Elmore Nickleberry, a longtime Memphis sanitation worker who participated in the pivotal 1968 strike that brought the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to the city where the civil rights leader was killed, has died at age 92.
Nickleberry died on Dec. 30 in Memphis, according to an obituary by R.S. Lewis and Sons Funeral Home, which handled his services. A cause of death was not disclosed.
Nickleberry was one of about 1,300 Black sanitation workers who formed a union and went on strike after two colleagues, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed by a faulty garbage truck compactor as they sought shelter from a rainstorm in the back of the truck on Feb. 1, 1968. Many struggled to pay bills and feed their families as they held out for better pay, working conditions and benefits.
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