{"id":114529,"date":"2018-04-06T11:00:43","date_gmt":"2018-04-06T15:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=114529"},"modified":"2021-02-10T09:05:30","modified_gmt":"2021-02-10T14:05:30","slug":"james-reese-the-night-of-kings-assassination-and-the-50-years-since","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2018\/04\/06\/james-reese-the-night-of-kings-assassination-and-the-50-years-since\/","title":{"rendered":"James Reese recalls the night of King’s assassination, and the 50 years since"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I recall, it was between 7 and 8 p.m. when on the television I heard, \u201cWe interrupt this program to bring you a Special Report.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the \u201960s, these announcements had a much more ominous quality than today\u2019s frequent \u201cBreaking News\u201d alerts.\u00a0A Special Report truly meant a significant, if not earthshaking, event had occurred.\u00a0I was watching alone\u00a0in\u00a0this moment on April 4, 1968. My parents were away from our home.\u00a0I sighed and waited for the impending report.<\/p>\n

Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot in Memphis, Tenn. There were not many more details aside from that he had succumbed to the bullets.<\/p>\n

I was not surprised.\u00a0As a 12-year-old growing up in the U.S. South, I had seen King\u2019s favor wane among some people from 1966 to 1968. Maybe it was his fair-housing marches in the North.\u00a0Or maybe it was his position against the Vietnam War, announced in ’67\u00a0\u2014 a stance attacked by white and black people and the black and white press.<\/p>\n

The author of this essay, James Reese, has been a Bates dean since 1977 and a key leader in the development of the college’s distinctive MLK Day tradition. He was the Class of 2017’s Baccalaureate speaker<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

Or perhaps it was the Poor People\u2019s Campaign he had initiated in an effort to critique economic conditions, which were less easy to pinpoint and change than the fight to enter public accommodations or gain voting rights.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

James Reese has been a Bates dean since 1977. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/p><\/div>\n

Over the next 50 years, those issues would, fortunately, rise in prominence.\u00a0But that night, his murder made me wonder whether the dream was deceased or just deflated. In my sadness was a loneliness, an uncertainty about whether our society would drift backward to division and unfairness, or if his campaign\u2019s efforts had enough momentum. Fifty years later, as we talk about that night and the commemoration of Dr. King, I still reflect upon and debate the answer.<\/p>\n

That night, when my parents returned, I shared that Dr. King was dead.\u00a0They looked at me as if, surely, our son would not make this up.\u00a0I looked at their faces and saw in their expressions, deep and strong, that we all would need to work forward together \u2014 which we would do after mourning.<\/p>\n

The next days moved quickly:\u00a0the shock of the event; the fear of racial backlash; the disturbances in many cities; the forlornness of another great man struck down.\u00a0The funeral saw Benjamin\u00a0E. Mays, Bates Class of 1920 and King\u2019s primary mentor, give the final eulogy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Martin Luther King Jr. with his mentor, Benjamin Mays ’20, who delivered King’s final eulogy on April 9, 1968, at Morehouse College.<\/p><\/div>\n

We can see, in the years that followed, society\u2019s response: the impact of the civil disturbances; the increased enrollment of students of color in schools\u00a0that formerly\u00a0discouraged it;\u00a0the expansion and controversy of affirmative action;\u00a0opportunities and setbacks for people of color; a deserved review of Dr. King\u2019s personal flaws;\u00a0and an increased understanding of the histories and horizons of many groups of people amid campaigns to slow them.<\/p>\n

The last 50 years have led to multiple interpretations of what\u2019s improved or not, and how quickly or slowly.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Demonstrators with signs, one reading “Let his death not be in vain,” march in front of the White House after the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968. (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, U.S. News & World Report Magazine Collection)<\/p><\/div>\n

But that night was still.\u00a0\u00a0We went to sleep early, sad \u2014 not bewildered, but vastly disappointed.\u00a0The morning brought more sadness, feelings of defeat, and much thought about how to maintain King\u2019s spirit.\u00a0These days, the spirit is present in his film clips and in the deep analysis of his ample writings.\u00a0But we miss much of it and him.\u00a0Many outcomes\u00a0\u2014 positive and negative\u00a0\u2014 that he identified, warned of, or concluded in his writings are present today.<\/p>\n

He did much of his work on civil rights and humanity\u00a0between the ages 26 and 39.\u00a0Many forget he died very young.\u00a0Some have said he was the most important American in the last 100 years.\u00a0If so, how? And why?<\/p>\n

And if not, what does the last half-century say of his impact and of society? The question looms, still, on the anniversary of MLK\u2019s assassination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twelve years old in 1968, James Reese recalls the night he learned of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, and ponders unanswered questions of King’s legacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1005,"featured_media":114568,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[175,224,11009],"tags":[9648,5708],"class_list":["post-114529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-justice-poverty","category-society-culture","category-the-college","tag-james-reese","tag-martin-luther-king-jr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1005"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114529"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117343,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114529\/revisions\/117343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}