I didn’t know who he was, I was pretty young. I remember the announcement on TV, April 4th, 1968, just printed text and a voice over, announcing his murder. Over the next few weeks, during the riots, I came to understand what he was trying to do.
I didn’t know who he was, I was pretty young. I remember the announcement on TV, April 4th, 1968, just printed text and a voice over, announcing his murder. Over the next few weeks, during the riots, I came to understand what he was trying to do.
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I was only 3 in 1968,
The day after he was assassinated my uncle brought my cousins from Chicago to our house (back then it was farm country but now it’s a nice sized suburb thanks to about a million subdivisions).
I didn’t know. I asked my dad.
Of course. It was an awful day.
Yes, I was 12. But if you don’t know about MLK, find out. You won’t regret it.
Yes, I remember ciivil rights and anti war leader Reverend Martin Luther King very well, thought that he was a great orator and I was shocked and saddened by his death. I was 16.
He and President Johnson had an amicable relationship and were working together.
King was murdered 3 years after Malcolm X was gunned down in NYC’s Audubon Ballroom and the public’s reaction was overwhelmingly different towards King’s death compared to Malcolm’s.
Yes, I did. I was 15.
Of course.
No, was born after he died.
I was in kindergarten when that happened. Suddenly, all the adults were talking about Martin Luther King and “colored people”, and I had no idea what that meant.
I had just turned nine so, no. I learned pretty quickly, and I remember the riots, but riots really weren’t a new thing at that point.
This was 2 months before I was born, but I grew up knowing. I also grew up white, so a lot of white people around me spoke his name with contempt, if also without elaboration. I grew up in a predominantly Black city — Detroit — so I’m not saying my neighbors were on the same page, but they weren’t talking about it with a little white girl.
As an adult, someone close to me mentioned MLK day with an eye roll, and I’d had it and told them off. Over time they reexamined a lot of things and became way more progressive. I brought up this moment, and they said, “I was an asshole.”
It’s easy to pick up our parents’ bigotries without questioning it, and so our lives need to be exercises in reexamining it all.
I was 3. Guess my attention was elsewhere. I think I found flatulence fascinating at that time.
Totally not even a twinkle in my dad’s eye. My sister was 4 and I don’t know if she knew anything.
Yes. I was 9 years old
I remember it well. Nobody knew what was going to happen after the killing.Killing presidents, presidents brothers,MLK. It was really bad time in this country.
I grew up in Atlanta so I certainly knew who Dr. King was. I was broken hearted to learn of his assassination. I did not want to live in a world where people were killed for seeking justice. I cried most of that weekend. I was 15.
Coming, as it did, in the same terrible year as a lot of terrible events, it felt like the world was flying to pieces!
Yes, indeed. I was 17.
1968 was a very grim year, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
Of course. He was on the news fairly regularly.
Everybody did
Doctor King was a nightly fixture on the news during a very turbulent time in America. Approximately 75% of the white people (north or south) were racist to some degree with the rest understanding that we were on the wrong side of history. King pointed out nightly how wrong so many were.
The night he died I was shocked by it because the level of sympathy I experienced and felt seemed like a huge positive. I assumed others felt it too. Assassination seemed like an impossibility for such a positive role model. Hate didn’t really run deep against black people, our ignorance did.
I remember. I also remember the riots that followed. I lived in Flatbush Brooklyn; a very “mixed” neighborhood. Everyone went out on the streets and agreed without saying that this neighborhood was not going to be torn apart.
Pretty much though I was young at the time
Yep, I knew and we raised hell in my city the year before the Doctor/Reverend died.
Yes, of course!
Of course, likely more than most. I was still living in a Washington DC suburb then and relocated right before his “I Have a Dream” speech (1963).
It is distressing so much of Black history is being pulled from schools; it is an integral building block of our shared history and must be studied, must be absorbed, not hidden.
We had moved from near isolation in AK to MD (late, 1959); the first time I was confronted with water fountains “Whites Only.” What? I was so confused ….
Keep in mind the military was the first entity to be desegregated; the only separation on an AF base was by rank: enlisted over here and officers over there. My playmates were white and black. I am so thankful for that early exposure.
Yes, I was in high school. I remember it pretty clearly.
But not as clearly as I remember JFK.
Yes. Even in my small, rural NY town we had young teachers who actually would attend protests and marches. They certainly instilled a sense of critical thinking into us. I recall there being a general sadness when he was assassinated.
I was 10, living in KCMO. I remember that we were all gathered and told that if we lived south of 63rd Street we could choose to go home. Others had to remain until parents picked them up. The riots started downtown and swept south, finally stopped at about 59th Street. They burned and looted a whole section of businesses (mostly owned by blacks) and the area really hasn’t fully recovered.
No because I wasn’t born yet.
Absolutely. His speeches were incredible and we all knew he lifted up the whole nation to be better than it was. Brought dignity and respect to those who had long deserved it.
Absolutely
1968 sucked. I was only six. Remember specifically coming down the stairs the morning after and being told about RFK.
MLK is foggier. I always thought it happened on a Monday evening but only learned much later in life that it was a Thursday.
I knew of him at the time but not much. Just finished the latest bio of him. Fascinating individual. Really guided by his faith in the issues he pursued even though he knew it was hurting his popularity to talk about, for example, the Vietnam War.
Yes, although like 8 years old so didn’t fully understand
Of course
Yes, sure. That was a tumultuous year, MLK being shot, the riots and police response at the Democratic convention in Chicago and then RFK being shot. It felt like the world might come apart. Dark and dangerous. BUT our own time is dark, dangerous and depressing. How do you young’uns feel about the direction of the world?
I was 21.
No, because I was not yet born.
Remembering back, being 5 years old, l watched it on the black and white floor model television. Everyone in the house l remember was quiet, just listening to Walter Cronkite talk about what had just happened. I felt sad because my parents were sad.
No. I’m Canadian. I was aware of the marches but didn’t understand why people couldn’t tell that black people were people.
1968 was a bad year in the US. The ongoing Vietnam War, the assassinations of mlk and rfk, the democratic convention, the election of Nixon..
I was pretty pleased to be a Canadian coming off our centennial year and without the apparent racial problems in the US. It wasn’t until later that I realized that we had our problems too. Non-smug comment.
I was a kid who was supposed to go on a field trip to the Newark (NJ) Museum on April 5th. Needless to say, the field trip got cancelled. At the time, I don’t think I knew who most adults were if they weren’t part of my family or immediate experience.
Yes, because I lived in Memphis and watched the news.
I was still in elementary school. But my school system had desegregated only a few years earlier (by choice, not by court order) – and the same teachers were still there. The civil rights era was taught as part of current events, by people who didn’t need a textbook.
Yeah, I knew who he was. RFK, too.
Yes — he was already a major influence in American life. His tragic death wasn’t entirely surprising.
No, I was only about 7.
I don’t remember most of the big events of the 60s because so much grim stuff happened. My folks shielded us from things like assassinations and the Manson family running around the area, but the tension and stress were evident even though I didn’t really know what caused it.
Sirhan Sirhan’s mother worked at our church, so that heightened the awareness of RFK’s death, but I still didn’t know what was really going on. My school was going to start bussing kids to better integrate the district, so we moved but I didn’t really know what is was about.
All in all, I had only a fringe of awareness of what was going on.
I was 9. I was watching the Canadian Liberal leadership convention because if the hype for this guy Trudeau and the news broke about MLK.
At 9, a Canadian, white kid, into hockey and Star Trek… I knew he was important. I knew about the injustice he was fighting.
I was 12. Yes, I knew. I still remember the day.
I wasn’t born yet but my dad has been a member of Ebenezer Baptist Church most of his life. He knew King as well as any church member knows their leader. He marched with him as a teenager. He said that it hurt him so deeply to lose King that way even though many knew it was coming.
Yes. Absolutely.
I had just had surgery to remove a tumor from my leg, so I was laid-up and spent a lot of time watching TV and listening to the radio. I was nine. Of course, I knew who he was before, but he was not at the center of my consciousness as a middle-class white kid from the suburbs. I remember my grandmother remarking that “he wasn’t as bad as some of the others,” presumably meaning more militant civil-rights activists like Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver. As that comment suggests, he was not popular to most of White America.
nah. I was only 7. World events held no interest for me.
I certainly did!
Yes. I was 16 and MLK was pretty much revered in my home. My father was at the Washington march for the “I have a dream” speech and we were very active in the anti Viet Nam war movement. MLK’s death was sickening.
Yes. April 4, 1968. I remember the date and where I was. (13 years old).
I was grown when he was murdered. I listened to his speeches and understood exactly what he was trying to do. I’m white and when the riots started, I wanted to be there with those who were angry and hurt and my husband, who I hadn’t married yet, and I protested with the black students at the university where we were both working towards our bachelors degrees. Police yelled at us but they were violent toward the black students. There were white students and faculty trying to defend our friends who were getting beaten for no reason…they were peacefully expressing their pain and sorrow. One cop called me the N word lover and I said shut up you racists pig and he didn’t hit me or arrest me, but the attacks on the black students and faculty was beyond anything I had ever seen. Blood was everywhere. Students were bleeding and dogs. OMG, those dogs were weaponized to attack peaceful protestors. For weeks, we protested, carrying signs, wearing shirts that voiced our support…but the thing is, MLK had a vision that benefited us all…everyone does good when we realize we are all the same.
I was 10. It was all over the news where I lived (metro Atlanta). I new who he was, but only because my mother watched the news every evening and I usually watched with her. Of course, we all learned much more about him and his movement after he was killed.
Absolutely. It was much talked about here in Canada
Yeah, and I saw a tank rolling up my street during the ensuing mass riot. Then, shortly after MLK they got RFK and I was disappointed that the White community didn’t riot over that. Robert Kennedy SR. was the brother of JFK and a charismatic progressive candidate who would have easily defeated the eventual winner in that year’s election – Richard Nixon.
Those three murders in the span of 5 years – JFK, MLK, and RFK profoundly altered the course of this country. And, for years after that you couldn’t visit a Black family in their home without seeing a [picture featuring those three](s-l640.jpg (640×498)) on prominent display.
I wasn’t born yet. I’m the child of Black activists, though. I was raised with this history.
My family is from Washington, DC. My grandfather came there after he had been drafted out of college for WWII. He was mistakenly sent to an all white unit. When he told them he was colored, he was sent to Texas to chop cotton, on the same base where they were keeping German officers who were prisoners of war and much better treated than my grandaddy and his unit. He applied to medical school, and was accepted. The Army announced that if you were not enrolled by a particular date, you would be sent overseas to fight. Howard & Meharry moved up their start dates, and he came to DC to start med school.
After Dr. Kind was murdered, 14th Street, 7th Street and H Street were burning. They called the National Guard. My granddad was an Army Reservist. He and his friends were ready . . . and they were told they would not be called as they didn’t believe Black soldiers would protect the city. Instead we hosted National Guardsmen from elsewhere, who slept in our pocket parks and “protected” the city.
I was almost 12. He was killed four days before my birthday. I definitely knew who he was and what he stood for. I remember feeling that the entire world was falling apart and really wondering what kind of world would remain for me to grow up into.
I had a vague knowledge of who he was and what happened. What I remember most is his funeral procession with the casket being carried in an open cart pulled by a mule. I have a much clearer recollection of the assassination or Robert Kennedy two months later. It’s my first “I remember exactly where I was when I first found out it happened” moment. I came out in our living room expecting to see the usual morning cartoons on our tv. Instead they were showing these frantic men in suits standing at a podium asking “Is there a doctor in the house?” I’d never heard that phrase before and remember thinking how strange it sounded. Then they showed the recorded clip of Robert Kennedy lying on the floor bleeding with all these people screaming and and crying. It scared the hell out of me.
Yes, I did. I was the only white kid on an all-black block. I was also a careful listener for a five-year-old. Dr. King is still among my favorite orator. My earliest physical memory is of his funeral procession. It moves me to this day.