On this day each year, we especially remember Martin Luther King Jr.’s impact on our nation and world. This year, we highlight an excerpt of King’s memorable All Labor Has Dignity speech given to Black sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee on March 18, 1968—two weeks before his assassination.

“You are doing many things here in this struggle. You are demanding that this city will respect the dignity of labor. So often we overlook the work and the significance of those who are not in professional jobs, of those who are not in the so-called big jobs. But let me say to you tonight, that whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity, and it has worth. One day our society must come to see this. One day our society will come to respect the sanitation worker if it is to survive, for the person who picks up our garbage, in the final analysis, is as significant as the physician, for if he doesn’t do his job, diseases are rampant. All labor has dignity.

“But you are doing another thing. You are reminding, not only Memphis, but you are reminding the nation that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages. … Do you know that most of the poor people in our country are working every day? And they are making wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the mainstream of the economic life of our nation. These are facts which must be seen, and it is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis and a full-time job getting part-time income. You are here tonight to demand that Memphis will do something about the conditions that our brothers face as they work day in and day out for the well-being of the total community. You are here to demand that Memphis will see the poor.”

King’s fervor for justice in uplifting the inherent equity and dignity of these workers was pertinent to the resolution of the strike.

We pray as the fight for dignity and equity continues today, that our God would bring renewal to people of all nations, restoration and value to all work and would unite us all in Jesus Christ.

The above excerpt was originally posted here. Visit Stanford University’s Martin Luther King Research & Education Institute to learn more about the history of the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ Strike.