Martin was a local sandwich shop owner and one-time streetcar man in New Orleans. Some 1,100 streetcar workers went out of strike in New Orleans on this date in 1929, spurring the creation of the po’ boy sandwich by Bennie Martin. "Whenever we saw one of the striking men coming," Bennie later recalled, "one of us would say, ‘Here comes another poor boy.’" Martin and his wife fed any striker who showed up.