Martin Luther King Day
Today the Martin Luther King Day holiday is being celebrated. April 4th, 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination and later that month I had the opportunity to visit Memphis and tour the Civil Rights Museum and view the preserved Lorraine Motel where Dr. King died. I thought it fitting to day to repost the entry in this community that was posted on April 4, 2018.
On Thursday, April 4, 1968, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee while standing on the second floor of the Lorraine Motel. Dr. King was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, and was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. CST. He had been a prominent leader in the Civil Rights Movement, famous for his advocacy of nonviolence in seeking to achieve his goals.
In 1968, Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (the SCLC) had organized a project known as the "Poor People's Campaign". Its focus was to address issues of economic justice. King traveled across various locations in the south to assemble what he described as "a multiracial army of the poor". The plan was for the group to march on Washington to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol until Congress created an "economic bill of rights" for poor Americans. In advance of the campaign, King had published his final book, entitled Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? In the book, Dr. King set out his views on how to address social issues and poverty, and called for a guaranteed basic income. The goal of the proposed march on Washington, D.C. was to demand economic aid to the poorest communities of the United States. It would urge government to invest in rebuilding America's cities. King said that he believed that Congress had shown "hostility to the poor" by spending "military funds with alacrity and generosity" while Congress doled out "poverty funds with miserliness." He also noted systematic flaws of "racism, poverty, militarism and materialism". King said that "reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced."
Prior to his assassination, King had received frequent death threats, and displayed a fearless and fatalistic attitude. He said that his death would not stop the struggle for equal rights. After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, King told his wife Coretta, "This is what is going to happen to me also. I keep telling you, this is a sick society."
In early 1968 King traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, in support of striking African American city sanitation workers. The workers had staged a walkout on February 11, 1968, to protest unequal wages and working conditions imposed by Mayor Henry Loeb. At the time, Memphis paid black workers significantly lower wages than whites. Several sanitation workers had been killed on the job due to unsafe working conditions. These were mostly African-American workers. There were other glaring disparities in working conditions. White workers were paid even if they stayed home during bad weather, while African-American workers were not.
On April 3, King returned to Memphis to address a gathering at the Mason Temple, which was the headquarters of the Church of God in Christ. His airline flight to Memphis was delayed by a bomb threat, but he arrived in time to make his speech, which had been dubbed the "I've Been to the Mountaintop" address. In the speech he referred to the bomb threat he had received, telling the crowd:
"And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threat, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!"
On Thursday, April 4, 1968, King was staying in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. The motel was owned by businessman Walter Bailey and named after Bailey's wife. Reverend Ralph Abernathy told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that he and King had stayed in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel so often that it was known as the "King-Abernathy Suite". King's last words were reported to have been something he said to musician Ben Branch, who was scheduled to perform that night at a planned event. King said, "Ben, make sure you play 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty." King then went out onto the balcony and was standing near his room when he was struck at 6:01 p.m. by a single .30-06 bullet fired from a Remington Model 760 rifle. The bullet entered through King's right cheek, breaking his jaw and several vertebrae as it traveled down his spinal cord. The bullet severed his jugular vein before lodging in his shoulder. The force of the shot ripped off King's necktie.
Shortly after the shot was fired, witnesses saw a man, later believed to be James Earl Ray, fleeing from a rooming house across the street from the Lorraine Motel. Ray had been renting a room there. Police later found a package dumped close to the site, which included a rifle and binoculars, both with Ray's fingerprints. Ray had purchased the rifle using a false name six days earlier. A worldwide manhunt followed and Ray was arrested at London's Heathrow Airport two months later.
Ralph Abernathy heard the shot from inside the motel room and ran to the balcony to find King on the deck, bleeding profusely. Andrew Young, a colleague from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference discovered that King still had a pulse. King was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where doctors opened his chest and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation. King never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. According to King's biographer Taylor Branch, the autopsy revealed that despite being aged just 39, King's heart was in the condition of a 60-year-old man, the result of the stresses of his 13 years in the Civil Rights Movement.
Dr. King's assassination was seen by some as a flaw in the strategy of nonviolence. But for many others, it reaffirmed the need to carry on Dr. King's King's work. Leaders within the SCLC confirmed they would carry on the Poor People's Campaign
That night, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was in Indiana campaigning for his bid to become the Democratic Party's nominee for President. He had learned about the shooting just before before boarding a plane to Indianapolis. Kennedy learned that King had died when he landed in Indianapolis. His campaign staff gave him speaking notes, but he refused them. The Indianapolis chief of police recommended that Kennedy not address the crowd because he could not provide protection, but Kennedy decided to go ahead with his speech. Standing on a flatbed truck, Kennedy was the first to tell the audience King had died. After many in the crowd expressed emotions of grief, Kennedy told them:
"For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man."
Kennedy never spoken publicly about his brother's death before. He quoted a poem by the Greek playwright Aeschylus: "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." He asked the audience members to pray for the King family and for the country. Later that night as violence broke out in other major cities across the country, none occurred in Indianapolis. Kennedy canceled all of his scheduled campaign appearances and had phone conversations with many leaders in the African-American community.
President Lyndon B. Johnson was in the Oval Office that evening, planning a meeting in Hawaii with Vietnam War military commanders. His press secretary George Christian informed him of King's death at 8:20 p.m. Johnson canceled the trip and directed Attorney General Ramsey Clark to investigate the assassination in Memphis. He made a personal call to King's wife, Coretta Scott King, and declared April 7 a national day of mourning, on which the U.S. flag would be flown at half-staff
Mrs. King had received an outpouring of condolences and a large number of telegrams, including one from Lee Harvey Oswald's mother, which she regarded as the one that touched her the most.
Colleagues of King in the Civil Rights Movement called for a nonviolent response to the assassination. James Farmer Jr. said: "Dr. King would be greatly distressed to find that his blood had triggered off bloodshed and disorder. I think instead the nation should be quiet; black and white, and we should be in a prayerful mood, which would be in keeping with his life." But more militant leaders called for a more aggressive response. Stokely Carmichael said, "White America killed Dr. King last night. She made it a whole lot easier for a whole lot of black people today. There no longer needs to be intellectual discussions, black people know that they have to get guns. White America will live to cry that she killed Dr. King last night. It would have been better if she had killed Rap Brown or Stokely Carmichael, but when she killed Dr. King, she lost." A nationwide wave of riots followed in more than 100 cities. After the assassination, the city of Memphis quickly settled the strike on favorable terms to the sanitation workers.
The next day, funeral rites for King were held in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia at Ebenezer Baptist Church. The service was nationally televised. A funeral procession transported King's body for 3.5 miles through the streets of Atlanta, followed by more than 100,000 mourners, from the church to Morehouse College. A second service was held there before the burial.
Governor George Wallace of Alabama, known as a segregationist, described the assassination as a "senseless, regrettable act". However Georgia Governor Lester Maddox called King "an enemy of our country" and threatened to "personally raise" the state capitol flag back from half-staff. California Governor Ronald Reagan described the assassination as "a great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order and people started choosing which laws they'd break".
Dr. King's funeral was held on April 9th. A crowd of 300,000 attended and Vice President Hubert Humphrey represented the President. Dr. King's last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church was played at the funeral.
Two months after assassinating King, James Earl Ray was captured at London's Heathrow Airport while trying to depart from the United Kingdom on a false Canadian passport in the name of Ramon George Sneyd. Ray was quickly extradited to Tennessee and charged with King's murder. Ray confessed to the assassination on March 10, 1969. On the advice of his attorney Percy Foreman, Ray took a guilty plea to avoid a conviction and potential death penalty. Ray was sentenced to a 99-year prison term. He recanted his confession three days later. Ray died in prison on April 23, 1998, at the age of 70 from kidney and liver failure.
Conspiracy theories abound as to Ray's guilt. In 2004, Jesse Jackson, who was with King when he was assassinated, said, "The fact is there were saboteurs to disrupt the march. Within our own organization, we found a very key person who was on the government payroll. So infiltration within, saboteurs from without and the press attacks. I will never believe that James Earl Ray had the motive, the money and the mobility to have done it himself. Our government was very involved in setting the stage for and I think the escape route for James Earl Ray." King's friend and colleague James Bevel put it more succinctly when he said: "There is no way a ten-cent white boy could develop a plan to kill a million-dollar black man."
Dr. King's legacy endures and had surpassed that of the ardent segregationists who hated him. Martin Luther King Day was proclaimed a national holiday in his honor. It was probably Dr. King himself who most prophetically summarized how he is remembered in the sermon he gave at the Ebenezer Baptist Church on February 4, 1968, two months before his death, when he said:
"I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King Jr. tried to love somebody.
"I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. And I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity.
"Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major. Say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind."