The 4th of April

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor

Hopefully, you would not have needed to read it in the “Today in History” section on Page 11 to know that today marks the anniversary of one of the darker days in U.S. History.

On April 4th, 1968, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed, just a dozen miles or so from wherever you are reading this, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. That was 56 years ago. Dr. King was just 39 years old when he was killed.

A little math tells you he would be in his early 90s were he still alive. And even if he would have died from some other cause by now, you can’t help but wonder what wisdom, leadership and insight he could have provided… in Vietman, in Watergate, in the Cold War, during the AIDS crisis, during 9/11, in the Great Recession, or on Jan. 6, 2021. What would his take have been on the War on Drugs? On Rodney King or Black Lives

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Matter? Might King’s presence over the past half century have made some of those tragedies simply not happen?

My grandmother talked one time about the day Dr. King was shot. She was working in Memphis at the time and in the panic and unrest, she just wanted to get out of Memphis and back home across the bridge. My mother was in high school on April 4, 1968, and she remembers it being all over the news. Of course, times being what they were and people being how they are, there were some folks who were happy King was dead. And let’s not pretend that kind of attitude went completely away either. I remember when I was in middle school when President Reagan signed the MLK Day holiday into law. The next year when it rolled around, a friend of mine snarkily wished me a “Happy James Earl Ray Day” — Ray, in case you didn’t know, being the man that shot and killed Dr. King. Sad, but I probably laughed. What else is an 11-year-old boy going to do in that situation, right?

For the record, I would not laugh at that same “joke” today. If you’ve never been to the National Civil Rights Museum (where the Lorraine Motel once stood), I highly recommend it. It’s very important to remember our complicated history and it’s very moving. If you don’t find it moving, I’ve got a joke you’ll orobably like…