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Hartford Courant: A Dream Shot Down

A Dream Shot Down

Frank Harris III
April 4, 2008

Forty years. One shot. A fall. Death.

An American patriot - whom some called un-American - died on a balcony in Memphis.

I was 11 when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. In the 40 years that have zoomed since, I wonder where we would be as a nation if the shot that killed King -- had missed.

Where would we be if the mountaintop had been postponed? If the dream had not been deferred? If he had gotten up, dusted himself off and continued his work? If he had lived to die at last of old age?

Longevity has its place, but where we would be if that haunting night I remember from 40 years ago today had been just another night among the 18,000 other days and nights of my life.

But it wasn't. And so I remember. With wide-eyed innocence, I remember when King was killed in Memphis. I remember from my family's home on a chilly April night in northern Illinois. It was the kind of April night that makes you wonder what's taking spring so long to kick in. The black and white television was playing "The Flying Nun." More amazing than a nun who flew, however, was the amazement of seeing for the second time in my life - the first was the news of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy - how bad news on the TV could, for a moment anyway, freeze folks in their tracks before quick-thawing them into action.

A nation burned that night.

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