Fifty years ago today I had "cleaned up for Gene", sort of, and was working on his campaign, while fighting to keep SDS nonviolent. Back then, the world was not connected the way it it now. I did not watch TV every day, so I did not learn until sometime the next day that my hero and friend had been murdered. Barack Obama joined John Lewis in a tribute to his legacy.
On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, and Wednesday marks the 50th anniversary of his death. In order to commemorate the occasion, Barack Obama discussed MLK’s legacy with John Lewis and a group of high school students in a new video released by the Obama Foundation.
At the beginning of the video, Lewis recalls where he was when he got the news that King had been shot — in Indianapolis, organizing a rally. Obama tells students from Washington, D.C.’s Ron Brown College Preparatory High School that Lewis was one of the people who made him want to become involved in public life.
"I thought that this would be a good opportunity to connect the people who inspired me with the next generation of young leaders who are going to be doing outstanding things themselves," Obama tells the students, whose all-male high school grew out of the Obama administration‘s My Brother’s Keeper initiative…
Inserted from <Bustle>
Here’s that video.
Civil Rights leaders remembered him in a CNN interview.
The previous summer I was walking down the hallway after a planning session for one of Dr. King’s Vietnam Summer demonstrations. Dr. King appeared next to me and told me how had he was that young people were dedicated to continue the work after he was gone. I felt surprised and asked, "Gone?" He said that he was stirring-up a hornets nest didn’t know how long he would be allowed to live. In the naivety of youth, I assumed he was kidding.
He was right, of course. If he had stuck with civil rights, he might have died of old age. But when he also organized so effectively against the war, and for the poor, he was threatening billionaires’ profit.
It boggles my mind that this was fifty years ago. That confronts me with my own mortality.
I’ll hope you’ll invest 43 minute to listen to his last speech, in which he predicted his own death.
RESIST THE REPUBLICAN REICH!!
7 Responses to “Fifty Years Ago”
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And after which speech he was so exhausted he had to be assisted to a chair or he would have stumbled. I can’t find now where I read that – it wasn’t Dr. Edelman’s column although that is a good one. If I can find it I’ll come back.
This is truly a sad anniversary. What if MLK had lived longer? He could have still been alive today. Sadly, “colored” and “white” are equally guilty of merely parroting his words rather than truly honoring his legacy.
A very fitting tribute to Dr. King. His Spirit is still alive. Very moving videos. “You Respect the dignity and worth of every human being.” ~ John Lewis ~
No, he neve heard the shot that killed him, apparently one never hears a shot that hits one, before being hit, but THAT shot is also still being heard around the world. Not loudly enough.
Oh, is our remarkable leader of Orange going to acknowledge King’s life or legacy? Is he going to say, “Some shooters are bad, and some are good?”
In his legacy MLK still lives on, commemorated all over the world today/yesterday. And his words ring true more than in the past few decades, and that isn’t just because he died 50 years ago. We seem to have come full circle on many things, and his need to fight for civil rights, against poverty and against war are as important now as they were then. It’s sad really that we commemorate this great man for what his fight meant both then and now, and not celebrate his accomplishments as never-ending and in no need of being accomplished all over again.
Thanks all! I have to leave!
Just listening to MLK Jr takes my breath away!
As I did, I was reminded of “Abraham, Martin and John” sung by Dion.
It was just two weeks before my 16th birthday when MLJ Jr was assassinated. My maternal grandfather had been an avowed racist living in Buffalo NY. I live in a country with a different ethos than the US. I did not understand the hate, and I still don’t, that one person can have for another just because of the colour of their skin, or their religion, or their economic status etc. We are all made in the image of the creator. No one is better than another, despite what the 1% and Republicans will and do say!
And one last thing, Mahatma Gandhi said “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” Both Gandhi and MLK Jr lived lives of service and non violence and in my book are to be revered.