Fifty years ago the world lost one of the greatest spokespeople for human rights it has ever known. The impact of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on civil rights in the United States, who was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968, and his impact on humanity itself cannot be overstated.
King was a champion for the people, and a leader in every sense of the word. He led through peace, but he was anything but quiet; just look at the 1963 march on Washington, Selma and his 1964 winning of the Nobel Peace Prize specifically for contending racial inequality through nonviolent opposition. King was a man of the people and for the people, but his cries of equality for all men were not accepted by all men.
One such man was James Earl Ray, a World War II veteran who turned to a life of crime following the war. On April 4, 1968 Ray shot King with his Remington rifle while King stood on the second floor of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Ms. Henrietta Giles, adviser for the National Association of Black Journalists at UTM and lecturer of communications, reflected on the importance of King to not only the United States, but even more so the campus of UTM.
“I think that the life of Dr. King is very significant to all of our students here at the university” Giles said. “For several students it would be impossible for them to even be here enrolled as students were it not for the work of Dr. King.”
Giles’ father was very involved in the Civil Rights Movement and even attended a conference in Washington, D.C., where King was the speaker. Giles wonders how if King were able to look around today what he would think. She said that in some ways she thinks he would be pleased with the steps our society has made, but in other ways he would be very disappointed in the grudges that people still cling to. She says how King’s achievements have profoundly affected her life.
“His life and what he stood for and how he overcame so much and tried to teach other people not to lash out but to be heard in a nonviolent way. To be heard by being silent, and not from a passive context, but just not reciprocating the hate. I think those lessons have stayed with me all of my life” Giles said.
Most would agree with Giles, because King wasn’t just for black people; he was for all people, he was for humankind. He was more than a civil rights leader to many; to some he was a reverend, to some a philosopher, to some an activist and to some a problem. King most likely knew he was impacting the nation and in turn the world in his march for civil liberties, but who knows if he knew the lengths his words would reach and the people of all kinds whose hearts he would touch.
“The significance of Dr. King’s life to the extent that our students understand what Dr. King really stood for is important on the one hand.” said Dr. David Barber, coordinator of the Civil Rights Conference at UTM and associate professor of history.
“On the other hand the fact that he was assassinated and was unable to continue the work that he was doing is, in my mind, of far greater importance, because had Dr. King not been assassinated this country would be a very different country today. Because Dr. King was the one person who commanded respect across the whole of the black community,” he said.
King had a vision, a “dream” as he called it, for all people to be equal not restricted by race or gender. As Barber would put it, he envisioned a society where “all men were brothers, and all women sisters.”
It’s a vision that our society still strives towards today. Barber also commented that if King were alive today something like the Black Lives Matter movement would be much more organized and structured and therefore most likely make a bigger impact.
Freedom for his people, true freedom, would be fought not by the barrel of a gun, but by the cry of passionate hearts. But the man who spoke through peace and nonviolence would be gunned down in violence. Ray didn’t silence King with a bullet however, in his hatred that he struck King down with, King’s words resonated evermore from the grave. As we approach 50 years since that day in Memphis, the struggle is still real, and perhaps still no one can say it better than Dr. King himself said it from the Lincoln Monument in 1963.
“Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protests to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.”
