Nobody, of course, had any idea what was going to happen. It was an ordinary day, after all, in early spring where I was raised--in the suburbs of Milwaukee. I think it was a Thursday. Not sure about that.
I am sure that it was my senior year in high school. I was two months from graduation, and I had a rehearsal after school. I was in the class play. It was a modernized version of the Greek story, "Antigone," and I was King Creon.
The rehearsal went on until about 5:30 p.m. I lived within walking distance of the school and got home around 5:45. The first thing my mom said when she saw me: "Did you hear? Martin Luther King died."
I hadn't heard.
"Why? What happened? Did he get shot?" President Kennedy had been slain less than five years earlier, and the memory of that day was still a raw wound.
And so I caught up with the news on TV. The details were coming out in bits and pieces. Dr. King had been in Memphis, Tenn., to help the city's sanitation workers, who were striking. They didn't know who did the shooting. This happened at a time when a lot of other things were going down. The war in Vietnam wasn't going well. The Tet offensive had taken place a few months ago, shaking confidence in the government's rosy confidence that the war was going their way.
More and more protests about the war and the draft were going on, and the clamor was increasing. Sen. Eugene McCarthy was challenging President Johnson in the Democratic primaries. Then, after McCarthy did very well in the Wisconsin primary, Sen. Robert Kennedy also decided to run against LBJ. I didn't like the war, but I supported Johnson, anyway, because of his work on behalf of Civil Rights and his war against poverty.
Then, at the end of a televised speech about Vietnam, Johnson announced that he would not seek a new term as president. That only happened a few days earlier. And now this.
I don't remember much from that night. Maybe I was in a daze. I knew the TV networks played parts of King's speech from the night before, when he said that he "may not get to the promised land," like Moses. Premonition?
My only clear memory from that night was the Tonight Show, which went on as usual, despite the national tragedy that had taken place. But Johnny Carson made it clear from the start that it was a night for thought and reflection. What I remember most from that show were the Supremes, the popular Motown group, singing "There's a Place for Us" from "West Side Story." And the tears streaming down Diana Ross' face as she paid tribute to Dr. King during the song. I don't think I will ever forget that.
The next few days passed in a blur. I heard there would be a march in downtown Milwaukee in King's memory. It may have been the first time I ever drove down into the central city area. But I made the trip, and I walked from the near north side--the center of the city's black population--to the downtown area and back. Nothing happened except that I skipped a day off from school, so I had to serve a day or two of detention. Small price to pay.
The play came. And went. I did OK. Not great. Graduation came. And went. I did OK. Didn't really seem to matter a lot. Priorities were shifting. Times were changing. What seemed important before had lost its value, and other things were taking over. I started seeing things differently. Thinking for myself.
In two more months, Bobby Kennedy was killed. Murdered, like Dr. King. Two months after that, the Democratic Convention broke down into riots in downtown Chicago; anti-war protesters confronted Mayor Daley's police. And in the end, Richard Nixon was elected president, and the war went on for another six years.
I don't know what the moral of this piece is. By rights, some great insight should be written here, in the very last paragraph, that may illuminate that time and provide light for all of us today. I don't know if there is one.
I just wanted to write about this terrible day 40 years ago that changed the way I look at the world. And I still wish to hell it had never happened.
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