MLK Assassination - 40th Anniversary

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AP: Congress Honors Martin Luther King Jr.

Congress Honors Martin Luther King Jr.

4 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress marked the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death Thursday with tributes by House and Senate leaders and words of remembrance by lawmakers who once worked alongside the civil rights leader.

The ceremonies were held as a pair of polls showed the public with racially divided views about the state of race relations today.

"Because of the leadership of this man we rose up out of fear and became willing to put our bodies on the line," said Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a companion of King in the civil rights struggles of the 1960s.

Also speaking at ceremonies in the Capitol's Statuary Hall were Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and House and Senate Republican leaders John Boehner and Mitch McConnell.

Reid noted that after King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968, his body was not bestowed the honor of lying in the Capitol Rotunda. "Yet because our country dared to embrace his dream, his statue now stands there permanently, just steps from where we are."

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Seattle Times: MLK's Promised Land - Are We There Yet?

Martin Luther King Jr.'s Promised Land: Are we there yet?

Leonard Pitts Jr. / Syndicated columnist

"I may not get there with you."
- Martin Luther King Jr., April 3, 1968

A few words about the Mountaintop and the Promised Land.

On the last night of his life, Martin Luther King Jr. famously told an audience in Memphis that he had stood on the one and seen the other. He did not define the Promised Land, but he did not need to. That audience of striking sanitation workers and their supporters, those long-suffering women and men who erupted in cries and shouts, already knew.

The Promised Land was where you did not have to march for your dignity. It was where you did not have to sing for your freedom. It was where there was no need for speeches to verify your humanity. The Promised Land was that sacred place where all of God's children would stand as equals on level, fertile ground.

Friday marks 40 years since Martin Luther King was assassinated. And the search for that promised land has shrunken until it fits inside an old riddle, the one that asks whether the glass is half empty or half full.

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Youngstown Vindicator

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Jan. 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Jan. 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968

Friday, April 4, 2008

Most Americans can't remember the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. They hadn't yet been born by April 4, 1968, the day an assassin's bullet snuffed out King's life on the balcony of a Memphis, Tenn., motel.

But like any truly historic figure, King left a name and a legacy that is recognized today even by generations who succeeded him.

King was in Memphis the day he was killed to lend his support to striking black sanitation workers in the city. It was a reflection of what some King scholars say was a shift in his emphasis from the traditional civil rights struggles of the day toward a broader campaign for peace and the eradication of poverty regardless of race.

Contemplating what he might have accomplished had he been given more time boggles the mind. His time on the national and international stage was cut terribly short. It spanned a period of just 13 years, from his emergence as a leader during the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott of 1955 until his assassination.

There is little question that the tragedy of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination spurred some quick advances in civil rights that might not have come for decades. But what might King have accomplished if he had been given, at least, his biblical three score and 10?

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New York Times: The View From Room 306

The View From Room 306

By DAVID BROOKS
Op-Ed Columnist

April 4, 2008

On Wednesday morning I was in Memphis, and I walked over to the Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 40 years ago today. I toured the National Civil Rights Museum and then went up to the room by the balcony where King was shot.

The Rev. Billy Kyles happened to be filming a documentary with his daughter Dwania as I arrived, going through a second-by-second account of the last moments of King?s life. The Rev. Kyles was with King when he was shot and was due to host him for dinner that evening.

You can watch Dwania?s documentary someday to hear his description of that afternoon, but I was curious for him to describe King?s mood during the final hour of his life. When you read the accounts of his final months, you get a sense of building pressure, of a rising atmosphere of menace and doom.

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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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