A night the world changed
Three Santa Feans share their memories from the aftermath on April 4, 1968
After the shot, after the killing, after the news, after the fires, Njeri Nuru-Holm simply wanted to reach a safe haven. It would not be easy. It would not be forgettable. The report of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in Memphis, Tenn., had ripped through the nation only moments before, and word of his death was particularly raw in Washington, D.C., where rioting had begun and the walk home for a student at Howard University in the nation’s capital would mark a night that would tattoo itself into her consciousness. April 4, 1968. “We were scared,” Nuru-Holm said, crisply recalling the moment when her America changed. “We had no idea if we’d be injured, or even if we’d get there. We had no idea if we should stay put. All you could see on TV was the city erupting in flames.”
Washington, like so many cities in America, burned the night of King’s death — an irony not lost on those who were
stirred by his calls for nonviolence as the civil rights movement of the 1960s moved to a crescendo.
Rather than attempt to ford the uncertainty of a trip back to her offcampus apartment, Nuru-Holm and a friend went to the friend’s parents’ house. Closer. Safer.
“I was,” she recalled, “afraid to move from that place.”
The memories remain strong for Nuru-Holm and other Santa Feans who recall the turbulent time. Their experiences were different, of course, but many say they knew — long before the smoke had cleared from the skies of American cities — that the death of the man who fell at the Lorraine Motel would change the course of America and, perhaps, their own lives.
For G.C. Hendricks, a young lieutenant called to the city from the Marine base at nearby Quantico, Va., to escort young ladies to the annual Cherry Blossom Festival, the reports of rioting in the capital prompted a change of plans. What was supposed to be a night of pomp (and later, some conviviality), quickly moved to the Marine barracks at the intersection of Eighth and I streets, where he listened to orders being issued to protect federal buildings.
“The only shoot-to-kill order was at the Library of Congress,” he said, “because of all the irreplaceable documents.”
Perhaps understanding the need for hardened troops, and not young looies in their crisp dress blues, Hendricks was dispatched back to Quantico. He says he can still see the fires burning in Northeast Washington.
“Headed back to Quantico,” he says now, “I knew it was going to be different. I didn’t know how, but I knew what King meant. He’d been making speeches that were dramatic, and his following was amazing. I wasn’t sure how it was going to be different, but I knew, this is a sea change.”
The ripples were just as evident to Carol Johnson, who saw the news with her parents in New York City.
“The news flash came,” she said, “and it was like, ‘Oh, no.’ ”
Johnson says her father, Snowden Eichelberger, was asked by then-New York Mayor John Lindsay to join him in Harlem to appeal for calm. There would be riots, she said, but not like those in other cities.
“I was 25,” she said, “and it made me start to think, we know things happen. We know consequences. We have to take care of each other. Within our realm, that’s what we can do. And I was brought up that way — to have a commitment to my community.”
So, it’s 50 years later — beyond King’s assassination, and that a few months later of Robert F. Kennedy; beyond Khe Sanh and the election of Richard Nixon; beyond the moon landing and Watergate; beyond Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton and 9/11.
But it doesn’t seem so long to Hendricks, Johnson and Nuru-Holm. With history as prologue, the echo from James Earl Ray’s rifle shot still seems tangible: a call to mourning; a call to action.
For Hendricks, service to his fellow citizens, to his community and country, would mean he found himself flying combat missions within two years in an A-6 Intruder in Vietnam and Cambodia.
“We knew we were going to Vietnam,” he says of his early days in the Marine Corps, “and that made it more intense to learn your lessons well.”
Hendricks came home to a career with words: He’s written for newspapers and penned a pair of books, centered on his time in the military.
For Johnson, the call took her to the Southwest and a career in public health, where she built a life serving people in the Indian Health Service in New Mexico.
“You know, King was so young when he was killed,” she says. “I have a 36-year-old son. Historically, he knows stuff and we’ve talked about stuff. But it’s only recently that he’s felt the need to be more committed, to take action and not let things happen.
“Part of that is maturity, but a lot of it is the climate as it is now,” she added. “He has two little boys. It’s ‘OK, you can’t sit back and let things happen.’ ”
And for Nuru-Holm, who retired to Santa Fe after a career as a dean and vice president at institutions as diverse as Cleveland State in Ohio and Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., a half-century after April 4, 1968, represents a continuum. On the night of King’s death, she simply wanted to reach safer ground.
Today, she says she strives for higher ground.
“From that time until today, it’s one group after another, after another: civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights … it’s all about humanity,” she says. “It’s important to be part of change and to stand up for your individual beliefs. It’s about people caring about other people.”