Martin Luther King Assassinated (April 4, 1968)

 

 

Ours was one of the first families in the neighborhood to own a color TV.  It was a Magnavox, delivered at the beginning of April 1968.  On Thursday, April 4, I had just come in from playing in the backyard, where I'd been having fun rolling around inside the TV's shipping box. (I was 10 years old at the time.)  When evening came, I went inside and lay on the living room floor eager to watch The Flying Nun in living color for the first time.  However, shortly after it came on a news bulletin interrupted to report that civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot and killed while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis.  He was just 39 years old. 

 

The next day, looking from our side porch, we could see smoke rising in the distance (about 10 miles away).  It was from fires set during rioting in a predominantly black neighborhood in Pittsburgh known as the Hill District.  The biggest fire came from a supermarket there that had been torched.  (Riots had broken out across the country as a result of MLK's assassination.)  Since we lived in a predominantly white community I didn't realize Pittsburgh had many black residents, at least not enough to have their own neighborhood.

 

 

Tuesday, April 9, was King's funeral in Atlanta and schools were closed because of concerns that there might be trouble.  I didn't watch the funeral but occasionally would catch a glimpse of the funeral procession on TV when I'd walk through the living room.  For the most part I spent the day outside playing because the weather was nice and warm.  This was my first exposure to the tumult of 1968 that was just getting underway.

 

 

(There are countless books and videos about the accomplishments of and controversies surrounding King, including an autobiography, the 1978 NBC mini-series King and the acclaimed PBS documentary from 2004 Citizen King.)