This Week in Texas Methodist History April 4

 

A Personal Reflection on the Anniversary of Dr. King’s Assassination

 

I began this weekly blog in January 2006 and for the most part have avoided personal stories.  I have included some in footnotes as I did last week. 

 

Today, this Easter Sunday, I am thinking about one of the most traumatic days in my life and the life of this country, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on Thursday, April 4, 1968.  The sadness still lingers fifty-three years later.   I, and many members of my generation, had been thrilled and inspired by the courage of the non-violent civil rights struggle of the 1960s of which Dr. King was the most prominent spokesperson.  As adolescents, we were forming the value systems that would guide our lives, and seeing such courage against such violent opposition had a huge impact upon us.

 

One reason the sadness continues is that we naively believed that the progress toward full dignity for all people of all races would continue, but events of the recent past show that progress toward full civil rights is being reversed.  Legislatures in 43 states are considering bills that seek to limit voting participation for minority groups.  Remember that voting rights were the linchpin of the 1960s campaigns.   Overtly racist political campaigns have been successful, and the result has been the lifetime appointment of judges resistant to even the idea of using courts to promote racial equality. 

 

In April, 1968 I was a junior at Southwestern University.  As part of my meditation on Dr. King’s assassination, I re-read the student newspaper, the Megaphone, for April 1968 to help me remember the event.

 

The April 5 issue of the Megaphone covered the assassination on page 1, but the lead article was about the speaking appearance of Senator John Tower later that night.  Senator Tower was an alumnus, who had been elected as the first Republican senator from Texas of the modern era.  In 1968 there was speculation that when Richard Nixon won the Republican nomination for president, he would choose Tower as his running mate. 

 

The April 19 issue of the Megaphone summarized the speech.  Tower mentioned the assassination and denounced it as “cowardly and irrational” act but also distanced himself from Dr. King’s campaign for equal rights.  Nixon, and the Republican Party, were already pursuing the “Southern Strategy” of playing up racial divisions for political gain. 

 

The April 5 issue was full of other political news.  My roommate wrote an editorial welcoming Lyndon Johnson back home to Texas (LBJ had just announced he was noting running for reelection.). 

The editorial presented LBJ as a man who tried very hard but was unappreciated.  The student newspaper weighed in on the candidates for the Democratic nominee for Governor of Texas and chose Eugene Locke.  (He didn’t win, but the night of the primary, I rode with him in the elevator of an Austin hotel.  His “victory party” and a formal dance I was attending were in the same hotel.)

 

Re-reading the Megaphone, I found that I had also supervised an election.  I was the outgoing president of the Men’s Residence Hall Council and had just conducted the election for my replacement. 

 

The most vivid memory comes not from April 4, but from April 9.  That was the day of Dr. King’s funeral.  It was also the start of Easter break so the campus was deserted---almost deserted.  I was still there because I had a campus job.  I maintained the switchboard at one of the residence halls.  There was one telephone for the entire dorm.  I would answer the phone and then buzz the room of the person being called, who would then have to come down to the lobby to talk.  There was only one television for the entire dorm complex, also in the lobby.  I was scheduled to work on April 9 even though I knew all the residents would be gone for Easter.  I looked forward to a quiet day.

 

I had the television on and was watching the funeral.  An African American woman who was part of the custodial staff also watched.  My vivid memory is the two of us in the empty dorm both with tears streaming down our faces as we watched the services for our hero.