Honor King: End Racism. PLACARD

Placard, 14 x 19.75 inches. Memphis, 1968. Large black letters printed on white posterboard stating ”HONOR KING: END RACISM!” Poster designed for a march on April 8, 1968, 4 days after Martin Luther King’s Jr.’s assassination. Printed by Allied Printing. Corners and top are trimmed, creasing throughout, staining and a pair of less than two inch tears on left side and another at top affecting the first "O" in "Honor".  Despite the obvious condition issues this piece displays as a worn relic of one of the most turbulent moments in recent American history and a defining moment of the civil rights movement. Rare.
An assassin took Dr. King's life on April 4, 1968, while he was in Memphis to support a strike of 1,300 black sanitation workers - the working poor of their day - to demand the right to have a union. In an atmosphere of extreme tension, Mrs. King and three of her children led some 20,000 marchers through the streets of Memphis on April 8, holding signs that read, "Honor King: End Racism," "Union Justice Now," and the placard from earlier in the week, that stated simply "I Am A Man."  National Guardsmen lined the streets, perched on M-48 tanks, bayonets mounted, as helicopters circled overhead. She led another 150,000 in a funeral procession through the streets of Atlanta the next day. (12789)

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Culture, Ethnicity & Gender

Broadside

Ephemera

Law, Politics & Social Sciences

History & Historiography

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