#1.Henry Loeb
Who?
Mayor of Memphis, Tennessee, 1968 - 1971. Unemployed jackass, 1971-?
Why He Was A douche:
If there's one thing a city thrives on, it's a rich subculture of homosexual artists who will paint murals on all the downtown buildings. Next in line is the services it provides. And no service is more vital in the sweltering, stanky South than getting the trash off the streets, so you'd think the mayor would want to keep the sanitation workers happy at all costs.
Does this look like the type of man you'd want to cross?
Unfortunately things worked a little different in the late 60s, and things worked
way different in Memphis. Especially when the mayor was the white, wealthy Henry Loeb, and the sanitation workers were black.
So, it's one thing to do job that still paid minimum wage after 15 years, and involves picking up trash in a city that didn't require any kind of bags or cans at all, so people could just fling the shit onto the curb as part of their "the negroes will get it" system.
A system supported by many [dirty racists].
But it's another thing to do the job for a boss like Loeb, who layered on one arbitrary rule after another, purely out of doucheness. Workers weren't allowed to stand in the shade of a tree. They got 15 minutes for lunch. But, worst of all, were the trucks; the old, broken-down machines were ridiculously unsafe, as employees told Loeb again and again.
Finally, one of those trucks malfunctioned
and crushed two workers to death, pulverizing them into the garbage.
The employees went on strike, and the city council immediately decided that what they had been doing was pretty crappy even by the standards of the late 60s South. They voted to give in to the union's demands, and everyone lived happily ever-
-Oh, wait, no. We forgot about Loeb. Loeb rejected the council's decision, then sent in police to fire mace and tear gas at demonstrators.
At this point the sanitation strike became a national civil rights cause, bringing a certain Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to town, along with tens of thousands of protesters. Loeb declared Martial Law, and brought in 4,000 National Guardsmen.
King addressed the sanitation workers on April 3rd, 1968. That, in fact, is the reason he was still in Memphis the next day, on April 4th, 1968. The day he was assassinated.
Yes, the world is basically one big orchestra of douches, playing in concert.
Needless to say, in the wake of Dr. King's assassination, Loeb and the city finally gave in to the striker's demands. Then they reneged on the deal, and the workers had to threaten a second strike before Loeb was finally forced to give in, his well of douche having finally run dry.
(bi tasarrof)