Those mournful days of April 1968
As clergy and others gather here Saturday to re-enact their April 5, 1968, march to City Hall to demand justice, I can’t forget the view I saw that day of the great injustice of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
On the evening of April 4, 1968, I was in a conference room in the student center at Lane College in Jackson, Tenn. I was working at my alma mater as its new director of public relations.
A co-worker came into the room and asked if we had heard that Dr. King had been shot. No one had, but we all began to pray silently that it was a fabrication. Later that night it was the lead news story on all three of our local television stations. Dr. King was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Memphis.
On April 5, the afternoon of my 26th birthday, I drove back to Memphis and went directly to 422 S. Main St., the address of the building where James Earl Ray fired the gunshot that killed the civil rights icon.
I was able to go into the second floor bathroom where Ray stood. I looked out the window and across the street at the motel and took several photographs. No police crime tape or security was there to stop me.
The view was haunting, and 50 years later it still is. Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but we march on.
After Dr. King was killed, there were two marches in Memphis. On April 8, Rev. Nicholas Vieron and Dr. Brooks Ramsey reflect on MLK50 and the April 5, 1968, clergy march St. Mary’s Episcopal Church to City Hall. Coretta Scott King and her four children led a silent memorial march Downtown.
On April 5, about 150 clergy met at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, 692 Poplar, and marched to City Hall to show their support for the striking sanitation workers. They confronted Mayor Henry Loeb and demanded that he meet with the workers and bring the strike to an end.
“There are laws far greater than the laws of Memphis and Tennessee, and these are the laws of God,” Rabbi James Wax told Loeb. “We fervently ask you not to hide any longer behind legal technicalities and slogans, but to speak out at last in favor of human dignity.”
That day and that march will be commemorated and re-enacted this morning, Saturday, April 7, at St. Mary’s, thanks to Rev. Mark Matheny and Voices for Justice.
Several of the original marchers plan to be there. That includes Rev. Dr. James Lawson, the United Methodist pastor who asked Dr. King to come to Memphis to assist the strikers. Lawson will lead an interfaith worship service at 1 p.m. Saturday. The re-enacted march will follow.
Rev. Nicholas Vieron, another original marcher, and Rev. Dr. James L. Netters, a city council member in 1968, also are scheduled to speak.
Justice demands that we keep marching.
Mark Stansbury has worked for 60 years as a WDIA radio personality and gospel announcer. He also served as assistant to four presidents of the University of Memphis.