Thursday, April 4, 1968 ... "a date which will live in infamy," to borrow a quote from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is how I feel about the day they slayed "The Dreamer" on the balcony in front of Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn.
I was in elementary school in Washington, D.C., at the time and I remember watching the CBS Evening News and seeing a picture of an African-American man who had been killed. I would come to know this man as Dr. Martin Luther King , Jr.
The next day at school, my teacher told us something very bad had happened and she did not know what was going to happen next, so we were all going to pray. Shortly thereafter, school was dismissed. We were to leave the building immediately. Little did we know at the time, but Washington, D.C., was about to go up in smoke.
As I walked home from school, people ran past me, away from the 14th Street shopping corridor. At home, my mother and my cousin were standing on the front porch watching the people go by.
New words were added vocabulary that day: looters, rioters, curfew, tear gas and assassination.
It seemed as if we were on the porch for hours, watching the parade of merchandise travel past. More and more people flooded our normally quiet block as they headed for the shoping district. My cousin Lola kept saying how shameful it was because Dr. King believed in nonviolence and this was just the opposite of what he stood for.
All night long, I heard sirens. The next day I noticed a sign on our front door which said "Soul Brother." Neighbors had the same signs in their windows, and signs were also placed inside cars. These signs prevented your home from being burned or your car window broken.
One evening the National Guard said they might have to evacuate our block. The gas station on the corner was on fire and it might explode and wipe out the entire block. I stood on the front porch, looking up the street at the balls of fire leaping into the night air.
The National Guard had set up barricades in certain areas of the city to prevent the rioting from spreading to the white community. So the rioters burned up the businesses in the African-American community because the majority of those businesses were owned by outsiders.
James Brown, "the godfather of soul," made appeals to stop the rioting. He saved Washington from being burned to the ground.
After several days, I ventured one block to the 14th Street shopping corridor. I didn't recognize a thing. Our mini-downtown was gone— the department store, shoe stores, drug stores, jewelry store, hardware store, liquor store, even the 24-hour newsstand where I purchased my Mike and Ike candy. Everything was gone.
Corporate America wasted no time in acknowledging the rebellion that had taken place in America's cities. By April 18, Time-Life Books had published I Have a Dream: The Story of Martin Luther King in Text and Pictures, price $1.50. Profits from the book were donated to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
The majority of the businesses have never returned. Today you can travel for blocks and not see a grocery store or gas station in Washington. Many of the burned-out structures still stand boarded up as a testament to "the date which will live in infamy."