I heard the loud thumping of footsteps coming up the basement stairs. Something was very wrong. Marie appeared at the kitchen entrance, distraught and out of breath. Martin Luther King has just been shot dead in Memphis. It’s all over the news. Come downstairs. Now.

A terrible primal rage boiled up from somewhere deep in my consciousness. Not Martin Luther King. Not King. For God’s sake, not him.

I stood for a moment overcome by this terrible anger then said,” They’re going to burn America to the ground tonight. And I’m glad.”

I wasn’t kidding. 

The TV news was already reporting riots in cities across the nation. There had been several seasons of deadly riots since about 1964. Now April, what T.S. Eliot once called the cruelest month, was exploding into flames and gunshots. And Dr. Martin Luther King was dead.

Earlier in 1968, I had volunteered to work on Martin Luther King’s Poor Peoples’ Campaign. King envisioned a massive multiracial occupation of Washington DC to press for social justice and an end to the Viet Nam War. He planned to call it Resurrection City.

King had moved in a radical direction by 1968, still committed to non-violence, but upsetting many in the traditional liberal community with his appeals to class solidarity and his opposition to the Viet Nam war.

I was on the University of Maryland (UM) committee with Mike Green, along with a student who would later become a campus cop and about 20 other people. It was nothing glamorous. Our job was logistics— helping to move the food and materials necessary for the poor peoples’ tent city that King hoped would awaken America’s conscience.

At our last meeting, we were planning for a DC walk with Dr. King in mid April. I had never marched with King before. This was going to be special.

King had gone to Memphis to support a sanitation workers strike. The workers were represented by the American Federation of State, County and Municiple Employees (AFSCME), the same militant civil rights oriented union that had established itself at UM. King hoped that the Memphis workers would become part of his Poor Peoples’ campaign.

UM student activists were already committed to supporting the campus workers’ union. Somehow it all looked like it would come together.

Instead, King had been cut down by gunfire as he stood on the balcony of his motel.

I sat with Marie in my parents’ house in Silver Spring Md, and heard the news that the 14th Street corridor was in flames. That was the street where I experienced some of my earliest childhood memories...where I had seen my first movie (ironically, it was Snow White).... the neighborhood where I had cried hysterically at the age of 4 when we moved. Familar landmarks were disappearing.

An era was over. Who knew what was coming next.

The news stations played the speech that King had made the night before, about having been to the mountain top. ... about seeing the promised land.....and the possibility he might not get there with us. It was the greatest speech of his life; better than the more famous “I have a dream” speech. King knew the odds. For a man in his line of work, they weren’t favorable.

Both Marie and I needed to do something...anything. The next day, we went over to the UM campus for a rally. Several hundred confused, angry students were there: SDSers, BSU members, SGA representatives and others. Many people had fled the campus in fear of racial violence.

Everyone wanted to do something.Typical of that Jim Crow era, the flag in front of the admin building was not at half-mast. Even MacDonald’s Hamburgers had lowered the flag out of respect. A short angry confrontation with an admin bureaucrat got the flag lowered. It wasn’t much. But what else was there to do?

Marie and I huddled with other SDS members. Someone said a rally was being organized in front of the White House. Neal and Dinky offered to drive down there with Marie and I. Jackie volunteered her car and another group of SDSers piled into her VW wagon.

Neal took the wheel of his car and we sped off down Route One and headed for the White House. As we drove into the District, it was obvious that white people were fleeing the city. DC traffic jams were notorious (especially after they ripped out the trolley cars), but this one was too early in the day for rush hour.

As we approached the intersection of 7th Street, we saw smoke rising off to the right. Stopping for a red light, we could see fire trucks and cop cars a couple of blocks away with nearby buildings in flames. People were running in the street, some with stuff in their arms.

The light changed and we drove on. No one on the street seemed to take any notice of us, but there was now bumper to bumper traffic going out of the city. Periodically, DC cop cars with riot shotguns pointed out the windows would wail past.

As we approached what was then the downtown shopping area near Woodward and Lothrop Dept store, we began to see small bands of teenagers running through the stalled traffic. They were looting stores a couple of blocks from the White House. We saw armed soldiers and more riot cops as we neared Pennsylvania Ave. We were supposed to meet in Layfayette Park, but that was closed off. Angry short-tempered cops waved as away. If there had been a rally, we were too late.

Driving back through the riot via Rhode Island Ave and the stalled traffic jam of terrified commuters did not seem like a great idea, so we headed over toward Dupont Circle and got back to the Maryland suburbs from that direction.

As night fell we knew that across our nation people were being killed, wounded and arrested as whole blocks went up in flames.

There were machine guns on the White House lawn. But for us, there was nothing to do but go home feeling helpless and defeated.

We got in touch with Jackie and she told us that they had made it to Layfayette Park ahead us, but had been driven out by cops and soldiers. The protest had fizzled.

Something went out of me that day. I never went back to volunteer for the Poor Peoples’ Campaign. Yes, King’s aides did organize a Resurrection City, but I lacked the spirit to even go to help out or attend the rallies. Somehow it seemed pointless.

1968 was a bad year. A very bad year.

In January the Tet offensive in Viet Nam was drowned in blood. Thousands of people were killed. Lyndon Johnson did announce that his presidency was over and that Viet Nam peace talks were scheduled, but the talks soon bogged down. Then Martin Luther King was shot. Soon afterward, Bobby Kennedy, the great liberal presidential hope was assassinated. The Soviet Union sent in tanks against the Czechoslovak experiment in socialist democracy. Mayor Daley’s Chicago cops beat up anti-war protestors on international television while Gene McCarthy’s peace candidacy went down in defeat at the Democratic convention. Richard Nixon was elected president in the fall.

A bad year. A very bad year. One could easily argue that our current age of GOP barbarism dates from those 365 awful days in 1968.

In the winter of 1968, I had volunteered to work for Dr. Martin Luther King. In the winter of 1969, I found myself volunteering to work with the Black Panther Party.

The times were a changin’ alright........

Where were you when Dr King was shot? Please comment below.