REMEMBERING MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.-- April 4th Marks 40 Years Since His Assassination

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

"I am in Birmingham because injustice is here....Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King (from "Letter from a Birmingham Jail")

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By Marty D. Omoto
Director/Organizer
California Disability Community Action Network

Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated 40 years ago in the early evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony just outside his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. King was in Memphis to support a strike by sanitation workers who were largely black. At the time King, who is best known for his "I Have A Dream" speech given during the 1963 "March on Washington" was planning the "Poor People's Campaign" on Washington, DC planned for May 1968.

Now regarded universally by an authentic American hero, King is now remembered every year with a federal holiday marking his birthday (he was born January 15, 1929).

His death plunged the nation and world into grief, with many American cities exploding in rage with rioting during a year that has been described by historians as one of the bloodiest and most turbulent time in American history, with the war in Vietnam raging, turmoil and fighting on the streets during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and the assassination almost exactly two months later of yet another major leader, Senator Robert F. Kennedy who was running for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination.

Below are the last few lines of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous last speech, given evening of April 3, 1968 in a MLK-2.gifMemphis church, the night before his assassination, delivering one of his most memorable lines "I've been to the mountaintop..." and recalling the major work he had done to advance the cause of civil rights:

"...Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination.

And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you.

You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?"

And I was looking down writing, and I said yes. And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman.

I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, you drown in your own blood—that's the end of you.

It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had sneezed, I would have died.

Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states, and the world, kind letters came in.

Posted April 4th, 2008 by Syndicated