Baxter Leach

Baxter Leach was one of the original sanitation workers who participated in the Memphis sanitation strike and served as the public face of the surviving sanitation workers who included Cleophus Smith, Ozell Ueal, H.B. Crockett, Rev. Leslie R. Moore, and Elmore Nickelberry. Leach grew up in LeFlore County, Mississippi, outside of Greenwood, quit school at the age of 14, and eventually found work with the City of Memphis Public Works Department.
The sanitation trucks typically had crews with four or five members with the driver being the only white member of the crew. Only the white employees were allowed to shower before going home. There were accidents where sanitation employees were maimed. In the early 1960s, Leach joined the Local 1733 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees but did not notice any results from that effort. Early in 1968, 21 African-American sanitation workers were sent home with only two hours of show-up pay due to rain. On February 1, 1968, Robert Walker and Echol Cole seeking shelter from the rain were crushed to death in the back of a sanitation truck with a faulty switch leading to the Memphis sanitation strike. Leach was on the front lines of the 64-day strike that began on February 12, included 1300 members of the Local 1733, and ended with the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
In July 2017, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland announced that the city would offer $50,000 in tax-free grants to the 14 surviving 1968 sanitation strikers, including Baxter Leach.
In October 2017, Leach represented the sanitation strikers at the National Civil Rights Museum Freedom Awards.
In 2018, Baxter Leach along with the other surviving sanitation strikers was presented with the NAACP Vanguard Award.

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