San Juan Island Library and Friday Harbor Laboratories Sponsor Author 

San Juan Island Library and the UW Friday Harbor Laboratories are sponsoring an evening with author Dr. Michael K. Honey on Monday, September 10, 2007, 7:00 pm, at the Commons at Friday Harbor Laboratories.

Dr. Honey, a professor at the UW Tacoma campus, will discuss his latest book, "Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign," offering a vivid chronicle of the events leading up to the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers’ strike and its aftermath.

In a review of the book in the Washington Post, reviewer Ron Suskind, author of "The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11" wrote:

In "Going Down Jericho Road," Michael K. Honey painstakingly recreates the explosive situation [Martin Luther] King stepped into. On Feb. 12, 1968, Memphis's 1,300 sanitation workers, almost all of them African American, went on strike. They didn't ask for much: recognition of their union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; an agreement that the city would withhold union dues from workers' paychecks; a small pay raise; and improved safety standards. But for men who had always lived under the crushing weight of white supremacy, even such simple demands represented an exhilarating assertion of human rights.

There is an important connection to the author, his book and the San Juan Islands:  Michael Honey wrote much of the book while at the Helen R. Whiteley Center, a scholarly retreat at Friday Harbor Laboratories.

Dr. Michael K. Honey teaches African-American, Ethnic and Labor Studies and American History at the University of Washington, Tacoma where he holds the Fred T. and Dorothy G. Haley Endowed Professorship in the Humanities. He is a recognized civil rights history scholar and the author of several books on the topic.

This event is part of the library’s adult programming series “Live and Learn” and is free and open to the public.  Refreshments will be served.

For more information contact Laura Tretter at the San Juan Island Library at 360-378-2798 or Bob Schwartzberg at Friday Harbor Labs at 360-378-2165 ext. 2