Looking back on the time of Dr. King

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April, 4 1968 while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis Tennessee. Even today, conspiracy theorists dispute the charge that James Earl Ray was the lone gunman. What did any of this mean to a fourteen year old girl of Irish Catholic and WASP descent living in Woodstock NY? It added to the uncertainty of life, contributed to the sense that the world was a flame with anger and unrest. The murder of Dr. King added to my mother’s angst over the treatment of African Americans in the United States. I recall vividly, while traveling with my family in the Deep South in the mid sixties, my fathers reaction to my mom using a colored only drinking fountain and the colored bathroom. Unfortunately, the apprehension that I experienced about the event was not over some philosophical difference with my mother. It was more focused on the words tumbling out of my dad’s mouth, chastising my mother for putting us in harms way by acting so impulsively. During 1968, my father, who would have been traveling through out New York State, was working to organize teacher union locals. Today, at ninety one, he recalls the event as the beginning of the trend toward individuals stalking political figures and powerful people with the intent of murdering them. My father views the murder as part of the fallout from the hatred of blacks by a segment of southern whites that was never addressed during the time of the Emancipation Proclamation. He has first person recollections of being a New Yorker in the south during WW II. Dad and many of his northern buddies had to learn to safely navigate the cultural habits of segregated drinking fountains, restaurants, toilets and public transportation. Though I recall the sense of unrest and uncertainty, the Woodstock that I was part of, in general, was pretty isolated from racial segregation and the pain and suffering that was inflicted on a community of people. We know, as a result of research and writing by local historians, that there was another side to the Woodstock community that was deeply involved in promoting and working toward social change. A good portion of that research relates to Communism and anti Semitism. Today, when I think of Dr. King, his message, as I’ve learned it over the years, and his place in history, I am struck with the thought of how far we’ve come, and yet how terribly far we have yet to go. The road to human kindness is so short a trip, and yet such a difficult one for many to travel.