From the Archives, 1968: US stunned by Martin Luther King assassination

First published in The Age on April 6, 1968

Martin Luther King

The last words of Dr. Martin Luther King were utterly in character. “Be sure to sing Blessed Lord tonight — and sing it well,” he told a colleague as a sniper’s bullet exploded in his face in Memphis, Tennessee.

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., second from right, standing with other civil rights leaders on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., a day before he was assassinated at approximately the same place.Credit: (AP Photo/Charles Kelly, File)

Since 1956 Dr. King, 39, had been the great disciple of non-violence in the American civil rights movement. His efforts won the world’s highest accolade in 1964 when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Ironically, the man of peace was no stranger to violence. He was imprisoned at least 12 times in Alabama and Georgia. His home was bombed twice and he was nearly stabbed to death. He faced police dogs and batons, rock-throwing white men and hate-preaching blacks.

All because he had a dream of an America where the colour of a man’s skin was irrelevant to the quality of his life.

Dr. King’s philosophy was simple and honest. “I believe in a militant, non-violent approach in which the individual stands up against an unjust system using sit-ins, legal action, boycotts, votes and everything else — except violence or hate.”

Throughout his life, Dr. King exhorted his less patient colleagues: “We believe in law and order. Don’t go get your weapons. He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword. Think for yourself, man. Don’t let the herd — white or black — take control.”

Martin Luther King Jr. addresses marchers during his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.Credit: AP Photo, File

At the time of his death Dr. King was in the middle of what could have been his greatest test as a black leader. Despite the great advances made under his leadership, the advocates of “black power” were gathering momentum and support for their philosophy of naked terrorism.

With the long, hot summer just around the corner, many observers saw Dr. King as the synthesising force which might draw together the various elements of the civil rights movement.

His only role now can be that of the martyr to the cause.

Martin Luther King was born Michael Luther King in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1929, and grew into boyhood in a community where 65 per cent of the black population was on the dole. His father was the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church and his mother was a former school teacher.

Unlike most black children, his world was secure. It was ordered, balanced, restrained, and contained generous lashings of religious teaching.

Coretta Scott King and her daughter, Bernice, attending the funeral of her husband, Martin Luther King, on April 9, 1968.Credit: (AP Photo/Moneta J. Sleet, Jr.)

Young Michael learned about segregation when he was six years old. A white playmate, son of a grocer, was told he must, not play with the Negro boy. Mrs King told her son about segregation then, but was emphatic that he should not feel inferior.

His father — whose volatility contrasted with his mother’s calmness — told him about Martin Luther, leader of the Reformation. “From now on, you and I are going to be named Martin Luther King,” he said.

Martin Luther King started school in 1935. By the time the outstanding pupil was in the ninth grade at Booker T. Washington High School, his father was a powerful force in the black community and in the infant civil rights movement.

The growing boy read enormously – Plato, Hegel, Kant, Schleiermarcher, Tillich and Neibuhr. Also he read all he could about Mahatma Gandhi.

In college, Martin Luther King continued his outstanding performance. He completed his doctorate course at Boston College, with philosophy courses at Harvard.

In 1954 he was called at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. At once he organised a social and political action committee within the church and urged every member to become a registered voter.

Two years later in Montgomery — the cradle of the Confederacy — Martin Luther King had his meeting with destiny. It came when a black woman was arrested for sitting in the white section of a segregated bus.

Dr. King immediately organised a boycott of the buses by walking to work and organising a pool of 300 cars. The famed Montgomery bus boycott lasted 381 days before the white proprietors capitulated and desegregated the buses.

It was a victory that launched Dr. King as the best-known civil rights leader in the world. During this campaign his house was bombed for the first time.

After winning the bus boycott campaign he left Montgomery and returned to Atlanta as associate pastor of his father’s church.

Here he organised the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an alliance of about 100 church-oriented groups which started to spearhead militant racial programmes in the South.

Dr. King by now was a symbolic leader of the civil rights movement and was frequently arrested and gaoled whilst leading non-violent demonstrations, often marching in jeans and a denim jacket.

As his fame grew Martin Luther King found himself travelling extensively throughout the United States and the world to speak and preach to vast audiences.

In 1963 he travelled some 275,000 miles and made more than 350 speeches. During the same year he played a leading role in the segregation struggles in Birmingham, Alabama — a struggle in which he had the personal support of President Kennedy.

After that he led the famous march of 250,000 on Washington. Twelve months later President Johnson handed Dr. King his pen after signing the historic civil rights bill in the White House.

When informed that he had won the Nobel Peace Prize Dr. King was in hospital, exhausted from an extensive tour of Europe.

In 1965 Dr. King was named “Man of the Year” by “Time” magazine. Also, he received the Roman Catholic Church’s St. Francis Peace Medal for his efforts on behalf of civil rights.

At the time of his death Dr. King was in Memphis to lead a march by the city’s striking garbage collectors, most of whom are black. Also, he was planning another huge march on Washington to jog America’s conscience about the plight of its poor coloured people.

“Be sure to sing Blessed Lord tonight — and sing it well.”