The sight of thousands of Guard troops with bayonet rifles and tanks on Memphis streets in 1968 is still fresh for Joe Calhoun.

Calhoun marched with sanitation workers led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. when violence, destruction and a fatal shooting by police spurred a deployment to the city streets.

King was drawn to Memphis in 1968 to support some 1,300 predominantly Black sanitation workers who went on strike to protest inhumane treatment.

King arrived to lead a march in late March, which turned violent when police and protesters clashed on the iconic Beale Street, and an officer fatally shot a 16-year-old. The National Guard was quickly ordered into the city.

Trump announced last month that the National Guard would be deployed to combat crime in Memphis alongside authorities from a slew of federal agencies.

Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who is supportive of the effort, said the National Guard will “play a critical support role” for local law enforcement.

The Guard's exact role hasn't been precisely defined yet. Guard members won’t have tanks, according to the city. They won’t be armed unless local police request it and they won’t make arrests, Lee has said.

In Memphis, a majority Black epicenter for civil rights, some residents like Calhoun and Lewis have long memories of the Guard during unrest. A decade after King's assassination, Guard troops were in Memphis during a firefighters and police strike when parts of the city were set ablaze.

Calhoun, 75, remains an activist and recently marched against the current deployment. He had hoped he would never again see the National Guard in his city.

“I’ve got four grandchildren, so much of what I do is to help make a better world for them, so they don’t have to go through the same thing, but it’s taken a lot longer than I thought it would,” he said.

Calhoun said in 1968, the soldiers, some armed and others in armored vehicles, presented "a very imposing sight for young kids to see that one the way to school, to see that on the way to church or whatever. So, we do not want to see that at all.”

Calhoun said the role of the Tennessee National Guard has not been made very clear and it feels more like a display of federal overreach than actual progress.

"Their presence regardless of whether it's fifty or two hundred, regardless whether it is fifty or 200 is the same," said Calhoun. It's threatening to a community and it's overreach. The problem is still it's a show. It's the show that says 'We saved Memphis.' Memphis saved Memphis."

AP Video by Kristin M. Hall and Adrian Sainz