Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream lives on
On April 13, Annapolis will hold its annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Parade. Some of the people watching the parade on West Street will remember where they were when King was assassinated.
I was a 14-year-old on April 4, 1968. I was standing on the corner of West and West Washington streets in Annapolis with about five other teenagers in front of the now-defunct Richmond Drug Store. A Black boy on a bicycle rode by and yelled, “Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was just shot.”
I did not realize then how traumatic this event would be. We crossed West Street and saw a pawn shop that sold television sets. We could see a white reporter speaking as we peered in the window but couldn’t hear the sound.
One of my friends had a small transistor radio and turned the dial to the WANN station. We heard the late Charles W. “Hoppy” Adams, Jr., a radio personality, say that “Dr. King was just shot and killed in Memphis, Tennesse.”
It is hard to articulate what that moment felt like. We returned to the black-and-white television set and saw images of King flashing on the screen.
An angry Black boy kicked the cement pavement and said, “They have done it again.” Anyone my age and alive can tell you where they were and exactly what they were doing when King was murdered.
The anger and grief over his death would be manifested by civil unrest from Maryland to California.
King was 39 years old when he was assassinated. He would never have an opportunity to see the birth of grandchildren. He had no chance to see his five children become adults and marry.
I remember a group of us started walking downtown, and as King’s murder swept through the community, the fear and tears began flowing. Some anniversaries are painful, and this is one of them.
In my lifetime, I knew about the assassinations of Mississippi NAACP’s Medgar Evers, President John F. Kennedy and Malcolm X. Yet, in many ways, this one was different.
I remember the efforts of the late Mayor Roger W. Moyer
Sr., Morris H. Blum, Rev. Leroy Bowman, George Phelps Jr., Marion Satterwaite and Joseph “Zastrow” Simms to keep Annapolis “calm.”
Baltimore City and Washington,
D.C., were literally on fire. Gov. Spiro T. Agnew called H. Rap Brown and Stokley Carmichael the “twin priests of violence.”
Agnew was blaming them for the rebellions occurring all over America. I remember the adults telling the youth, let us make sure that we allow Annapolis to return to “normal.”
“Normal”? Poverty and racism were the true twins of evil that my generation experienced. At that moment, I decided that I would not allow Annapolis to become “normal” again.
In 1968, there were private clubs that discriminated against women, Jews and African Americans. Slum housing was par for the course. Job opportunities were limited.
I had no intention of Annapolis returning to “normal.” In the 56 years since King’s assassination, I have seen us move from protest to progress.
We now have Gov. Wes Moore, Attorney General Anthony Brown, Chief Judge Vickie Gipson of the Anne Arundel County Orphan’s Court, Sheriff Everett Sesker, Delegate Shaneka Henson and other African Americans holding public offices who were largely denied to people based on their race for years.
However, I am acutely aware of the progress and challenges ahead and have faith in the future.
Yet, I will always remember what it felt like on April 4, 1968. Tears flowed, and some people were left distraught and feeling lost.
I witnessed this moment of history, which I will take to my grave. Yet something else happened that day, which I want to share with the readers.
On that day, my parents brought their children into our living room. They were solemn. My father was a butcher, my mother a maid.
They were part of a generation that had seen racism and experienced an American apartheid system. They knew first-hand what this moment meant to them and their children.
I waited to hear from them about what we should do. They said nothing, but they hugged each of us, and an eerie feeling encapsulated the room.
Then my mom, who would die at the age of 104, said, “God will make a way out of no way.” Indeed, more than five decades later, I have seen it occur, God making “a way of no way.”
I will never be able to pay the debt that I owe my ancestors, who gave me and my generation the strength to endure.
I will never forget King saying, “If a man hasn’t found something worth dying for, he isn’t fit to live.” On April 4, 1968, when King died, I found something worth dying for.
He also said that in a democracy, an American’s most crucial march is the march to the ballot box.
In May and November, when I go to vote, I will remember that little Black boy who said “They shot and killed Dr. King”.
I will also remember that “normal’ is never acceptable if it means accepting the status quo that includes racism.
I will remind many people who listen that “A Luta Continua,” which in Portuguese means that the struggle for peace, justice and freedom continues.
You can murder a dreamer, but the dream lives on. Somewhere in the not-too-distant future, I hope that someone will remember who killed King and why, on this anniversary, some are still weeping.