Whittier A. Sengstacke Jr. was proud of his heritage

Whittier Alexander Sengstacke Jr.

During the turbulent 1960s, Whittier Alexander Sengstacke Jr. wrote cutting-edge news stories for the Memphis Tri-State Defender. If the surname sounds familiar, it’s because the name speaks volumes. 

Sengstacke was the eldest son of the late venerable newspaper publisher Whittier Sengstacke Sr., and the nephew of the late publishing magnate John H. Sengstacke, who founded the Defender in 1951. 

Sengstacke had been ill for a while and died the morning of Feb. 20 at Midtown Center for Health and Rehabilitation. He was 76.

In the late 1960s and early ‘70s, the respected journalist held the title of editor-in-chief at the Defender. He reported from the trenches and cobbled together breaking news stories from a Black perspective, which the mainstream press had largely ignored.

He was an eyewitness in the struggle for freedom and justice. For Black journalists during that era, fear no doubt was a constant reminder of the dangers that confronted them while they were trying to shed light on the age-old problem of systemic racism. Whatever confronted Sengstacke, he kept reporting the news. 

His career highlights included covering hard news – police brutality, crime, politics – and other noteworthy news stories. He continued to write and performed other duties as well for the Defender into the late 1990s. 

“He was a great guy, very knowledgeable of the newspaper business and didn’t mind sharing his knowledge,” said Marzie G. Thomas, publisher and editor of the Defender in the early 2000s.

“He had been in the business all of his life,” she said. “We loved Whit. He was a wonderful person. He always was so supportive of me.”

He also was supportive of Thomas’ predecessor, Audrey Parker McGhee, the Defender’s publisher and editor from the late 1980s until she retired in the early 2000s. 

“He was well-grounded as a member of the Black Press,” she said, “not only because his father was head of the Defender, but because of the Sengstacke name. He always talked about his heritage.”

He was very courageous too, McGhee added. 

Born in Chicago, Ill., Sengstacke received dual degrees in speech and journalism from Tennessee State University and applied his skills to the family business of newspaper publishing.

He was just as steeped in writing plays and performing on the stage as he was in journalism. He first thrived in his native Chicago before bringing his skillset to Memphis, where he settled down as a journalist for the Defender. 

Ethel Sengstacke, a former TV camera operator, took note of her big brother’s work ethics and varied accomplishments in journalism, including his work in the theatre when she was much younger. 

“He was always into theatrics,” she said. “He used to have a puppet show at the public library. We put on shows for the neighborhood kids. One time he built a stage and I fell off it.”

The injury still reminds Ethel Sengstacke of that harrowing experience. Other experiences were typical between a brother and his younger sister. “He was a big brother who always took me to the movies,” she said, “and he would give me advice.”

Pat Mitchell Worley remembers her uncle’s creative side. “He used to do art projects with me,” she said, “like papier-mâché, acting projects, and storytelling. He was the first to push the idea of storytelling.” 

A memorial service for Whittier Alexander Sengstacke Jr. will be held in March. A date has not been determined. Serenity Funeral Home at 1638 Sycamore View Rd. in Memphis has charge.

   

The Invaders: Caught up in the Throes of the Sanitation Strike

Invaders Calvin Taylor (left), Charles Cabbage and Coby Smith try
to restore peace on the campus of LeMoyne Owen College in this '60s
era photo (Courtesy photo)

Editor’s Note: This is the final installment of a two-part series about John Burl Smith and the Invaders.

 

By Wiley Henry

 

MEMPHIS, TN – John Burl Smith, Charles Cabbage, Coby Smith and others identifying themselves as the Invaders were embroiled in a conflict with local Black leaders working to end the Memphis sanitation strike in 1968.

The strike was called after sanitation workers Echol Cole and Robert Walker were crushed to death in the back of a garbage compactor Feb. 1, 1968. They were seeking shelter from that day’s downpour when the compactor malfunctioned. 

“On inclement days, they would let the white workers go back to the locker room and send the Black workers home without pay,” Smith said. “Black workers tried to figure out what they could do to stay on the clock.”

On Feb. 12, 1968, 1,300 sanitation workers refused to show up for work at the Memphis Department of Public Works. They were demanding better working conditions, better pay, and union dues check-off. 

Henry Loeb, the cantankerous mayor of Memphis who governed with a hardened heart, refused to recognize the strike and the union that represented the sanitation workers – Local 1733 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). 

A number of strategy meetings was convened. “I started going down to the meetings,” said Smith, who was fully engaged in the fight to restore the dignity of the Black sanitation workers and improve their condition. 

After speaking with them, Smith said they were unhappy with the contingent of local leaders negotiating with Loeb to end the strike. Their jobs were on the line; they were urged to go back to work. 

Smith said he encouraged the strikers to stay the course. “I told them that if you go back, you’d be right back in the same place. If you go back to work, Loeb can do to you what he wants to do.”

Another meeting was convened at the Rubber Workers Union Hall in North Memphis. This was a secret meeting, he said. “[Some] of the workers came by my apartment, which served as the headquarters for the Black Organizing Project (to uplift the poor) and the Invaders. They told us what they had up.”

They decided to crash the meeting. “[But] they wouldn’t let us in,” said Smith, who was told by someone at the scene to go to the side door of the building if they wanted to get into the meeting. 

After entering the building, Smith said Jerry Wurf, a U.S. labor leader and AFSCME’s president, was up speaking. He said Wurf was explaining to the assembly that Loeb had agreed with him to give the workers the union dues check-off.

“When I heard Jerry Wurf talking about them getting the dues check-off, I started shouting him down,” said Smith, making the point that the union had gotten what it wanted, “but the workers hadn’t gotten anything.”

His outburst forced security to eject him from the meeting.

The strike was nearing a crescendo and prompted the Rev. James Lawson, chairman of the strike committee and co-founder of COME (Community on the Move for Equality), to extend an invitation to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to come to Memphis and speak.

On March 18, 1968, Dr. King, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, made his way to Memphis and spoke at Mason Temple Church of God in Christ in support of the sanitation strike. The throng of sanitation workers was convinced of Dr. King’s commitment, Smith noted.

“They (strike leaders) felt that by bringing Dr. King to Memphis, he would give them an image that was larger than the Invaders,” he said. “They thought Dr. King was going to come to town and do what they were doing. But he did the opposite.”

The Invaders were active participants in the strike, but Smith believed they were being marginalized by the strike committee and the local civil rights leaders who did not see the benefit of working with the militant group.

A meeting was held at Parkway Gardens Presbyterian Church during the month of March. The pastor was the Rev. Ezekiel Bell, a fireball preacher, civil rights activist, and founding president of the Memphis Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

“When Ezekiel Bell started talking about the city burning, I made a newsletter and put a diagram on the back of it on how to make a Molotov cocktail,” said Smith, noting to his army training. “While they were inside talking, we were outside passing out the newsletter with the Molotov cocktail in it.”

After that move, he said no one wanted to have anything to do with the Invaders. But that didn’t stop them. The march was set for March 28, 1968. Determined to make an impact, his group set out to recruit five-to-10,000 young marchers.

“We got teams of people together to go down in Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi,” he said. “[Teams] to go to colleges and high schools to recruit students to come to the march.”

Their efforts paid off. A groundswell occupied downtown Memphis and marched from Clayborne Temple to Beale Street to Main Street, where Memphis police, he said, were waiting for them. Dr. King was ushered to the front of the march before all hell broke loose. 

Smith said he witnessed a scuffle between a police officer and a young Black man. “He (police) tried to hit the guy and hit a window. It sounded like an explosion. At that moment, police waded into the crowd [with mace and Billy clubs] and started hitting people.”

A riot commenced and more windows were shattered, forcing frantic marchers to run for their lives. Looters took advantage of the melee and left behind damaged property. “The Invaders were blamed for it,” he said.

Dr. King knew what happened, Smith said. “He gives Calvin Taylor (a young copy editor identified as an Invader) the message that he wants to meet with us.”

On April 4, 1968, the Invaders met with Dr. King. Since then, they’ve been trying to prove their innocence – that they were not the culprits that started the riot and that they were not trying to destroy Dr. King’s non-violent reputation.

Another Perspective on Dr. King and the Invaders

John Burl Smith has been fighting for the rights of African Americans
in the United States since the 1960s. He has written a book about 400
years of African-American resistance and met with Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. hours before his assassination. (Courtesy photo)

Editor’s Note: The Invaders, a militant group from Memphis, dared to make a difference during the tumultuous Civil Rights Movement. They’re now an integral part of history. This is the first installment of a two-part series.

 

By Wiley Henry

 

There have been countless stories written about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from various perspectives that differ in scope from one author to another. But could the truth about the iconic civil rights leader be mired down in inaccuracies?

John Burl Smith has a rare perspective on Dr. King’s final hours that he believes, unequivocally, to be the truth. He was there in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968, when he and Charles Cabbage met for two hours with the civil rights leader. 

Both Smith and Cabbage – co-founders of the Invaders, a 1960s militant group in Memphis drawn to the Black Power movement – worked out an agreement with Dr. King after he asked the Invaders to serve as marshals at the next march since the one on March 28, 1968 ended in a riot. 

Fifteen Invaders, Smith said, occupied rooms 315 and 316 at the motel in advance of their 1 p.m. meeting with Dr. King, who met with the group before meeting privately with Smith and Cabbage.

Smith said Dr. King shared his innermost thoughts with them about the Civil Rights Movement and his plan for the Poor People’s Campaign. Much of their conversation has been stored in his memory bank and now included in his upcoming book, “The 400th: From Slavery to Hip Hop.”  

He said the Invaders left the motel at 5:30 p.m. Dr. King was fatally shot by an assassin at 6:01 p.m. Smith has since told his story about the Invaders, their role in the Memphis sanitation strike, and the agreement with Dr. King that never came to past. 

But how did the Invaders become infamous and find themselves at a pivotal moment in the nation’s history when the Civil Rights Movement was teetering on the edge of uncertainty? 

“The Invaders, as a group, didn’t start that way,” said Smith, who credits Cabbage, a Morehouse College political science graduate, for introducing him to the concept of Black Power.

During that turbulent era, Dr. King was promoting nonviolence and civil disobedience, while Stokely Carmichael was espousing Black Power. “Nobody knew what that meant,” Smith said. “So, when Charles came home in 1967, he really brought Black Power to Memphis.”

Smith, an Air Force veteran, had gone to Vietnam. He was discharged in 1966. But Memphis had not changed while he was away. In fact, racist attitudes still prevailed, and anger welled up in him.

At the corner of Parkway and Third sat a full-service gas station. Smith pulled up in a 1962 Volkswagen. The station owner, a white male, “comes out, fills the tank, and tells me I didn’t have a gas cap. I knew I had one.” 

Smith said the man threatened to shoot him. “I’m a disabled veteran who just came from Vietnam,” he explained. When the police arrived, “they talked to the white guy. So, I ended up going to jail.”

Meanwhile, Cabbage and Coby Smith, who was one of two Black students to enroll at Rhodes College, developed a friendship in Atlanta. John Smith was given an introduction. Soon, the young radical scholars/intellectuals started talking about the political climate and the plight of African Americans.

“We realized we really needed to do some organizing,” said Smith, now a willing student of the Black Power movement. 

That year, in 1967, Archie Walter “A.W.” Willis Jr. – the first African American elected to the Tennessee General Assembly since the 1880s – was on the ballot in the crowded race for Memphis mayor.

Russell B. Sugarmon, an attorney, civil rights activist, political strategist, and a General Sessions judge later in his career, was Willis’ campaign manager. “So he recruits us to become a part of his (Willis) campaign,” Smith said.

Smith was learning the political system. A brainstorming session with the group soon followed, and the Black Organizing Project was born. At that time, Smith was working at the Memphis Defense Depot.

He lost that job and another one at Map South, he said, thanks to U.S. Rep. Dan Kuykendall, who represented the 8th and 9th congressional districts. “He got us fired from Map South,” Smith said, “because Russell Sugarmon got us working at Map South as community aides.”

Smith matriculated at Owen College before the merger with LeMoyne. Higher education was a worthy pursuit, but activism had become his way of life. To strengthen the movement, he turned to the youth. 

“We wanted to go out,” he said, “and get the youth involved in Black Power.”

They recruited the youth from high schools in Memphis and outside the district. “My apartment was sitting right in the back door of Carver (High School),” he said. “My back door faced Carver.”

Richard B. Thompson Sr. was Carver’s principal. Since the Board of Education had banned the wearing of afros and Afrocentric paraphernalia, “he was kicking kids out of school for that,” Smith said.

He said the students ended up at his apartment instead. One of them was a talented artist. “He had decorated a jacket and had written ‘Invaders’ on the back. I liked that. So I put the word Invaders on my old Army jacket.”

Meanwhile, the Memphis sanitation strike was simmering and caught Smith’s attention. He gave it his undivided attention from this point forward and drew the ire of local leaders and those from the strike committee who were running the show.

NEXT: The Invaders: Caught up in the Throes of the Sanitation Strike