MLK Remembered, My Eye Witness Account

I was a seven year old living in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia in 1968 when MLK was killed. I remember my 2nd grade teacher, Miss Garrett making an announcement to the class that MLK had been killed and that we were to go directly home after school. We were not to stop at the little store on the way home. We were not to dawdle. We were to run home as quickly as possible, and we should make sure we had our little brothers and sisters with us. She advised us that when we got home we were to stay in our houses and not go out to play. She informed us that there might be trouble and then she dismissed class. That was when the imaginations of all of the kids started to run wild! The rumor started to swirl that the Negroes from Atlanta were marching down the four-lane to Marrietta, GA to kill all of us little white kids because they were mad about MLK. As I ran home with my sisters I looked as far up the four-lane as my vision would allow but saw no mass of angry Negroes heading our way, even though all of my friends swore that they could see them running with knives, guns and baseball bats. The new rumor was that they were going to cut off the hair of the blond kids and poke out the eyes of the blue-eyed kids. I was pretty relieved that I had brown hair and brown eyes at that point. My sisters, with their blond hair, were going to end up looking pretty bad though. I hoped the Negroes could discern that Deanna had green eyes, not blue, or else she would end up in a school for the blind. Needless to say, we were terrified! In my mind I developed a plan. If I were to get caught up in the murderous riot I would calmly explain to everyone that I did not hate Negroes, that I thought they should have the same rights as white people. Fortunately, there were no riots in Atlanta spilling over into little Marrietta, so I did not have to use my 7-year-old powers of persuasion.

I just remember great sadness. I remember the tears shed publicly by Negroes in Atlanta. I am using the term Negroes because that was the politically correct language in 1968. That was the polite and respectful term. I know that there have been many updates since, but this is a 1968 memory. MLK was killed on April 4th in Memphis, Tennessee in the early evening. We had heard about his death on the news before we went to school on April 5th. I remember being sad, but back in the 60's it seem like assassination was just the way things were. From looking at old news reports there were riots in Chicago and DC. I wonder why we were allowed to walk home unaccompanied if the school was so worried about a threat. They must have had a lot of confidence in our ability to run fast and handle the situation.

I turned 8 on April 7th. I think it is funny that the only thing I remember about my birthday that year was thinking that I was old enough to be baptized but knowing that no one in my family would get around to making the arrangements. The funeral was held 2 days later on April 9th in Atlanta. We watched some of it on TV but my father didn't have a lot of patience watching coloreds on TV so that was out. As for my newly minted eight-year-old self, I loved to hear MLK's I Have a Dream speech and his Promised Land speech. You would think that I would have gone to see some of the proceedings out of respect and proximity, but no. This was 1968 and there were visible racial lines that would not be crossed.

I remember being allowed to play outside again the day after the funeral. What a happy day! I went back to my all white life in the Atlanta suburbs where the biggest racial development in the neighborhood was a new form of token integration. Deanna had a negro kindergarten teacher, Miss Killingsworth!

So this MLK weekend I reflect on how far this country has come in the last 41 years. It seemed after MLK's death that the time for talk was over and there seemed to be some real action taken by judges and legislatures to eliminate forced segregation.