened doors for a lot of people around the world.

Not just in Memphis Tennessee, but around the world.

They taught us -- all these men, all these gentlemen from the sixties -- taught us to stand up, take our places, no matter what color you are.

Stand up and take your place.

♪♪♪ In 1968, we have (McKinney) a burgeoning civil rights movement, a movement that we are all familiar with.

We shall overcome.

(McKinney) The NAACP decides that they're going to use -- they're going to access -- America's court system to change the laws.

(male announcer) President Johnson addresses a joint session of Congress... That's a narrative that is about African-American elites.

(McKinney) The downside of that being the star of the show, if you will, is that it obscures all of this other really great stuff that's going on within African-American communities.

When you look under the surface he re in a place like Memphis, you also see a really vibrant working class community that has spent a long period of time trying to assert itself.

The perfect storm piece comes when, I think, you start factoring in labor and you start talking about (Wiggington) the ability of somebody to literally put food on the table.

And when you combine that with, "Wait a minute, why are we being exploited as workers?"

(McKinney) And so in the late 1960s, you have this convergence when the sanitation worker's strike comes along.

You get a group of men who simply say, "Enough."

Remember the time we had barrels like this?

(man) It was rough.

It was rough.

Water run all down your back.

Maggots would get all in your clothes.

I couldn't ride on a bus 'cause I smelled so bad.

(Elmore) They say, "“Look at that '‘ole garbage man back there.

"He should not be ridin' the bus.

He stinkin'."

So, lot of times, I didn't ride the bus.

A lot of times, I walked home.

Pick it up, put them on the truck like that.

The man in the truck would just take it off our heads.

(woman) It was...horrible.

You know, he would come home, you know, and he would have to dress outside because of the maggots, you know, and the smell.

That waste would come down on your head like that.

All down your back.

(man) There wasn't no other job!

Wasn't no other job.

Had to work from sun up to sundown.

Work two weeks, you wouldn't draw a hundred dollars.

(Alvin) That was the bad part -- for nothing.

Five dollars and forty cents for nine hours of work.

That's what we made a day.

Well, with one child, it wasn't so bad.

But after the kids started coming and the money -- the salary they was making -- it was pretty hard.

And your check wasn't but a hundred and something dollars -- now what could that do?

You pay rent.

You ain't got nothing left.

So then what you gonna do?

You got to scuffle to the next month.

Going behind them houses, bringing that garbage out from back there.

That's the toughest thing.

'Cause people be calling, sayin' we peepin' in the windows.

You walk by out there and see a lady or a man naked, what are you gonna do?

You walk on by '‘em.

You ain't gonna stand there and stare at '‘em.

I know I ain't.

What am I gonna look at a man for?

[laughs] Or whatever!

I'm gonna do my job.

♪♪♪ Two workers are on their route (McKinney) one day and it starts to rain.

They got into the back of the truck -- with the garbage -- and the truck malfunctioned.

And the thing just closed up and crushed them.

They was nice guys.

(William) And then it became clear that there were no policies, there's no benefits.

You pass a hat to take care of them or their family.

There's something fundamentally wrong with that arrangement.

(McKinney) The workers go out on strike.

They don't call their union representatives.

These are folks locally who say, "You know what?

We're done with this."

(William) It was an effort to be recognized as giving something to the city of Memphis of va7ó7ólue, yet being treated as less than a man in doing it.

(William) We really didn't have any glue that would hold these issues together th at could be a simple statement that everyone could identify with.

The statement "I am a Man" was really what was in the heart an d soul of each one of those who had signed on to the struggle.

I was a man.

They always called me "garbage man," but that sign say, "I'm A Man."

I was a man.

All they wanted to be was respected, and treated right, and not "boy," you know?

With respect.

To me, what that really means is, "Stand up and be somebody."

He wanted justice, equality.

To try to be a man and struggling, you know, for his family and his home.

That meant a lot to me that he wanted to be a man.

You grown, you a man.

You want to be treated like a man.

If you a woman, you grown, you want to be treated like a woman.

The fact that they were the lowest -- considered the lowest on the totem pole -- and nobody dreamed that they would ever rise up and take such a stand, you know.

I thought it was very appropriate.

(McKinney) Ma rtin Luther King comes to town an d is immediately confronted with a group of men who are again at their wits' end.

King is tragically assassinated on April 4th.

Part of the tragedy is that their struggle gets caught up in Dr. King's assassination.

(William) They established better wages, they established a rational promotion process...

This problem can be best solved by providing jobs...

They established a disciplinary process, they talked about what training they could receive for different types of jobs.

(William) I'm not sure that merging these stories does justice to these men.

This is my grandfather, Jesse Perry, walking right in front of the camera shot.

(man) I speak for our whole family, it makes us proud to know that he was part of the movement an d part of helping make change.

Paid all his bills, you know, just took care of his family.

And so on that, you know, I really have a lot of respect for him.

(man) Th is is a story of how hundreds of black men stood side by side, trusted each other, respected each other.

This is how women in those communities got -- you don't hear those stories.

You only hear the end of a shotgun.

(Caldwell) The real tragedy of 1968 was not that it occurred.

It's the fact that we ignore it.

This is where I was born at, right here.

I started working with my daddy picking cotton.

And cutting wood -- most of the time I was cutting wood.

He did a lot of things.

He did some of everything to make a living.

(Elmore) He lived until he was 107.

His brother was 106.

My grandmother was 106.

My uncle was 102.

I got a family that's way up in ages.

(Elmore) When I got out of the Army, I was looking around for different jobs.

And I couldn't get nothing.

So one week I went to the Sanitation Department.

I went there for about two weeks.

'Cause I had a family to feed.

And I love my family, see?

The head man at the Sanitation Department said, "Boy, you've been coming for two weeks."

I said, "Yes, sir."

He said, "Do you want a job?"

I told him, "Yes, sir, I want a job."

He said, "Come on in."

I went on in that morning.

He told me to come the next day, an d I got the job.

It was an important job to me.

It really was an important job to me.

I couldn't find no other job.

And I had to raise my family, so I had to take the job.

Most of the time, I went to work an d then I'd come back and work with my daddy.

You just can't raise a family off of one job.

You've got to have more than one job.

You always had to have something to fall back on.

You know, whatever he could do to make ends meet that was honest.

That's where we went to church at.

All of us.

My sisters and brothers.

We were raised up in this church.

(Peggy) He would always tell you, and he told the kids as they was growing up, "Whatever you do, "you do the right thing.

"Because if you if you do it the wrong way, and you get in trouble, and you go to jail, don't call me.

(Elmore) That's my daddy's name, Earl Nickelberry.

He used to always treat people like he wanted to be treated, and that's what most I think about him right now.

If they're black or white, just treat them like you want to be treated.

Respect people.

Always respect all people.

And that's what I do, respect all people.

Family -- stick to your family, son.

Ain't nothing like family.

Stick to them.

Whatever happens, stay with your family.

♪♪♪ (Terence) We used to spend the summer ov er at my grandmother's house.

And we used to see the sanitation workers coming down the street.

And we used to call them, "Garbage man," "They stink!"

"They this, they that."

And my dad found out I did that.

And boy!

(Terence) He sat me down and had a long talk with me about that.

I say, "“Yeah, I was a garbage man.

"That's the only way I could raise you for being a garbage man.

"” (Elmore) I say "'Cause I'm a garbage man.

"There ain't no garbage man, we're men.

"So I expect for you to call them men.

"Don't call them no garbage man, call them men."

(Elmore) We made a way for young people.

They could look back and see what the sanitation men did.

They could make their life 100 percent better.

(Elmore) I keep working because I feel better working.

(Terence) He feels good, he likes to work, so we let him work.

He'll go anywhere they need him to go.

He'll help anybody that needs help.

(Terence) He's got to get the job done.

Elmore, he's a Christian type of person.

(Willie) He like to joke with Alura a lot of the times.

So I don't intervene in their joking.

We laugh and talk till we get to the first stop.

And then he'll say, (Alura) "Let's hit it!

Let's roll!"

♪♪♪ And he says, "C'mon now, you gotta move faster than that!

You too young to be going that slow!"

It's a wonderful thing to work with him (Willie) because he's a jolly type of person.

Every once in a while he starts si nging or something.

It kind of keeps things going.

(Alura) When I look at him -- even though I'm hurting sometimes -- I force myself to keep on workin', keep on workin'.

I have a teenage daughter, and I would ask him for advice.

(Alura) He'd just say, "You gotta be firm."

"You gotta mean what you say, and go through with it."

He helps me out a lot.

A lot of people don't know he helps me out.

Give me advice when I ask for it -- and when I don't.

[laughs] (Caldwell) I want you to think about all those important character attributes -- courage, responsibility, leadership.

(Caldwell) We don't get to do a victory lap when it comes to civil rights victories, right?

Because part of it is you have to be humble, or you don't want to upset people who just gave something which is your right.

Which is the irony of it.

So a lot of times, we don't talk about what was actually won.

(man) Here's the scene -- it's raining, it's cold, it's February, it's miserable.

They didn't get a day off.

History has always seemed like something that has happened, and you don't really know anything about it, and you don't know people who are involved in it.

So we're going to try to hide from the rain for a second.

We're going to get in the back of our truck.

The truck malfunctioned and killed them.

When you think through what they went through, (Caldwell) it 's not very different th an what kids go through today, or families go through today to some extent.

Under different circumstances, obviously.

Sometimes, they under-estimate themselves.

(McKenna) Because general society, as a whole, under-estimates inner-city students all the time.

They don't think they have the capabilities, they don't think that they're able to really push themselves to the next level.

That is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Our word that we're working on today is "trust."

"Equality."

"Discipline."

"Patience."

"Courage."

(Caldwell) Those values are constant.

Those character attributes are constant.

There is an upside to having these attributes.

Because that's the other thing, we almost never in our history see the final product.

We hear "struggle," but we don't al ways see the final product.

It's important for young kids to know about history, (Elmore) about how we came up in the march with Martin Luther King.

We had kids that their parents marched right with 'em.

(man) It's tried to be forgotten.

People try to forget it, and they don't want to talk about it.

What's important is, once you have some new knowledge about the injustices that take place in the world is what do you do then?

That's the challenge.

And today we have a unique experience.

You have the experience of actually meeting someone who was part of history.

(Elmore) A little kid tell me the other day, little kid say, "Did you march with Martin Luther King?"

I say, "I sure did."

(Elmore) He say, "Could I please have your autograph?"

I said, "Sure."

"Thank you, sir."

Round of applause for Mr. Nickelberry.

That's respect.

[applause] (Perry) The people during that time, they had it figured out.

They just didn't have the resources to make that next step.

But it's just not about resources.

It was more about love.

It was more about taking care of your family.

They were fathers, they were members of the community.

But the community never realized the value of having people with that kind of strength within it.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

Trust -- that means that you trust him to do the right thing, right?

Long as he do the right thing, you trust him.

But now, if he go out and do something else different, you don't have no trust in him right?

(man) You know, Latinos have the same struggle.

They, too, would like to stand up and say, "Hey, I am a man, too.

And I came here to better myself.

I'm not doing any harm.

I just want to help.

I just want this to be fair."

I never would have thought that a black man would be president of the United States.

I never would have thought that.

I didn't have no dream of that.

If my daddy would have seen that, he'd have been surprised.

(man) Ki ng's dream has not be en realized with the election of President Obama.

Why?

Poverty, violence, injustice.

And so I think the challenge of our time is to define what those issues are, and to speak out, and to stand up, (Greenstein) and not to be afraid.

After the Elmore Nickelberrys, the rest of us have no excuse.

You've got to have courage.

It's something that's built into you.

If you ain't got courage, you can't be what you want to be.

You have to have courage to talk to me, you know that?

When you cry, that makes me feel bad.

But you've got to have courage.

We had to have courage to do what we had to do.

We had to march.

We had to fight for what we wanted.

That's why I'm here today to talk to you.

Have courage.

Be what you want to be.

Looking at her today, the way she's crying, I figure she's going to be a nice young lady.

You can overcome anything with courage.

I'm 77 years old and I have courage.

I never thought I'd be standing here talking to y'all.

Way I feel now, I feel like crying.

But y'all make me feel good.

I thank y'all for having me.

[applause] You think about what (Caldwell) "I am a man" really is saying.

It's a response to a question of somebody who is taking something away from you.

And at the very base of what they're taking from you is your manhood.

Remember this -- all you've got to do is remember this.

I seen an old man named Mr. Nickelberry -- he's a man.

And I'm a man, too.

I might be an old man, but I'm a good old man.

[laughing] (Caldwell) The real protest was around a reclamation of themselves, a reclamation of their manhood.

And a declaration that no matter wh at you do to me, I'm still who I say I am, not who you say I am.

(Terence) The sacrifices they made, the things they had to go through, I think they could be compensated better, or a better health package after retirement.

I know the city can do it.

But will they do it?

Who knows.

(Elmore) I would like to see my grandkids co me out, and they could read something about their granddaddy.

And I hope someday they will learn about how we stood up for rights.

(Alura) To me, a man is -- a real man takes care of his family.

He'll work.

He'll take care of himself, he'll take care of his wife, his kids.

And you won't have to be looking for him to do it.

Anytime you stand as a man, you're supposed to be a man.

You ain't supposed to be no boy.

If not me, who?

(Elmore) I'm a man.

You stand up for rights.

That's what a man means to me.

♪ Ain't gonna let no ♪ ♪ Earthly power ♪ ♪ Oppress my manhood ♪ ♪ Call me honey, daddy ♪ ♪ Yes sir, mister, understood ♪ ♪ Cause I'm a love making ♪ ♪ Baby making ♪ ♪ I'm a one woman man ♪ ♪ Ooh, strong as leather ♪ ♪ I've got it together ♪ ♪ God fearing man ♪ ♪♪♪ ♪ Happy Birthday to you ♪ Surprise!

[cheering and applause] ♪♪♪ I love this boy.

Good man.

Oh man, don't be kissing on me!

♪ Ain't gonna let no ♪ ♪ Earthly power ♪ ♪ Oppress my manhood ♪ ♪ Call me honey, daddy ♪ ♪ Yes sir or mister understood ♪ ♪ I'm a love making ♪ ♪ Baby making ♪ ♪ One woman man ♪ ♪ Stronger than leather ♪ ♪ I've got it together ♪ ♪ God fearing man ♪ ♪ Hey I'm a love making ♪ ♪ Baby making ♪ ♪ A one woman man ♪ ♪ I'm stronger than leather ♪ ♪ I've got it together ♪ ♪ I'm a God fearing man ♪