Going down Jericho Road

"Memphis in 1968 was ruled by a paternalistic "plantation mentality" embodied in its good-old-boy mayor, Henry Loeb. Wretched conditions, abusive white supervisors, poor education, and low wages locked most black workers into poverty. Then two sanitation workers, seeking shelter from one of the city's notorious torrential rains, were chewed up like refuse in the back of a faulty truck, igniting a months-long public-employee strike that would shake the nation.". "With novelistic drama and rich scholarly detail, Michael Honey brings to life the magnetic characters who clashed on the Memphis…