Where were you when you heard that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been killed?
In the afternoon of April 4, 1968, I was walking with a friend on Telegraph Avenue after leaving the campus of the University of California at Berkeley where I was a student. It was then that I heard the news that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee. News of his assassination spread quickly on a campus that was the center of the Free Speech movement, protests against the Vietnam War, racial equality, women’s equality, etc. I was sad to hear about a man who was marching to bring about equality, a man who wasn’t afraid of marching and risking his life, a man who gave his life and left a platform on which others could build a more diverse and equal America.
My memory fails me as to what exactly I did next after learning the news of King’s assassination. But looking online, I found an article “Where Were You in ’68? Faculty and staff memories conjure a tumultuous decade’s most eventful year” that was published in the June 4, 2008, UCBerkeley News. Irene Hegarty, who graduated in 1968 and went on to be the Director of Community Relations at Cal, described how the campus responded.
Some of the students “were called to a meeting at a vice chancellor’s house to advise on how the campus should acknowledge the event. It was decided that classes would be cancelled for the afternoon of the next day so that students could go to religious services nearby; that there would be a special carillon concert of spirituals played at the Campanile, followed by ‘We Shall Overcome’; and that students would gather at Sproul Plaza for a minute of silence and could then voice their feelings.”
Hegarty goes on to describe what surprised yet didn’t surprise me since we were students on a campus that had diverse opinions on every topic. She writes, “I sat on the Sproul Hall steps that day, listened to the music, and cried, while thousands of students gathered. After the music and the silence, someone stood up and said some words honoring King, but then another student stood and said that King had sold out to the White establishment. Before long, there was an active, heated debate—shouting and pointed fingers. I remember thinking, ‘A young man—a father, a husband, a great leader—is dead. Can’t we just honor him for a moment and fight this out later?’”
My year had gotten off to a very sad start when on February 2 my mother died suddenly. My grief continued after King died. On June 4, Robert F. Kennedy, younger brother of President John Kennedy, was assassinated and died two days later. Instead of being able to nominate another Kennedy for president, Hubert Humphrey ran and lost the election to Richard M. Nixon after a tumultuous convention in Chicago. Ronald Reagan was Governor of California at a time that the campus became a center for organizing and taking action for civil-rights marches and major anti-war protests.
We as a country have lost many great leaders, leaders who will stay alive through the contributions they have made to my life and those of others seeking peace, justice, and intelligence on who we can become when we take down the barriers to change.
