Tag: Martin Luther King Jr.

One after another social commentators have watched Martin Luther King Jr.‘s children and wondered if one day one would assume the mantle once worn by the "king of peace" himself.

On the night of Thursday, April 4, 1968, Louise and I were in our bedroom at home watching television and reading the newspaper when a bulletin flashed on the screen: MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., SHOT IN MEMPHIS.

John Lewis and Julian Bond. Two men whose lives were shaped in the crucible of the civil rights movement, whose beings were transformed by the soaring energy and ringing eloquence of the man who came to symbolize that movement, Martin Luther King Jr., and whose major roles have been played out in the cold vacuum of his absence.

"My father was sent to do a very specific job. . . . He was a God-sent man and when his work was done he moved on higher. . . ." —Yolanda Denise King

If the road to Equal Opportunity is paved with the good intentions of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center For Social Change to address the experience of all people, then the implementation of their planning must surely focus on the poor and oppressed. Isn’t that what the dream was all about?

On a Memphis motel balcony four years ago this month, a 30.06 slug tore the life from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His colleague and intimate friend, the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, was standing inches behind him when the bullet struck.