Much has changed in the years since King’s death

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20100404/NEWS01/704049921

By Julie Muhlstein, Herald Columnist

This Easter, the joyous day when Christians celebrate the miracle of resurrection, the calendar also holds a sad reminder of life cut short, the life of a 20th-century man of faith.

Forty-two years ago, on April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot to death on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tenn. Reading the history of King’s assassination last week, I was reminded of what brought King to Memphis. It was to lend support to striking sanitation workers.

Around here last week, the news was also filled with talk of a possible strike by garbage collectors. That topic, trash collectors’ labor issues, was one of the few similarities I saw in a revealing comparison of The Everett Herald from April 1968 and how this newspaper looks today.

Using a microfilm reader at the Everett Public Library on Friday, I was startled by the coverage of the King assassination 42 years ago — or, more accurately, the lack of local coverage — and yet, not surprised.

I remember that week well, as much for a personal loss as for the national tragedy. It was the spring of my eighth-grade year at Spokane’s Sacajawea Junior High. Dr. King was killed the week my grandmother died. My father, a colonel in the Washington Air National Guard at the time, was at a Guard meeting in Atlanta when the assassination occurred. He had to stay longer than planned as some cities experienced unrest in the wake of King’s murder.

Pages of The Everett Herald from the days after April 4, 1968, look much like I recall Spokane’s Spokesman-Review newspaper from the 1960s. A national story was just that — something that happened far from our Northwest communities.

What’s missing from the 1968 papers are any local stories of how the shock of King’s death affected people here. Seeing those papers now, it was a glaring omission.

FULL story at link.

[Stargleamer]

1. Yet with so many white people voting for assholes. . .

and thinking that African-Americans "have arrived", there is still so much that needs to be changed.

Currently reading Taylor Branch's trilogy of America in the King Years.