Fifty-two years ago today Dr. King was shot to death. A tragic event within a tragic year. Some thoughts regarding it:
One of the more moving historical sites one can ever visit is the museum that was built from the hotel where Dr. King was killed. It's the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis at the Lorraine Motel. If I were to make a list of required stops for an American to visit, it would be on the list.
Dr. King's death occurred in the same year as a great deal of turmoil: RFK's assassination, the Mexico City Olympics, the Vietnam War's stalemated climax. I wonder how Americans must have felt bouncing from startling story to startling story.
I once read an interesting thesis that President Johnson, who announced his intention to not run again for office came a few days before King's death, was hoping to conduct a victory tour in his last year as a lame duck. He would ride a circuit of bringing Vietnam to a close, passing more substantial civil rights legislation, and extending his war on poverty. King's assassination upset the political momentum he had tried to build.
Dr. King was born on or near the year my dad was born. I wonder what more he could have done with his life had he been granted another 52 years to still be with us today.
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I must gently suggest that you check your math. It was 53 years (1968).
You wonder how Americans must have felt bouncing from startling story to startling story. I don't really remember a lot of it. You see, I was 18, finishing up my freshman year of college. And my mother died that summer. In my life, that pretty much overshadowed all the national news.
I sometimes wonder what it would have been like if she had been granted even another couple of decades...
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