Special News Feature
The date is one of the darkest in American history. The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. generated a cosmic ripple across the globe.
When he was struck down on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN, Dr. King became a martyr of hope and light for his many followers. Like India’s Mahatma Gandhi years before him, King settled on a nonviolent platform, appealing to the nature of the oppressor, calculating that love would eventually wear down the consciousness of the oppressive and racist state that was America.
Many said on that day that America would never be the same, especially Black America. However, Dr. King always dreamed it would become a much better place for equal rights and social justice. And today, some will argue that where things are progressively better, work still needs to be done.
With this writing, we embrace the anniversary of this infamous day as an additional opportunity to discuss the man’s impactful legacy of life, as well as the indescribable loss and void left by his death.
Below, you’ll read responses from some notable Twin Cities’ civil rights, education, and social justice advocates who reflect on this painful event. We asked three questions: Where were you when you heard the news of Dr. King’s assassination? How did it impact you? And what was taken from the Black community on that day?
Dr. Mahmoud El-Kati: Lecturer, author, and commentator on the African American experience. El-Kati is a professor emeritus of history at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.
I was at The Way, a community center that no longer exists. It was the hotbed of Black activism and the starting place of the Black Power Movement in the Twin Cities, on Plymouth Avenue, right across the street from the Urban League. And the impact on me was like everyone else.
But I won’t say I was like, “Oh my God, this couldn’t happen” because of Dr. King’s stance. We knew, and he knew, and he predicted his death as he knew his life was in danger. So I couldn’t act like I didn’t expect something like this to happen. But I remember when a guy named Clarence opened the door to the classroom and said almost quietly and eerily, “Dr. King has been shot.”
He didn’t shout and wasn’t nervous. It impacted us all very quietly, but we were all obviously disturbed. It was almost like something you expected eventually. I dismissed the class, and we went to the radio and television to listen to the news.
About an hour later, Clarence shot the first white man he saw. Clarence was a nice guy who talked a lot. He served time for his actions at Stillwater but was released after completing his sentence.
On that day, we lost a great human being with a great spirit. He was also a great teacher, with a view of nonviolence that many of us did not understand, but King was on a much higher moral level than most.
What he was trying to do—and he may ultimately succeed, I don’t know, but we’ll see after this upcoming presidential election—he was trying to raise awareness of what he would call a beloved community, of which he said people would learn to live together, cooperate, and share resources so that everyone lives a fruitful life.
That’s what we talk about now when we talk about being allowed to be who they are. There is more democracy now than ever. Just having the power to vote was not a given 65 years ago. Throw in civil rights and voter rights legislation, which hadn’t been heard from since the 1920s, and a plethora of other movements around King’s efforts.
Now, these rebellions…I refuse to call [them] riots. Black people’s violence grows out of a reaction to the dismal reality they are forced to contend with daily. People in Watts got it right—they called it the Watts Rebellion. The press calls our rebellions riots, which they are not.
Remember, that’s what England called the American Revolution – they called it a riot. That’s precisely what the U.S. does to Blacks in this country—labeling us crazy and operating without a cause, with no viable background or reason for that level of action. That’s how they shape the narrative around Black protest or rebellion.
Even in the Nat Turner rebellion, we were against slavery and the push to extend it in the form of segregation. But I also know that Dr. King’s assassination certainly caused another level of activism and an even greater sense of urgency. The government initiated MLK programs and started putting some funds into the Black community, and many of our people were able to gain opportunities they never had.
And I want to say that King’s death played a role in Barack Obama’s election. I would conclude that Dr. King’s death was a reflection point in the struggle for democracy.
Mother Atum Azzahir: Founder and Director of Cultural Wellness Center and Elder Consultant in African Ways of Knowing
When I heard the news of Dr. King’s tragic death, I was living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My brother, his family, and mine shared a two-story house. I was washing dishes after dinner and suddenly heard screams from my sister-in-law and loud cursing from my brother. I felt a sense of hysteria, thinking that something had happened in our house to one of them or one of our children.
I ran to the other room and down the stairs; they were beating the floor, shouting, “No, no, no, they have done it again!!!!! What are we going to do? What are we going to do now?” My brother, who I never witnessed cry, was shedding tears. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, I could not stand still, we could not sit still. We knew the pain of our neighbors on the block. We knew others were also listening because we could hear the moaning and groaning.
As for how it impacted me, I believe what Dr. King said in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1964: “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” He said, “This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.”
Dr. King died when I was 25 years old; he was 39 years old. Today, at 80 years old, I am living the commitment that developed inside of me on the day Dr. King was murdered. I remember [the Sixties] as a decade of tragic disruption in and of freedom-fighting leadership. John F. Kennedy (1963), El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (1965), Dr. King, and Robert F. Kennedy (1968). This is but a short list of fighters for human freedom who were murdered during the ‘60s.
As I seek to move through the last three years of this decade of the 2000s, we grieve under the shadows of the names called of those who have been murdered in our ranks. I remember, and I grieve, the losses of many on the front lines of Black living in America.
We each have a lot of leading to do. We each have to work on closing the gap in the leadership circle. Dr. King left a message, a system of thinking that will continue to live on inside of us and will fuel our work toward human freedom.
Finally, on that day, we lost much hope and faith. We also lost passivity and fear of standing together. We continue to have these forces to feed, refresh, and act on to make our strength last beyond an individual.
We gained the power of an identity revolution. Black is beautiful, spiritual, and everlasting,
Yusef Mgeni: Civic volunteer and former director, office of Educational Equity at Saint Paul Public Schools
I was living in Los Angeles, CA, on April 4, 1968, and I remember visiting a friend’s house and watching Bobby Kennedy’s presidential campaign news conference when he announced that Dr. King had been assassinated in Memphis, TN.
And like most of the nation and the Black community in particular, there were mixed emotions: Sadness that anyone would want to assassinate a proponent of nonviolence and anger because of the campaigns that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI had launched against Malcolm X and Dr. King that contributed to their assassinations.
I was not particularly involved in the Civil Rights Movement because I was 20 years old and working full-time, but I remember Dr. King saying that the riots in 1965, ’66, and ’67 were the voices of the voiceless. Many young Black men my age expected that the death of Dr. King would no doubt result in those voices once again reverberating across the country in 1968.
And what was lost with his death—Dr. King used to say he was a pacifist on the war in Vietnam, but he was a general in the war on poverty. We lost a spokesman, a figurehead of the Civil Rights Movement. Someone that most Black people and many progressive whites looked up to, and the primary non-elected Black contact person that existed between Black and poor people and the white power, systemic structure of corporate and political America. In short, we lost one of our country’s most genuinely authentic, intelligent, and decent moral voices.
Tyrone Terrill: Former Human Rights Department and Gang Violence Intervention veteran
I was at home on Thursday, April 4, 1968, watching television when the television show was interrupted by CBS National Correspondent Walter Cronkite, who was crying, and I said to my mother Dr. King was dead as we knew he was in Memphis. My mother said that I kept crying for close to two hours about why they killed “The “Dreamer” and that someday I would do his work.
I was profoundly shaped by the news. Dr. King impacted my life, and as I said above, I committed to doing his work so that his death would not be in vain.
I recall in 1976, while two weeks away from an opportunity to play ball in Belgium with a free apartment and a Mercedes Benz, I played in a community basketball game at Jimmy Lee Rec Center and met a man named Bill Wilson, who was then the commissioner of human rights and first African American Ward 1 city council member.
He eventually offered me a job in his office, although I told him I was signing a contract in two weeks to play basketball in Belgium for six months. I took the smaller salary because I wanted to keep my promise to Dr. King to someday do his work. I believed then and now feel that Allah (God) allowed me to do his work.
As for what the Black community lost on Thursday, April 4, 1968, we lost the leader of not only the civil/human rights movement but the movement for our humanity in the United States of America and the world. Not only did the Black community lose its leader, but the United States of America lost its leader as Dr. King is (arguably) the most significant African American EVER.
Dr. King was the architect of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which gave Black people significant rights and afforded women, although more so the progression of White women in their civil/human rights. We must not forget that Dr. King was a fantastic preacher of the word of God. That is overlooked because of his impressive civil/human rights resume.
I come from an era when every Black home had a picture of Dr. King, John F. Kennedy, and Jesus in our homes. Today, I have 15 photos of Dr. King in my house and hope that one day, my granddaughter will ask me who he is. Most Black people do not have one picture of this great man who gave his life on our behalf at the age of 39 years old. I MISS HIM!
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