Where were you when MLK was assassinated? I remember it like yesterday.

[Faygo Kid]

Yes, I am older than most here. A junior in high school then. That evening, I was attending a class in the basement of the school building to become a softball umpire that summer (make a few bucks; big time sports fan). Then, some a##hole came down the stairs, and said, Don't go into Detroit tonight, King was shot and killed in Memphis. I was stunned; even paralyzed. Bobby Kennedy was in Indianapolis for a speech that night. Instead of cancelling it, he dumped what he was going to say, and instead told the crowd of King's killing and about the need for racial justice and healing. Spontaneous from the heart (he never recovered from Jack's assassination). Cities burned across the land that night, but not Indianapolis. It was quiet. The message is what counts, but the memories will never be erased. Bobby was dead two months later - another uneraseable memory. Damn.

[RubyDuby in GA]

1. I was -10

Ten years before I made my debut.

[wicket]

4. Same here!

:)

[SaveElmer]

2. Living in Fargo, North Dakota...

I was 7 years old, my Dad and I were coming home from somewhere and my mother met us at the stairs in hysterics saying King had just been assasinated.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. I was in Vietnam.

[MuseRider]

5. I was in junior high

and I did not hear about it until the next day (I think it was the next day). I think my parents listened to the news about once a month so I was always way behind and got all my news from my friends.

I do remember standing outside the band room listening to my best friend talking about it. We all cried, such sad news.

[FreedomAngel82]

6. Aww

I wasn't a live yet. :(

[Rick Myers]

7. I was about 10 years old,

standing in the toy dept of a J. C. Penney's store when I heard it on the radio. Everyone gathered up their families and started to leave. I remember knowing it was something very important.

[hlthe2b]

8. I was living in the South at the time... elementary school...

I just remember the looks on the teacher's faces and their gathering up their students (all or largely white, as I recall)shortly afterwards to "warn us" with worried looks "not to say anything to any black person right now. That something had happened to MLK and they would be upset."

I've long wondered if they really thought African Americans were going to do something horrible to a bunch of little kids who deign to ask them a question! But, it underscores the paranoia. My parents were terrified that riots or a full-blown race war would break out... I rememberr Bobby Kennedy's speech on TV. That reassured my parents too, though my Dad was not any kind of major Kennedy fan.

Sad time. My childhood memories and adolescence was full of violence. Amazing how that shaped me in one way and FREEPERS from my generation, another?

[Faygo Kid]

12. Thoughtful post. I remember that mindset.

I was in elementary school when JFK ran for president. The controversy over a Catholic president was the topic of conversation in my household. We did not understand one another; now parents are terrified of a terrorist attack, and we are paying the price as we did with race then (and now).

[hlthe2b]

18. I was only 5 when JFK was killed...

but I remember the anti-Catholic slurs... Sadly some from within my own family. Not to be an apologist for such, but I've always thought it was more verbal bluster than anything. These same family members --through their deeds-- showed a willingness to help others, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, or other. :shrug:

[Faygo Kid]

29. Same here. Good people, salt of the Earth.

Grandma was a Swedish immigrant, about 1912. Her son, my uncle, married a beautiful Catholic woman well before my birth (loved them both dearly), and Grandma had issues (Swedish = Lutheran). They were all fine, upstanding people; Grandma an uneducated woman of her generation, but she would cook you a meal that couldn't be beat if you were hungry. At no charge.

[catabryna]

9. Eeeek!

I was almost 3 years old! Thank goodness I had parents and attended schools that believed his life and accomplishments were worthy of discussion!

[chefgirl]

16. I always think of this on MLK day.

I was in grade school at the time. Maybe first or second grade. I wasn't aware of anyone having been assassinated, until the next day at school.

My very best friend was a little girl named Jackie, who happened to be black, and when I got to the schoolyard that morning, and walked over to her, like I normally would have, she told me she couldn't be my friend anymore.

I was completely confused, and asked her why, and thats when she explained to me that MLK had been killed, and it was whites against blacks now.

I remember that I started to cry, and went to Sister Mary Ruth and asked her why Jackie would say something like that, and she took us both into the church, and explained to both of us how that was the kind of thinking that MLK was trying to stop, and that it was people who wanted to keep blacks and whites separate who were responsible for his death.

I don't remember much else that she said, except that she made us promise to still be friends, and by the end of the day, things were back to normal between Jackie and me.

I learned, even that early on, to pay more attention to events in the world, even if they don't seem to apply to my life. I also learned, although I didnt realize it until much later, what an important event it obviously was in the personal lives of so many Americans.

In a way, it really shaped how I viewed life from that point forward.

-chef-

[hlthe2b]

32. that's a nice story...

thank heavens for that enlightened nun.

[chefgirl]

34. Thanks

Yeah, some of us actually were afforded liberal educations in Catholic schools in the sixties. Amazing to think of that today, isn't it?

-chef-

[AspenRose]

10. I was born three weeks after the shooting, in Germany.

eom

[karlrschneider]

11. I have no idea, I don't think I heard about until a few days after.

...

[hwmnbn]

13. I was in Ft. Benning Ga. nearing my ETS....

(Expected Time of Separation) that meant I was almost out of the Army. We were put on alert, but nothing happened. I guess the National Guard handled most of the situations.

My unit included many Viet Nam vets back from their tour of duty who were awaiting their release. It might not have been a good idea to let them out on the streets, armed and in a stressful situatuion.

I was 20 years old, but still a politically naive, brainwashed kid.

[Bandit]

22. I was at Fort Polk LA and we also were placed on alert

It was expected there would be riots but never came about although a few incidents did occur. The fear was palpable though..

[Punkingal]

14. Senior in high school....

In Tennessee, and I was so horribly upset and ashamed that this great man was killed in my home state. I also remember thinking when they caught James Earl Ray that it was odd that he could make it all the way to London. I suspected a plot, and I still think there was a plot...J Edgar Hoover hated MLK, and I think he had something to do with it.

[Thirtieschild]

15. It was a Thursday night, raining in Atlanta

My husband was in the garage, loading the station wagon for a weekend trip to St. Augustine. The UPI office called. King had been shot. He raced to the office and I didn't see him again for at least three days - he slept on a couch there, directed the coverage and wrote the assassination, the funeral and the search for the assassin. Unfortunately the kids shoes were in the station wagon and we only had one car. I took the eight-year-old and the ten-year-old with me to walk in the funeral march. I cried every time I heard "We Shall Overcome" - our six-year-old called it the song that makes Mommie cry - and my husband cried like a baby while he wrote. The feeling in Atlanta was powerful; one of the city's own had died.

[Faygo Kid]

21. Thank you. We should never forget.

I will add this, that after Bobby Kennedy's assassination, I went out and bought both his and MLK's last books. They were so filled with hope and commitment, and commonsense, humane solutions to problems - and opportunities. Now look what we have. Thanks.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

17. I was nine.

My mother woke me up and told me about it after breakfast.

She was very upset, that much I knew.

It was the same scenario with RFK, two months later.

I started reading the newspaper every day that summer, and have been a rabid pinko leftist nutcase ever since!

[alfredo]

19. I was at Tract C at Kagnew Station Asmara Eritrea*.

when we got the news. The lifers cheered, but the rest of us knew it was a tragedy beyond belief.

*4th USASAFS

[Oeditpus Rex]

20. It was my 12th birthday

The party came to a rather dark, disjointed halt.

[Itchinjim]

23. I was eight. I was in the basement rec room...

with my mom and a couple siblings, when my dad came down and told mom about it. I got a sinking feeling in my gut. Because mom and dad were supporters of the civil rights movement I had a pretty good idea of what it meant. My dad said very presciently something about how cities were going to burn that night. Two months later or so, Bobby Kennedy was gunned down. I had the same feeling then.

[doni_georgia]

24. I was four years old, but it's one of my earliest memories

I lived in Atlanta. As a four year old, I knew well who Dr. King was and had listened to the numerous debates different members of my family had had about him - from my well-intentioned but wrong-footed grandmother who felt segregation was wrong, but that it was up to the elected officials to sort it out, to my biggoted uncle who thought King should be in jail, to my preacher uncle who had marched with Dr. King in Selma, to my own parents who supported what Dr. King was doing but silently in an effort to try to keep the peace. We were all at my grandmother's that day, and the memory that stands out most in my mind was that everyone fell into stunned silence. I remember the next day sitting on the front porch with my aunt and her trying to explain what had happened to me, this confused child, who simply sensed that this was something big that I would remember the rest of my life.

[MrBenchley]

25. Baltimore, Maryland

A bunch of ignorant hillbillies came out in the street and began cheering....and a few minutes later I heard the bulletin over WCAO.

[Innocent Smith]

26. too young

No memory of it at all.

[Kaylee]

27. 3 years before my birth....I am so thankful for all he did to

make my life as a black girl growing up in America that much better than my parents.

[f-bush]

28. Tacoma, Washington

I was 10 at the time and a student at St. Charles Borromeo Roman Catholic School.

That evening we found out about the murder and the priest called for a Mass in King's honor. I was an alter boy at that Mass.

With in a few days, there were disturnances on Tacoma's Hilltop and neighborhood that is predominantly people of color and slighted for many years.

[catmandu57]

30. 6200 Swopepark Way Kansas City Mo

That was where we lived. I don't remember exactly what I was doing, probablly building a model car. I was ten soon to be eleven, and really wasn't sure what was going on, I remember the city exploding though.
That summer we joined the white flight to the burbs.
1968 was a horrible year, let's hope we never see another like it.

[hlthe2b]

33. So you lived near the zoo?

I remember it fondly from my childhood..I gather the area has become fairly crime-ridden now?

[catmandu57]

36. The park and the zoo

was our babysitter, it was only two blocks away, and the zoo was free if you went in the mornings.

[Bluerthanblue]

31. I remember it was raining, and grey...

and the radio in my sisters room announced the news.
I didn't want to go to school.
I was a kid, but i knew who MLKjr. was and i loved him-
i remember numbness.
And weeping... and thinking all the good people get asasinated.

And thinking the world was not going to last much longer.

I've always hated april rains- even knowing the flowers need the rain doesn't help.
April is grey and sad.

[DesertRat]

35. 7th Grade in Massachusetts

It was a terrible day.

[tenshi816]

37. I was in school in Atlanta.

MLK was buried about 3 miles from our house. City of Atlanta schools were closed for a couple of days because it was claimed that there had been threats of interracial violence, but even as a kid I was sceptical about that. I went to an integrated school and there had never been any problems there, although obviously I can't speak for all the schools in Atlanta. Baby liberal that I was, I automatically assumed that any threats of violence came from white rednecks. My mother wouldn't let me leave the house for days and I remember the scorn I felt for all the adults I knew. Sometimes children see things far more clearly.

Even as a kid I knew what a major event MLK's assassination was, and what a loss.

Edited to say that I wasn't literally at school when MLK was killed. I was at home and saw the TV news coverage and knew it wasn't good.

[lostnfound]

38. At age 6, I remember being awed by what I saw on TV when he spoke

and feeling moved in my young heart. I knew that Vietnam was, and wanted to know why; and I knew that black people were treated very badly, and wanted to know why; and I knew when I saw him speak on TV in front of a large crowd that there was some hope that good would triumph over the evil non-sensical things that were happening in the adult world that no adult could answer for me.

And when he was killed I couldn't understand. I remember crying, that is all.