Remembering Cornellia Crenshaw: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement in Memphis
A heroine of the Civil Rights Movement, Cornelia Crenshaw was a leading figure in Memphis’s early racial justice initiatives, a proponent of worker’s rights, and a pioneer of the Energy Justice movement. Born in Millington, Tennessee in March 1916, Cornelia Crenshaw was an academically motivated student. After graduating from Booker T. Washington High School, Crenshaw went on to attend Lemoyne-Owen College, Memphis’s only historically Black college. Crenshaw was employed by the Memphis Housing Authority for approximately 27 years but was fired in 1964 for vocalizing her positions on unionism, economic equity, and labor rights. The termination would transition Crenshaw into a life dedicated to social activism and political advocacy that earned her the title, “The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement in Memphis.”
Crenshaw was appointed to the strategic committee for the historic Memphis Sanitation Workers’ strike in 1968. As an instrumental influencer and organizer in the campaign, she would maintain an active role in the coordination of the protest and was a fixture at City Council meetings. As African American sanitation workers assembled a strike protesting the city’s racial disparities and refusal of union recognition, she would organize the community efforts that supported the workers and their families while they were without income. Most notably, it was Crenshaw that would adapt the Robert Worsham poem I AM A MAN, to the infamous rallying cry for the strike as the movement’s defining symbol, representing the demand for recognition of their dignity and humanity.
Cornelia Crenshaw passed away on February 19, 1994. In her honor, the Vance Avenue Library has renamed the Cornelia Crenshaw Library in 1997, where it stands as a “sanctuary” for that community and personification of the strike’s continued legacy.