Henry Loeb

Henry Loeb III (December 9, 1920 – September 8, 1992) was an American politician of the Democratic party, who was mayor of Memphis, Tennessee for two separate terms in the 1960s, from 1960 through 1963, and 1968 through 1971. He gained national notoriety in his second term for his role in opposing the demands of striking sanitation workers in early 1968.

Loeb's grandparents were Jewish Germans who migrated from Germany to Memphis in the 1860s. His grandfather, Henry Loeb, founded Loeb's Laundry. Loeb III attended Phillips Academy and Brown University. He then served on a patrol boat in World War II. After the war, he gained popularity with the white middle class through appeals to his military service and through opposition to communism.

Loeb was Memphis's Public Works commissioner from 1956 to 1960. In 1959, he called for a "white unity" electoral ticket to oppose the increasingly organized black vote in Memphis. He was re-elected to a second term in November 1967. Loeb converted to Episcopalianism immediately after he started his second term as Mayor of Memphis on New Years Day, 1968.

Loeb was a conservative in politics; but he received a large part of his criticism, as well as local support, for the local police's harsh and often violent treatment of strikers and sympathizers, which included local ministers, schoolchildren, and families of the workers. It was only after the King assassination, and subsequent Federal pressure placed on the city by President Lyndon Johnson and the United States Department of Labor, that the city relented and recognized AFSCME.

Loeb supported segregation, declaring support for "separate but equal facilities" and describing court-ordered integration as "anarchy". He grew more antagonistic to civil rights and labor in his second term, refusing even during the 1967 election to make any concessions to black union workers. He won the election despite intense opposition from Memphis's black community. The especially harsh conditions he imposed at the start of his 1968 term were a trigger for the Memphis Sanitation Strike.

...
Wikipedia