Echol Cole and Robert Walker - sparking the Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike

Echol Cole and Robert Walker were sanitation workers who died accidentally in Memphis, Tennessee at the corner of Colonial Rd. and Verne Rd. on February 1, 1968. While working that day, the pair sought refuge from a rainstorm in the compactor area of their garbage truck. The two African American men were prevented from seeking shelter from the rain inside a building due to segregation laws. They were killed when the compactor accidentally activated. Their deaths were a precursor to the Memphis sanitation strike, during which the prominent civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.