Dream lives on
March commemorates King’s last days
On the 47th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., hundreds take part in a commemorative march from Mason Temple Church of God in Christ to the National Civil Rights Museum, site of the Lorraine Motel where King was fatally shot. The night before the slaying, the civil rights leader gave his famous “Mountaintop” speech at Mason Temple in support of the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike.
Memphis rapper Alphonzo “Al Kapone” Bailey pointed toward the balcony adorned with a red and white wreath on Saturday at the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 47 years ago.
Bailey and Stax Music Academy’s Justin Merrick were performing Common’s and John Legend’s “Glory,” as hundreds gathered on the brick plaza and lawn.
“They tried to kill the dream,” Bailey said. “Right there. The dream still lives. The dream still lives.”
Members of the crowd, some holding signs reading “family,” “peace” and “economic development,” sang, clapped and raised their hands toward the sky.
Hundreds had marched to the motel, the site of the National Civil Rights Museum, from the Mason Temple, where the civil rights leader gave his famous “Mountaintop” speech the night before his death in 1968 in support of striking sanitation workers.
“Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right,” King said in that speech. “And so just as I say we aren’t going to let any dogs or water hoses turn us around, we aren’t going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on!”
Jerry Taylor, standing outside the museum on Saturday, said he was 17 years old and a student at Bartlett High School when King was assassinated and the governor called the National Guard to Memphis.
“It was a sad day, because (King) was a great man and it was like the dreams that he had, when he died, it looked like they died with him,” he said. “As a younger person that’s what I thought. The hope was gone. But really it wasn’t.”
Ira Nelson, a 73-year-old man from Senatobia, Mississippi, sitting on a bench in front of the museum, recalled hearing the news of King’s death when he was living in Downtown Memphis as a young man.
“I was at the house,” he said. “I don’t know if it was radio or television. And it came across.”
Then, “a lot of hurt and grief” ensued, Nelson said.
“I admired him,” Nelson said. “The courage that he had.”
In front of the balcony at the museum is the stone marker inscribed with the Bible passage:
They said one to another, behold, here cometh the dreamer … let us slay him … we shall see what will become of his dreams . “It’s still alive,” Nelson said of King’s dream. “Maybe we haven’t progressed to the fullest but we have progressed ... It’s wonderful when I sit and look at my kids and see the freedom they have that I didn’t have. We were very mistreated. Yes we were.”
Terri Lee Freeman, president of the National Civil Rights Museum, said parts of King’s dream “have come to pass, and I think that we can certainly say many of the legal barriers that existed are gone.”
“We can also say that when we look specifically at African-Americans that there are more professionals, there are many CEOs, there is a lot of progress and of course we have to say that we have an African American president,” she said.
“Now after we say all of that, we have to look at the social issues. And some of the social issues that he spoke of have in fact gotten worse. The wealth gap has broadened. Here in Memphis we have almost one out of every two children in poverty, and it’s harder to get out of poverty than it ever has been ... We have a lot of work yet to do.”