Today marks the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. You would have to be as old or older than me to really remember the event. As a white Southern boy I lived through the civil rights movement and I still remember the treatment given blacks as I was growing up. I went to school in a segregated school. Even the little lunch counter by the Greyhound bus station that my parents ran for a while had a separate window on the sidewalk for blacks. It was a revolutionary time for America and Dr. King was it's catalyst. I witnessed first hand the demonstrations on the court house steps and watched the television coverage of the riots and demonstrations in the cities around the south such as Birmingham, Montgomery, Atlanta and Selma. I heard the cries for brotherhood, equality and justice first hand. I was fortunate that for most of my young life I and my brothers were raised by a black nanny. Her name was Hattie May and she was the spitting image of the black woman depicted on the Aunt Jemima pancake box. She was wise, jovial, loyal and took absolutely no guff from us young boys. My mom picked her up each morning from her little run down house on the black side of town and took her home every night. I remember she was paid everyday and was always grateful for the small amount of cash my mom would hand her. She was married and was raising a young school aged daughter but I remember her telling my mom that her husband had been gone for a few years working as a roustabout for the circus. In spite of what I heard from peers about blacks, Hattie May sealed my beliefs and I will always be grateful for the care she gave us and mostly for the experience of knowing her and giving me a rational and civilized understanding of her race.
I remember very well the night of April 4, 1968, when we learned that Dr. King was murdered. I was just starting Navy electronics school at Great Lakes, Illinois after finishing boot camp there. My roommate was a black kid named George Washington 'something' (I've lost it). He was the son of a State Department official of some type and had traveled extensively as a kid and as a result was pretty sophisticated and self confident. From what I gathered in our short few months together I don't think he really ever experienced what being black in America was all about and especially what being black in the American South was all about. When the news came on the TV he was stunned, then angry and and then devastated and it took him days to return to normal. We had some long talks about what this meant to the civil rights movement and I can still remember him just stopping in the middle of a conversation and saying quietly to himself "They've killed Martin Luther King." Unfortunately, there were others in the barracks that felt as did a lot of other Americans, especially those from the South, that it was about time '"somebody put them niggers in their place". There were some very serious confrontations for a few weeks around the halls.
The great news, of course, is that Dr. King's dream did not die. His dream and martyred death changed America forever and it didn't just change the lives of black citizens. A lot of what we take for granted today as the rights of all citizens were changed by the civil rights movement. Unfortunately, we have had some set backs along the way and especially in the last 7 years but the dream still lives and as Dr. King said more than once, it will live for generations. He knew he would not see the promised land and maybe even his children would not see it but he knew that someday all of us would.
Even if you don't remember Dr. King when he was alive, you should appreciate and honor his sacrifice because he changed your world and he changed it for the better.
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