from the Los Angeles Times
Remembering Martin Luther King Jr., killed 44 years ago today
By Rene Lynch
April 4, 2012, 9:40 a.m.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.was assassinated 44 years ago today. The somber anniversary will be marked across the country, including with a wreath-laying ceremony at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn., which is on the site where King was fatally shot.
And the new Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial in Washington, D.C., will also mark the anniversary -- its very first, since it just opened to the public last summer -- with a candlelight vigil later this evening.
In the social media world, the anniversary of King's assassination is being noted in a different way -- with a dotted line being drawn between King's assassination and the shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla. "From Martin to Martin: Hoodies up on the Mountaintop," reads the headline at the influential website Global Grind. "Today is Wed, April 4, 2012, the 44th anniv of MLK's death, the 38th day since the murder of #Trayvon Martin -- with no arrest," according to a posting on Twitter.
On April 4, 1968, King was staying at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., preparing a speech he was scheduled to give that night at the nearby Mason Temple. The hotel was one of the few places in the area where blacks were welcome to spend the night, according to the Commercial Appeal, and was a haven on the road for the likes of black celebrities and entertainers such as Ray Charles, Lionel Hampton and Aretha Franklin.
When King stepped out onto the balcony before heading over to the temple, a shot rang out: Assassin James Earl Ray had been lying in wait with a clear view from a nearby boardinghouse. Ray escaped that night but was later captured and convicted of King's death; he spent the remainder of his life insisting that he was innocent and that he was being used as a scapegoat.
King had long been the target of bombings and death threats and had often alluded to a belief that his life would be cut short. In fact, one night earlier, in a speech at the Mason Temple, he told those in attendance: "I may not get there with you, but I want you to know that we as a people will get to the promised land."
The National Civil Rights Museum was built up around the motel where the assassination took place, and visitors can still see the room -- Room 306 -- where King slept. Efforts have been made to preserve it exactly as it was, down to an ashtray filled with cigarettes. The museum will not be open this time next year. Renovations will shut its doors on what would be the 45th anniversary of King's assassination, the Commercial Appeal notes.
Events being held in Memphis to mark the anniversary include a rally organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Council -- an organization that King led until his death -- and the renaming of a street in King's honor.
And at 5:30 p.m. local time, the Rev. Jesse Jackson -- who was with King at the time of the assassination -- will lay a wreath on the balcony near the spot where King was shot.
The candlelight vigil being held in Washington, D.C., will include a number of dignitaries, including Gandhi's grandson, Arun Gandhi.
Follow this link to read the above article at the Los Angeles Times website.
from The New York Times
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April 5, 1968
OBITUARY
Martin Luther King Jr.: Leader of Millions in Nonviolent Drive for Racial Justice
By MURRAY SCHUMACH
To many million of American Negroes, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the prophet of their crusade for racial equality. He was their voice of anguish, their eloquence in humiliation, their battle cry for human dignity. He forged for them the weapons of nonviolence that withstood and blunted the ferocity of segregation.
And to many millions of American whites, he was one of a group of Negroes who preserved the bridge of communication between races when racial warfare threatened the United States in the nineteen-sixties, as Negroes sought the full emancipation pledged to them a century before by Abraham Lincoln.
To the world Dr. King had the stature that accrued to a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, a man with access to the White House and the Vatican; a veritable hero in the African states that were just emerging from colonialism.
Between Extremes
In his dedication to non-violence, Dr. King was caught between white and Negro extremists as racial tensions erupted into arson, gunfire and looting in many of the nation's cities during the summer of 1967.
Militant Negroes, with the cry of, "burn, baby burn," argued that only by violence and segregation could the Negro attain self-respect, dignity and real equality in the United States.
Floyd B. McKissick, when director of the Congress of Racial Equality, declared in August of that year that it was a "foolish assumption to try to sell nonviolence to the ghettos."
And white extremists, not bothering to make distinctions between degrees of Negro militancy, looked upon Dr. King as one of their chief enemies.
At times in recent months, efforts by Dr. King to utilize nonviolent methods exploded into violence.
Violence in Memphis
Last week, when he led a protest march through downtown Memphis, Tenn., in support of the city's striking sanitation workers, a group of Negro youths suddenly began breaking store windows and looting, and one Negro was shot to death.
Two days later, however, Dr. King said he would stage another demonstration and attributed the violence to his own "miscalculation."
At the time he was assassinated in Memphis, Dr. King was involved in one of his greatest plans to dramatize the plight of the poor and stir Congress to help Negroes.
He called this venture the "Poor People's Campaign." It was to be a huge "camp-in" either in Washington or in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention.
In one of his last public announcements before the shooting, Dr. King told an audience in a Harlem church on March 26:
"We need an alternative to riots and to timid supplication. Nonviolence is our most potent weapon."
His strong beliefs in civil rights and nonviolence made him one of the leading opponents of American participation in the war in Vietnam. To him the war was unjust, diverting vast sums away from programs to alleviate the condition of the Negro poor in this country. He called the conflict "one of history's most cruel and senseless wars." Last January he said:
"We need to make clear in this political year, to Congressmen on both sides of the aisle and to the President of the United States that we will no longer vote for men who continue to see the killing of Vietnamese and Americans as the best way of advancing the goals of freedom and self- determination in Southeast Asia."
Follow this link to read the complete New York Times obituary. |
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