MIFA History II continued The Sanitation Strike In February, 1968, Memphis' sanitation workers went on strike, demanding better wages and better working conditions as well as the right to unionize. Although the Ministers Association attempted to mediate, the strike continued with increasing hostility and bitterness. It soon became a racial confrontation instead of the labor/management problem with which it had begun. The strike ended two months later only after the tragic assassination (April 4) of the national civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had come to Memphis to support the sanitation workers' cause. The stark aftermath of these events was the total polarization of Black and White. The crisis accentuated the lack of any venue to address this problem. There was an obvious lack of communication, cooperation, organization or structure through which to channel either an immediate response or a long-range plan for change. The day after the assassination, the Ministers Association, still mostly White, and the (Black) Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance marched together from St. Mary's Cathedral to City Hall to demand that the Mayor settle the strike. Dean Dimmick led the assembled group carrying the Cathedral's processional cross. Rabbi Wax marched beside the prominent Black minister Henry Starks. This crisis-and the active role played by the clergy-had a dual effect. This demonstration by many of those involved in the founding of MIFA increased distrust of its activities and made the new agency's beginnings both tenuous and rocky. Conversely MIFA's organizers were inspired to intensify their efforts. Annabelle Whittemore, later the first Chair of MIFA's Board of Directors, believes, “If we had tried to get MIFA started at any other time, we would have failed. The sanitation strike convinced the churches that we really did have problems in this city and that no single church could solve them alone. There was a role for the whole religious community to play.” The second Chair of MIFA's Board, Preston McDaniel, adds, “MIFA was not begun because of the garbage strike; its (development) accelerated because of it.” The second “Consultation on Mission” was postponed until the fall. The steering committee was enlarged to included the Reverends Maynard Fountain, H.H. Hooper, Ray Riddle and Richard Wells; Assistant to the Mayor of Memphis Jerrold Moore; Frank Campbell, J.W. Clarke, J.T. Fisher, Dr. John K. Johnson, Ted Johnson, Frances Loring, O.C. Shuttles, Southwestern College's Dr. Carl Walters, Waddy West and Annabelle Whittemore. Next: MIFA Founded in September, 1968