White-haired veterans of the sanitation workers' strike that brought the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis in 1968 marked the 40th anniversary Friday of his assassination by marching to the motel where he was cut down by a sniper's bullet. "Dr. King was like Moses," said Leslie Moore, 61, who was a sanitation worker in 1968 and is still on the job more than a generation later. "God gave Moses the assignment to lead the children of Israel across the Red Sea. He sent Dr. King here to lead us to a better way." The morning rally ? which included a dozen or so of the original strikers, along with hundreds of other people, mostly members of AFSCME, the public employees union ? was one of two marches to the Lorraine Motel, once a blacks-only establishment in segregated Memphis, now a civil rights museum.
See "Civil rights leaders, sanitation workers mark 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's slaying", Woody Baird, Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 3, 2008