50 Years Later: King’s Words Still Encourage
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” –Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Fifty Aprils have passed since that fateful day in Memphis.
April 4, 1968.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 39, was assassinated while addressing crowds gathered at his motel. King, a Baptist minister who became an activist, spent 14 years until his death fighting for equality as he led the Civil Rights movement.
The 1960s were a volatile time in America with the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, King, and Bobby Kennedy, inspiring the 1968 song Abraham, Martin, and John; protests against the Vietnam War, riots, and Civil Rights marches that were met with violence from KKK members.
When he died, King’s obituary was listed in the New York Times. Today the Times has an entire section on his life: 50 Years Later, Remembering King, and the Battles That Outlived Him.
Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), who was one of the young activists, known as Freedom Riders, with King during those years, was not with King on the day he died. Lewis was, instead, in Indianapolis campaigning with Bobby Kennedy who was running for president. Two months later Kennedy would also be gone.
John Lewis marched in Selma with King. In 1963 he was the youngest speaker at King’s March on Washington. In 1986 he became Congressman Lewis.
Jonathan Capehart writes of Lewis in the Washington Post:
Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) has led an annual civil rights pilgrimage to Selma, Montgomery and Birmingham, Ala., with the Faith and Politics Institute for 20 years. And every year but one since 1965, the icon told me, he has returned to the sites where he was arrested, brutally beaten and continually bore witness to death in the pursuit of equality under the law for African Americans. But when it came to Indianapolis, where Lewis was campaigning with Bobby Kennedy on April 4, 1968, the day Martin Luther King was assassinated, Lewis resisted returning. That will change on the 50th anniversary on Wednesday.
History and the passage of time have a way of putting the best light on the memories but those were difficult times.
Today there will be commemorative events in Memphis along with live coverage from Memphis beginning at 10:30am ET from the National Civil Rights Museum.
The night before his death, King gave his “Mountaintop” speech that concluded:
“We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter to with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life–longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”
Fifty years….
