Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Only when it is dark enough can we see the stars,” meaning that hope can only exist when there is adversity. The quote was taken from King’s, “I 've Been to the Mountaintop,” speech. During the time this speech was given, inequality was the darkness and speakers such as Martin Luther were the stars. King and his words drove mistreated sanitation workers to go on strike, kept the civil rights movement going in the right direction, and pushed the fight for equality several steps forward. First of all, Martin Luther was the cause of a very important strike by the sanitation workers of Memphis. According to the article, “Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike (1968),” from Stanford University, “1,300 black men from the Memphis Department of Public Works went on strike,” due to a long pattern neglect and abuse of the department’s black employees. On 1 February 1968, two Memphis garbage collectors, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed to death by a malfunctioning truck. After the city refused to acknowledge the recent incident, the sanitation workers were angered. Demanding recognition of their union, better safety standards, and a decent wage, they went on strike. King arrived in Memphis on March 18th to address a crowd of approximately 25,000, which was the largest audience there was in the civil rights movement. During this meeting, King spoke on how the workers were demonstrating the power they had if they worked together and stood