Background
"His grandfather, Henry Loeb, founded Loeb"s Laundry." Loeb was born in 1920.
"His grandfather, Henry Loeb, founded Loeb"s Laundry." Loeb was born in 1920.
He attended Phillips Academy in Massachusetts and then Brown University in Rhode Island.
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. He then served on a patrol boat in World World War World War II 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.
lieutenant 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. The especially harsh conditions he imposed at the start of his 1968 term were a trigger for the Memphis
Loeb was mayor during what came to be known as the Memphis of 1968. This conflict, and racial violence that spread throughout the city in its wake, brought Martin Luther King, Junior. to visit Memphis in late March of that year, in order to assist AFSCME in their negotiations with Loeb and other city officials and work alongside other Civil Rights leaders in raising consciousness about the low pay and mistreatment suffered by the workers.
However, on April 4, King was assassinated.
In the nationwide rioting that followed April 4–5, Loeb installed a curfew. Those events helped force a temporary resolution of the strike on the part of the city.
Negotiations on April 16 brought an end to the strike and a promise of better wages. Further strikes had to be threatened later in 1968 to force Loeb and the City Council to honor its agreements.
Loeb himself eventually left Memphis and moved to Forrest City, Arkansas, some 50 miles westward where he was active in the Rotary Club and was instrumental in the early formation of the local Humane Society.
He suffered a stroke in 1988, and another one about a month before his death in September 1992.
After the war, he gained popularity with the white middle class through appeals to his military service and through opposition to communism.
About 1,300 African-American members of Local 1733 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) engaged in a 64-day strike for improved wages, working conditions, and union recognition.