Monday,
January 18, 2016, is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day -- it always brings back distant
memories for me,
* * *
In
1955, at age 26, Martin Luther King, Jr. was thrust into civil-rights
leadership in Montgomery, Alabama, after Rosa Parks had made her courageous
stand not to move to the back of the bus.
A
group of blacks, formed by the community to lead a bus boycott, chose King as a
compromise candidate to lead their moral crusade.
Immediately,
King was besieged with threats. The Ku Klux Klan gave him three days to leave
town. He spent a night in jail for driving 30 mph in a 25-mph zone. A bomb
exploded on his front porch.
But it
only made him stronger.
In April of 1966, I was drafted into the U.S.
Army (Vietnam Era) and stationed at Ft. McPherson, Headquarters of the Third
Army, in Atlanta, Georgia, whereupon I was one of a half dozen data processing
analysts, working night shift, supervised by a civilian employee, coding documents
to be processed by computer.
On
April 3, 1968, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) was in Memphis, Tennessee,
speaking to a capacity crowd of striking garbage workers and others at Mason
Temple about the climate of racial hatred.
King’s final
words in his last speech were… “I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get
there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get
to the Promised Land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything.
I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the
Lord.”
At
6:01 the following evening, King was struck in the face by a rifle bullet as he
stood on the balcony outside of room 306 of the Lorraine Motel.
He was
rushed to St. Joseph’s Hospital and pronounced dead at 7:05.
Martin
Luther King believed in non-violent protest of racial injustice -- it cost him
his life. He was 39 years old.
Racial
riots broke out that night in over 100 cities, including Detroit, Chicago,
Boston, New York, Newark, Baltimore, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati,
Nashville, Kansas City, Oakland, Memphis, etc.
On
April 5, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson called out 4,000 federal troops to
quell the rioting in Washington DC -- plus, 20,000 Army and 34,000 National
Guardsmen had been ordered to anti-riot duty elsewhere.
April
11, 1968, was my scheduled discharge date from the U.S. Army. However, King’s
funeral was to be conducted on April 9 in Atlanta, just a few miles from Ft.
McPherson.
My
plans to become a civilian once again were temporarily put on hold. The entire
world, including the Army, expected massive outbreaks of chaos during or shortly
after the ceremony. Instead of packing to go home, I was in combat gear,
practicing bayonet thrusts, wondering how much live ammo would be distributed
for riot control.
Lester
Maddox, an outspoken racist who once chased blacks out of his restaurant by
passing out axe handles to his white patrons, was the Governor at the time. He
was furious that flags at state buildings in the capitol of Atlanta, and
elsewhere, were at half-mast the day of the funeral.
Surrounded
by 200 armed state agents, he proceeded to personally hoist the two flags back
up, but backed off when the major TV networks showed up to record the action. This
added mayhem gave those of us standing by with bayonets an extra sense of
anticipation.
The funeral service
was held in Ebenezer Baptist Church.
King’s casket was
placed on an old farm wagon, with steel-rim, wooden-spoke wheels. 30,000
marchers were sent ahead to start the procession. An estimated 200,000 mourners
took part in the procession that eventually passed directly in front of the
Capitol.
Governor
Maddox, along with 160 helmeted troopers and 40 enforcement officers from other
state agencies, remained inside the statehouse. There were eight armed men at
each entrance.
Maddox
had given them the following orders: “If they should go so far as to break
through the locked doors, then start shooting and don’t stop until they are
stacked so high above the threshold the followers would be unable to climb over
them.”
The
procession passed by solemnly and the funeral occurred without incident.
Two
days later, I was discharged from the Army and returned home to Minneapolis, where
I kissed the ground and embarked on a new life once again.
___________
Quote for the Day -- “A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
___________
Bret Burquest is the author of 11 books. He lives in the Ozark
Mountains in the Land of Ark on Planet Earth -- where the human conscience
is eternal and will never die.
___________
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