On Feb. 1, 1968, two sanitation workers in Memphis, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, rode out a driving rainstorm by climbing inside one of the Sanitation Division’s old “wiener barrel” trucks. The walls inside the packer were caked with putrefying garbage of all sorts—yard waste, dead chickens, moldy food.

Cole and Walker’s soiled, worn-out clothes smelled of garbage. The city did not provide them with gloves, uniforms or a place to shower. They did hard, heavy work, lifting garbage tubs and carrying them on their shoulders or heads or pushcarts to dump their contents into outmoded trucks.

As crew chief, Willie Crain drove the loaded garbage packer along Colonial Street, he heard the hydraulic ram go into action, apparently set off by an electrical malfunction. He pulled the truck over to the curb immediately but the ram was already jamming Cole and Walker back into the compactor.

The men were crushed like so much garbage.