In Memoriam – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Jan. 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)

by Latoya Peterson

Washington Post – The Other Side of the Mountaintop

Near the end of his life, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. felt cornered and under siege. His opposition to the Vietnam War was widely criticized, even by friends. He was being pressured both to repudiate the black power movement and to embrace it. Some of his lieutenants were urging him to jettison his urgent new campaign to uplift the poor, believing that King had taken on too much and was compromising support for the civil rights struggle.

Today students learn of his powerful “dream” that children be judged not “by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Politicians and private citizens of all ideologies summon King’s soaring oratory as the inspiration that challenged the nation to better itself. But this beleaguered young man — he was only 39 when he died — was not just the icon celebrated at Martin Luther King Day programs and taught in U.S. schools.

His life, like those of other historical figures — Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt — has been simplified, scholars say, his anger blurred, his militancy rarely discussed, his disappointments and harsh critiques of government’s failures glossed over.

Forty years after King was gunned down by an assassin in Memphis, it is this sharper-edged figure who has come into focus again. To mark today’s anniversary, several scholarly reports have been released charting the nation’s uneven social and economic progress during the past 40 years. Some scholars and former King associates are using the occasion to zero in on the two issues — war and poverty — that were consuming him at the time of his death.

Washington Post – Two Black Americas

In a sense, then, the most striking measure of how far African Americans have come since 1968 isn’t the rise of Barack Obama. It’s the story of Stanley O’Neal.

That’s not to minimize the prospect that a nation midwifed by slavery could soon have its first black president. But O’Neal did something that would have been equally unimaginable 40 years ago. He rose to become chief executive of Merrill Lynch, one of Wall Street’s biggest firms; by all accounts, he was a taskmaster of a boss who cared less about whether subordinates liked him than he did about the bottom line. He placed big bets on mortgage-backed securities, generating record profits for the firm. When he got caught in the mortgage crisis several months ago and was forced to write off billions in losses, he resigned — and floated back to earth with the help of one of the loveliest golden parachutes Wall Street has seen.

Oh, and his grandfather was born a slave.

[Latoya's Note - The offerings from the New York Times are pathetic. This was all you could do for Dr. King? A backhanded editorial tribute, an article about a cabin and a link to a slide show about "a death?" Not even a photo on the front page? I cannot express how thoroughly disgusted I am.]

Wikipedia – The Assassination

King was booked in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel, owned by Walter Bailey, in Memphis. The Reverend Ralph Abernathy, King’s close friend and colleague who was present at the assassination, swore under oath to the HSCA that King and his entourage stayed at room 306 at the Lorraine Motel so often it was known as the ‘King-Abernathy suite.’[21] While King was standing on the motel’s 2nd floor balcony, James Earl Ray (is believed to have) shot him at 6:01 p.m. April 4, 1968. The bullet entered through his right cheek smashing his jaw and then traveling down his spinal cord before lodging in his shoulder.[22] According to biographer Taylor Branch, and also Jesse Jackson, who was present[23], King’s last words on the balcony were to musician Ben Branch (no relation to Taylor Branch) who was scheduled to perform that night at an event King was attending: “Ben, make sure you play Take My Hand, Precious Lord in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty.”[24] Abernathy was inside the motel room heard the shot and ran to the balcony to find King on the floor. Local Rev. Samuel “Billy” Kyles, whose house King was on his way to visit, remembers that upon seeing King go down he ran into a hotel room to call an ambulance. Nobody was on the switchboard, so Kyles ran back out and yelled to the police to get one on their radios. It was later revealed that the hotel switchboard operator, upon seeing King shot, had had a fatal heart attack and could not operate the phones.[25] King was pronounced dead at St. Joseph’s Hospital at 7:05 p.m. The assassination led to a nationwide wave of riots in more than 100 cities.[26]

Five days later, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national day of mourning for the lost civil rights leader. A crowd of 300,000 attended his funeral that same day. Vice-President Hubert Humphrey attended on behalf of Lyndon B. Johnson, who was holding a meeting on the Vietnam War at Camp David. (There were fears that Johnson’s presence might incite protests and perhaps violence.) At his widow’s request, King’s last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church was played at the funeral. It was a recording of his famous ‘Drum Major’ sermon, given on February 4, 1968. In that sermon King made a request that at his funeral no mention of his awards and honors be made, but that it be said that he tried to “feed the hungry”, “clothe the naked”, “be right on the [Vietnam] war question”, and “love and serve humanity”. Per King’s request, his good friend Mahalia Jackson sang his favorite hymn, “Take My hand, Precious Lord” at his funeral.

According to biographer Taylor Branch, King’s autopsy revealed that though he was only 39 years old, he had the heart of a 60-year-old man, evidencing the stress of 13 years in the civil rights movement.[27]

After the assassination, the city of Memphis quickly settled the strike on terms favorable to the sanitation workers.[28][29]

The Root – Honoring King is Not Enough

Too many of us would rather celebrate than follow Dr. King. Some of us have enshrined Dr. King the dreamer, but have ignored Dr. King the disturber of all unjust peace. Many celebrate King the orator, but ignore his words and warnings about the need for reordering the misguided values and priorities he believed to be the seeds of America’s downfall. Many remember King the vocal opponent of violence, but not King who called for massive nonviolent civil disobedience to challenge the stockpiling of weapons of death and the wars they fuel.

The Root – April 4, 1968: Chicago Burned

On April 4, 1968, however, things changed. The assassination made radicals of thousands of young blacks like me who envisioned themselves as engineers, lawyers, steel mill workers, secretaries, nurses, and doctors. Yes, the radicalization of black politics had begun years earlier. North Carolina NAACP leader Robert Williams, in the 1950s, had asserted the right of blacks to defend themselves with arms. And the rise of Malcolm X in the 1960s, and the founding of the Black Panther Party in 1966, powerfully influenced black urban youth.

But for many in my generation, it was the cold killing of the man of peace that accelerated and solidified the movement.

Worth a look: The Root’s feature MLK 40 Years Later: Still Searching for the Promised Land