Maynard Jackson's Grave: The Garbage Strike
The sanitation workers helped make him mayor. Four years on, they hung a banner about him at a Braves game.
Listen to this place’s story in Peplos.
How the story begins
“Maynard's Word is Garbage.” Striking city workers unrolled that banner during a nationally televised Braves game in 1977. Seven years earlier the man it named had been on their side. In 1970 Maynard Jackson was Atlanta's vice mayor. When Mayor Sam Massell fired striking sanitation workers, Jackson publicly backed them and called their pay “a disgrace before God.” In 1973, at 35, he was elected the city's first Black mayor, with their union's help.
The rest is in the app. Peplos plays the full story when you reach the place. You can also listen ahead of time.
Visiting
Oakland Cemetery, 374 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive SE. The grounds are open dawn to dusk year round. The visitor center and store are open 10 am to 5 pm daily, and have a map; the cemetery's website has a burial search that marks a grave on its map.
Sources
- A Disgrace Before God, Jason Schultz, Libcom
- Georgia State University Library: AFSCME Atlanta Local 1644 Protest
- Wikipedia: 1977 Atlanta sanitation strike
- Jacobin: When the Black Political Class Betrayed Black Workers
- New Georgia Encyclopedia: Maynard Jackson
- Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Monument for Mayor Jackson
- Historic Oakland Foundation: Visit and map
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