Richard G. Carter (second left) interviews Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the Milwaukee Star in January 1964.
As a home-grown Milwaukeean, I cringe at all the bad things in the world today including deranged shooters killing school kids and adults, terrorist attacks running rampant and a boisterous bully in the White House. Thus, it is sadly ironic that 50 years ago next week, the greatest man of the 20th century unjustly lost his life. The king was dead. Long live the king.
It was April 4, 1968 when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fell victim to a sniper bullet on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. And like others slaughtered by sickos using powerful, high-tech weapons, Dr. King was an innocent victim.
To me, it seems like only yesterday. And there is no relief, or respite, today when remembering King’s death, at 39, in the Old South city where he’d gone to lend his considerable presence on behalf of striking sanitation workers.
Like many mature Americans, I still choke-up when I see the striking photo of the immediate aftermath, with King on his back and his colleagues pointing in the direction of the assassin’s gunshot.
In my very first Op-Ed column for the New York Daily News (Oct. 23, 1987) I speculated as to how King might have reacted to events plaguing the planet at that time. In so doing, I conducted many street interviews and came away enlightened. Each felt that as a result of his death, many of our lives had changed.
In the years since, I have been amused at how often other writers have followed my lead when marking the tragic anniversary by trying to imagine King’s role in world affairs were he alive. But to me, as one who was privileged to interview King twice, in person, my recollections of this warm, gracious man are equally meaningful.
In the depths of my continuing grief, it’s clear that in one sense, King died of natural causes. Natural, that is, for outspoken black leaders in America and worldwide.
Like Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and others less well known, King fell victim to the gunfire of assassins. His luck, often tested, finally ran out on that motel balcony in Memphis. And only the most optimistic among us deny that the dream he espoused died with him.
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Of course, King had contended with many death threats and violent acts. He was stabbed in New York by a deranged woman, hit by rocks while leading an open housing march through Chicago’s Marquette Park and bullied countless times by racist police.
Like many other black leaders, King was unjustly jailed countless times in countless cities, first in the Montgomery, Ala. bus boycott sparked by the late Rosa Parks, whom I was privileged to interview for USA Today in 1985, marking its 30th anniversary.
King also endured intense, personal, wiretapped scrutiny by the FBI and its unlamented chief, J. Edgar Hoover. And in the midst of the bus boycott, his home was bombed, with he and his family barely escaping unscathed.
Then the fateful time arrived on that fateful April 4 evening in topsy-turvy 1968. This was the awful year that later saw Robert F. Kennedy killed and massive street protests in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention. But King was truly special and millions—black and white—were shocked. Many of us still can’t believe it happened.
So how do we remember this very special man? My best memories are of the times I was able to talk with him -- after a Southern Christian Leadership Conference rally in Milwaukee in 1964 (see photo) and boosting Carl B. Stokes’ mayoral campaign in Cleveland in 1967. Still a young reporter, I was awestruck by his unpretentious, friendly and gentle manner and that he remembered me from my Milwaukee interview with him more than three years earlier.
“Ah, yes. The Milwaukee Star,” he said. “We had a nice time. And I love the photo of all of us together with me holding your newspaper.”
And just as did the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan on one occasion, King called me Mr. Carter during my interviews—an expression of respect I still cherish.
To his millions of admirers—those who lived when he lived and those who know of his deeds mainly through television clips—his wonderful, inspirational spoken words provide a legacy for the ages. And that is how most Americans remember King.
But he gave us more than unsurpassed oratory. King provided blacks in America with a genuine hero, someone we could proudly look up to without reservation. He was humble, albeit educated, accomplished and genuinely respected by the best and brightest.
I’ve always considered King’s greatest accomplishment the Nobel Peace Prize he won on Oct. 14, 1964, largely for his stance against the Vietnam War. This chagrined those who felt he should confine his interests and opinions to racial and domestic affairs.
Upon accepting this most prestigious of all honors in Oslo, Norway, on Dec. 10, 1964, King, as expected, gave another fine speech. Among those words, what I find most meaningful was the simple phrase: “...I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life that surrounds him...”
To me, this is what King was all about -- a great man able to connect with every man and woman, regardless of station. It’s why his tragic, violent death 50 years ago next week is still so hard for so many of us to live with. The king is dead. Long live the king.
Richard G. Carter was a Milwaukee Sentinel reporter, Milwaukee Journal columnist and local radio commentator, a New York Daily News columnist, and has appeared on “Larry King Live” and “Donahue.”
