As I look through this chronology of his life I have many memories. I will be self centered in this tribute and talk about his effect on me. He was born eight years before I was and had his wonderful life cut short. One of the important warnings to this Nation of what was to come.
Few seem to see the event that way. His death changed my life as it did the lives of so many others. I was a young professor at SUNY at Buffalo. On the night he was murdered I was playing basketball at the Town Of Tonawanda YMCA. The announcement came over the loudspeaker and there was this roaring cheer! I left and went home never to return to that racist place. I'm afraid I had too many gin and tonics that night.
Read on below the break and I'll share my memories of the great man.
I grew up in Chicago which, to me, is one of the most racist cities in the world. My parents were racist yet because my dad wanted me to be an engineer I went to Tilden Technical High School across the city from our "safe" white neighborhood. I was warned about "those people" and quickly learned how sick my parents really were. My experiences in a mixed race school showed me what people were really like and I saw my parents as bigoted liars. I was in high school in 1954 when
Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to vacate her seat and move to the rear of a city bus in Montgomery to make way for a white passenger. Jo Ann Robinson and other Women’s Political Council members mimeograph thousands of leaflets calling for a one-day boycott of the city’s buses on Monday, 5 December.
That was my first real urge to be part of something. Then in 1956
At 9:15 p.m., while King speaks at a mass meeting, his home is bombed. His wife and daughter are not injured. Later King addresses an angry crowd that gathers outside the house, pleading for nonviolence.
Even though I had to use an NROTC scholarship to go to college and served as a USMC officer, the roots of my pacifism and belief in non-violence were sown as seeds then. Later that year
13 November
The U.S. Supreme Court affirms the lower court opinion in Browder v. Gayle declaring Montgomery and Alabama bus segregation laws unconstitutional.
21 December
Montgomery City Lines resumes full service on all routes. King is among the first passengers to ride the buses in an integrated fashion.
In 1957 I would graduate from college and
10-11 January
Southern black ministers meet in Atlanta to share strategies in the fight against segregation. King is named chairman of the Southern Negro Leaders Conference on Transportation and Nonviolent Integration (later known as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, SCLC).
18 February
King appears on the cover of Time magazine.
I'm going to fast forward a bit. I was in Israel from 1963 from 1965 so I got the news of that time from international sources. I missed this event in 1963
The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom attracts more than two hundred thousand demonstrators to the Lincoln Memorial. Organized by A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin, the march is supported by all major civil rights organizations as well as by many labor and religious groups. King delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech.
Upon my return in 1965 I got deeply involved in the anti-war/civil rights movement and was leader of a large coalition in Buffalo. I attended most of the mass rallies in Washington and NYC and heard King speak at many. I was getting radicalized very fast, but King seemed to be tending in the same direction. He became a champion of the poor and an anti-war spokesman. His influence grew. And then he was killed.
I believe he had to be killed for his message and his radicalization were catching on. I am a systems theorist so I don't need a conspiracy theory to make that last statement. He had to be eliminated or we might have had real change in this country. Now his memory is part of the system that killed him and actually, ironically, makes the system more stable. I miss him very much.