As an 10 year old white kid from the Midwest I never really thought about race or war or cruelty or poverty or discrimination. It didnt affect me much. I just went to my 99% white grade school every morning and then came home. Oh I'd seen racism in action when in 2nd grade some kid in my class stabbed a black kid in the back with a pencil and still to this day remember the kid's tears as he walked by me leaving the school forever. I found it disturbing and didnt understand it but racism? I was 7.
But when April 4, 1968 happened, it changed me forever. The news break that announced the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King made me go what? My father was disturbed but not for the reasons I was. He was concerned about riots. I was just offended by it all. I was offended that a man was murdered for having the gall to demand equality. I was offended because a man was murdered because his skin color was different. I was offended because a man was taken from his children.
I barely remembered the JFK killing. But this one meant something to me. It affected me. Walk in a man's shoes before you judge.
Five years ago we road tripped to Dallas to be at the Texas School Book Depository in the 50th year since Jack Kennedy was murdered. It was something I had to do.
This year we road tripped to Memphis to be at the Lorraine Motel in the 50th year since Dr Martin Luther King Jr was murdered. It was also something I felt I had to do. The Lorraine Motel has become ground zero for what is now known as the National Civil Rights Museum.
Seeing the Lorraine Motel sign, seeing the balcony on which Dr King was killed, seeing the rooming house across the street. It's all there. Once you allow yourself to get the chills out of your system you can enter the museum. The history of a people. a movement, an atrocity, a tragedy, the shame of a nation.
Beginning with slavery, you see it all. The burned out Freedom Riders bus, the slave ships, the bus where Rosa Parks said no (did you know others also said no before Rosa Parks did?), the Panthers, the March on Washington, all of it is here. It is perhaps the most interesting museum I have ever been to.
The tour ends with a chance to see the room in which Dr King stayed. You see the room, the balcony, the rooming house across the street where the shooter lay in wait. They always refer to "the shooter", not the name of that guy who they claimed did the deed. The room is where you can show respect. Dr Kings last place of rest. You think it cant get any more intense.
But it does, The trip across the street to the shooters rooming house. The strange timeline of an escaped convict. The gun. The bathroom where the shooter lay in a bathtub, opened a window and shot a man to death. The window is till open. The view is chilling. Its even worse when you go back across the street and can see the open window.
The night before he was murdered, Dr Martin Luther King gave a speech to striking Memphis sanitation workers. A truly mic drop speech. A speech that in retrospect, you know he knew. He knew he was going to die. You see it in his eyes, you hear it in his voice. That speech makes one get tears in your eyes. See it.
I look at the nation in 2018 and often wonder is it any better. I mean we have a bonafide white supremacist asshole in the White House. We have the alt right and the economically anxious. We have rogue racist cops killing unarmed black men and women without consequences. We have a white population who has freaked out that a black man was elected President and given a majority of its votes to some of the most evil cretins of all time. Is it any better?
So today, on the 50th anniversary of this horrific event, the killing of a great American, please just shut the fuck up about Dr King being a "Republican" or how he would be very conservative or blow that content of their character shit in someone's face. Take a step back for once. Please dont holler the empty headed "All Lives Matter" nonsense at anyone. You really have no idea what you are talking about. Just shut up.
Saying that, I know its not going to happen. I am going to get angry at phony tweets and speeches made by outright racists like our President and Vice President. Empty blathering from
50 years was a long time ago. Or was it?
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