on April 4 1968 at 6:01 p.m. James Earl Ray a white drifter and petty criminal
raised a bathroom window at the rear of the Bessie Brewers rooming house on
South Main Street in Memphis Tennessee and aimed a Remington Model 760 rifle
across the street at the Lorraine Motel when he saw dr. Martin Luther King jr.
step onto the balcony of room 306 he pulled the trigger a fraction of a
second later a single 30 caliber bullet from his weapon struck the civil rights
leader in the head at 7:05 p.m. doctors at st. Joseph's Hospital pronounced dr.
King dead he was only 39 years old as word of the tragedy spread throughout
Memphis a pall of shock and sadness blanketed the black community anguish
soon turned to anger fearing a riot the Memphis Police went on high alert but
calm prevailed local civil rights activists who for the past two months
had been leading a full-scale grassroots mobilization to support striking black
sanitation workers channeled raw emotions into peaceful marches and
public remembrances non-violence however did not win out everywhere 172 American
cities exploded in the days following dr. King's assassination in communities
large and small stretching from the east coast to the west african americans
poured into the streets to vent their rage in almost every instance they
targeted local symbols of white supremacy in washington d.c which
experienced some of the worst unrest african americans torched white owned
businesses and clashed with the police although dr. King had fallen out of
favor with many African Americans who felt that non-violence had run its
course both tactically and philosophically they
still respected him they may have disagreed with his approach
they admired his commitment to social change they may have felt that his
tactics needlessly put people in danger but they did not doubt his courage so
when they heard the news that he had been murdered
they were enraged furious at white America for silencing a voice of
compassion and love dr. King had preached peace and had been cut down by
violence and so it had to be the fire this time the disturbances following dr.
King's death are often dismissed as chaotic outbursts of violence from
emotionally distraught black mobs with more than a few criminal opportunists
among them but they were much more than that
they were rebellions against the racially discriminatory status quo
attempts by an especially alienated segment of the black population
impoverished and unemployed young men in particular to make white America take
notice of their plight of the deep frustration and of their determination
to do something about their situation these were protests about police
harassment housing segregation inadequate municipal services failing
schools and non-existent jobs the looting that took place during these
uprisings reflected these sentiments those who perpetually did without seize
the opportunity to cast aside normative expectations of black consumers that
they pay more for less in order to acquire necessities they always struggle
to afford and to acquire luxuries they never could for some it was retribution
and for others it was reparations the impact of the rebellions was
long-lasting on urban America White's had been fleeing America's central
cities for newly developed lily-white suburbs for two decades but the
uprisings quickened the process in some places while completing it in others the
absence of whites eroded a tax base that was already in
steep decline exacerbating the problem of poor municipal services and
insufficient social services companies had been doing the same thing chasing
corporate tax breaks designed to lure them away from urban centers the
rebellions increased the resolve of many to leave and hastened the departure of
quite a few others the relocation of large companies was especially harmful
the absence of capital investors made short-term recovery from the physical
destruction wrought by the rebellions extremely difficult and the permanent
loss of jobs made sustaining long term recovery efforts almost impossible the
disappearance of small mom-and-pop shops many of which did not reopen after being
burned hurt as well by further limiting consumers options the clashes with
police had far-reaching consequences to they significantly aggravated already
tense relations between the police and the black community these relations
continued to deteriorate in subsequent years as the officers and command
structure of metropolitan police departments remained overwhelmingly
white despite rapidly changing racial
demographics dr. King's death and the uprisings that followed did more than
just reshape American urban landscapes they also determined how dr. King has
been remembered or more accurately misremembered today we celebrate dr.
King for his remarks at the 1963 march on Washington but at the time he was
denounced across the south as a communist sympathizer and roundly
criticized throughout the north for pushing for civil rights too hard and
too fast when he finally spoke out against the war in Vietnam he was
pilloried by liberals for not knowing his place
that we may not be able to achieve
demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our
adventure in Vietnam that we have been detrimental to the life of the
Vietnamese people stick to civil rights they said and he was excoriated by
southern segregationists and northern law & order' conservatives for being a
radical extremist all this began to change when dr. King fell to an
assassin's bullet the day before he was persona non grata at the White House
because of his opposition to the war in Vietnam the day after he fell president
lyndon b johnson praised him and a presidential proclamation as a teacher
of all people whose vision of brotherhood gave purpose to his life and
works to paraphrase the poet car window heinz now that dr. King was safely dead
it was time to praise Him to build monuments to his glory to sing hosannas
to his name even before his funeral had taken place the public process of
reimagining dr. King had begun all of a sudden he was a colorblind Crusader
determined to end racial discrimination without using race conscious approaches
to change and by 1983 when President Ronald Reagan signed the bill making his
birthday a national holiday the American prophet of non-violence had been reduced
to a handful of sound bites from the march on Washington and snippets from
his letter from Birmingham jail dr. King's politics had not changed people
just chose to ignore his critiques of capitalism his critiques of militarism
and his critiques of racism in the interest of making him more palatable to
white Americans in many ways the man we celebrate today is not the man who lost
his life on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel 50 years ago
as public perceptions of dr. King's politics are changed so too did general
understandings of the civil rights movement those who had identified dr.
King as the singular leader of the movement while he was alive declared the
movement over when he was dead but the movement dr. King helped Shepherd to new
heights in the 1950s and 1960s did not suddenly end in 1968 activists close to
the drum major for justice as he was called from his wife Coretta Scott King
to his successor at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference the
Reverend Ralph David Abernathy continued the March for freedom so too did those
who did not know him well or did not know him at all they continued agitating
for non-discrimination in employment and housing desegregation and community
control of schools and equal protection under the law and they did it with even
more passion and determination than before with raised clenched fists and
shouts of black power these activists one notable victories in dr. King's name
immediately after his death including a resolution of the Memphis sanitation
workers strike and passage of the 1968 Fair Housing Act but they also met
continued resistance the participants in the Poor People's Campaign which was dr.
King's final crusade to get the nation to address it's appalling levels of
poverty they were put out of Washington DC in June 1968 having failed to
persuade federal officials to act the assassination of dr. King
neither ended the movement nor made it any easier it has now been more than 50
years since dr. King was shot and killed and the nation is still wrestling with
the meaning of his life and death one thing is for sure dr. King was a man
ahead of his time and not even our time has caught up with him yet the world the
color they are wondering whether we mean what we say when we talk about democracy
in this kind of reaction only weakens our prestige in the world but not only
that it increases the frustrations and the despair and the bitterness of all
those individuals who've been under the yoke so long and I say tonight the white
America there will be no rest there will be no tranquility in this
nation until the Negro has his freedom.