Forty years. It's been forty years since Martin Luther King was killed at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. April 4, 1968. I was in 7th grade at Howard Middle School, Alexandria, VA. Going to school with many of the kids who would play on the famed TC Williams Titans football team immortalized in the movie "Remember the Titans."
The day was a whirlwind in Alexandria. With a sizable black population and right next to Washington DC, there was fear of widescale rioting--which never materialized in Alexandria, anyway. DC was another story. What I remember most were white kids I knew, 12 year olds, grabbing bats and saying they were going to 'get some N.....s'. I always felt ashamed I didn't try to stop them. When the day was over, we were all overcome by a collective shock as we watched the tanks rolling through the streets of Washington on TV.
There was also Robert Kennedy's brief speech in Indiana announcing King's death. Listen to it. It will make you think twice about Hillary's claim that words don't matter.
1968 was also an election year. And if you think that the Democratic Primary of 2008 is rough, all I can say is "Please". Starting with King's death, moving on to the bloody Chicago riots at the Democratic convention, followed by more riots in Miami at the GOP convention and then Bobby Kennedy's assasination in August, 1968 made 2008 look like like high tea at Harrods.
There are parallels, however. With Kennedy gone, Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey hammered each other just enough to to give us the glorious Presidency of Richard Nixon. Folks often forget that the '68 race was one of the closest in Presidential election history. Dems of a certain age shudder at this scenario as they look at the Obama/Hillary fisticuffs.
So the good news as we remember this awful day? Well, John McCain publicly admitted he was wrong to vote against a MLK Day in Arizona. Hillary Clinton recalled meeting Dr. King as a 14 year old girl from an all white world. And, of course, Barack Obama provides the most compelling evidence that Dr. King's dream, that we be judged "not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character" is close to becoming a reality. Here are his remarks yesterday.
It's also beautiful symmetry that on a day 40 years after MLK had led a march of sanitation workers and then was killed, Barack Obama reported he had raised...$40 million in the month of...March.
We'll get back to the campaign talk...tomorrow.
What do you remember about that day? Click on 'comments', by pass the Google sign-up and hit the nickname or anonymous button.
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1 comment:
I was 6 years old living in Nashville Tn when King was assassinated. It's one of my earliest memeories. We did have a period of unrest requiring the presence of National Guard. My mom did lots of volunteer work and was driving a car load of blind black children home from school when the news broke. The children guided her through the roughest parts of the city telling her what streets to avoid and made it safely home. I'm so proud of my mom.
It's ironic that politicians today enthusiastically embrace King when several of his speeches actually resemble those of Reverend Wright.
RIP Martin.....I'm sorry you're not here to witness the rise of Obama. We still have a ways to go but good progress we have made. We need to keep on working, talking and not bury our heads in the sand.
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