Keeping a legacy alive for 50 years
Bay Area activists say the civil rights icon’s message is still relevant
Fifty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Bay Area activists say the civil rights icon’s message is as timely and relevant as it’s ever been.
From the Black Lives Matter movement to protests against gun violence and efforts to reform America’s criminal justice system, many around the region continue to follow in his footsteps.
“Many of the movements that have occurred in the last decade are continuations of what Dr. King was trying to do 50 years ago,” said Clayborne Carson, a Stanford professor of African-American history and the director of the university’s King Institute. “Young people see the contemporary relevance of his message, rather than just seeing him as a historical figure.”
King was shot at 6:01 p.m. Central Time while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, and pronounced dead
an hour later. The news arrived on a busy Thursday afternoon in the Bay Area.
“It was like losing your mother,” said David Johnson, a San Francisco photographer who documented the March on Washington and other civil rights protests. He first heard about King’s assassination when his coworkers at the UC Berkeley Medical Center told him to turn on the radio.
“We were all in shock,” said Johnson, who’s now 91. “It was a hole that can never be filled in our lives.”
King came to the Bay Area several times to give speeches and sermons, speaking at UC Berkeley, Stanford and churches around the region. He even addressed a committee at the 1964 Republican National Convention at the Cow Palace, where he unsuccessfully urged delegates to support civil rights legislation in their party platform.
“A physical death is the price that some must pay to free their children and their white brothers from a permanent death of the spirit,” King said in a sermon at the March 1965 dedication of San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral, days after concluding marches through Selma, Alabama.
Clarence B. Jones, King’s former speechwriter and lawyer who is now a professor at the University of San Francisco, said he is just as angry about King’s assassination
today as he was five decades ago.
“It was one of the most painful days in my life and one of the most shameful days in the country’s history,” Jones said in a phone interview while on his way to a commemoration event in Memphis.
The best way for people to honor King, Jones argues, is registering to vote and becoming politically active. “He understood power, and for him power could be defined in voting,” Jones said.
The day after King’s death, thousands of people packed San Francisco’s Civic Center to honor him.
There was unrest around the country in the hours and days following, notably in Washington, D.C., New York City, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Baltimore and Kansas City. But the Bay Area remained calm, despite the shooting death of Black Panther Bobby Hutton by Oakland police on April 6, two days after King’s assassination.
Jerry Varnado, one of the founders of the San Francisco State University’s Black Student Union, the first in the country, said King was the model for American activists today. Varnado first heard King speak as a teenager
growing up in Jackson, Mississippi, where he went to a King sermon without telling any of his family or friends for fear of getting in trouble.
King “would be proud” of young people protesting for gun control in recent weeks, Varnado said. “His message of nonviolence was revolutionary — when you get into violence, it takes on a life of its own and nobody comes out clean,” he added.
Several events around the region today will memorialize King’s life and death. At Grace Cathedral, an audio recording of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech will
play at 4:01 p.m., the time of the shooting. A candlelight vigil and march will be held in Milpitas at 7 p.m. This week’s Oakland International Film Festival will focus on King’s legacy. And at San Jose State University, students will hold a community prayer and unveil a new exhibit of civil rights posters and memorabilia.
Bells at Grace Cathedral, UC Berkeley’s Campanile Tower and other churches around the region will ring dozens of times to mark King’s death.
At Stanford, the King Institute held an event Tuesday night, on the 50th anniversary
of King’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech at the Mason Temple in Memphis — the final public address he gave — and a documentary about King’s life was screened.
“I thought it would be more positive to really emphasize that last great speech as opposed to what happened the following day,” Carson said.
He said he hoped Bay Area locals would be inspired to think about what they can do to bring King’s vision into reality.
“I’ve been to so many King commemorations where people quote his words and they’re not applying those words to the problems around them,” Carson said. “His legacy is always stronger when people express their admiration to Martin Luther King through action, rather than simply words.”