Clarion Defender_1968-04 Special Memorial Edition

CLARION DEFENDER REV Kl NG MURDERED I MEMPHIS He lived a life of non-violent protest to injustice, but was killed in the most violent way possible~ Outside the emergency room of St. Joseph's Hospital, a Negro woman clasped her hands to her face, sobbed, and ran away. Mayor Henry Loeb, who had clamped on the Dr. Martin Luther King, whose peaceful curfew after last week's riots and then lifted it efforts to win equality for black Americans won him earlier this week, said "After the tragedy which world renown, was shot down by an unknown white man has happened in Memphis tonight, for the pro- as he was preparing to meet the greatest challenge tection of all our citizens, we are putting the of his civil rights career. curfew back in effect. All movement is restrict- Earlier in the week Dr. King had vowed ed except for health or emergency reasons." to stage a peaceful demonstration in support of black Chief Holloman said every resource of the garbage collectors, who had gone out on strike for a Memphis Police Department, the Shelby County bigger piece of the economic pie in the Mississippi Sheriff's Department and the Tennessee Highway River metropolis. Patrol is committed and dedicated to identify and But the plan was abruptly halted when a apprehend the person or persons responsible. well-dressed white man shot Dr. King as he sat in a Police threw a cordon around a five-block car outside the hotel that had become headquarters area of the Negro district that contained the in the Memphis effort. Lorraine Hotel, where King was slain. Two white The Memphis plan had been Dr. King's men wearing dark clothing were hustled into the primary challenge over the past week. The violence Memphis Police Station. that marred the march last Thursday had put a shadow Chauncey Eskridge, King's legal adviser, over his ability to pursue his mission of finding sobbed outside the emergency room when word came equality non-violently. out of King's death. Police issued a bulletin for a young He said it "ought to have a shocking white man who darted out of a building across the effect on the whole world. A man full of life, street from the hotel. full of love, and he was shot. There were reports that police -- and "He had always lived with that expectation civilian cars -- were pursuing and firing upon a (of assassination) but nobody ever expected it to car carrying three white men that sped out of the happen." city. Police also hustled two young white men into Solomon Jones, Jr., King's driver, said he the police station. was standing on the street when King strolled out It was not immediately known if there was onto the second-floor balcony, moments before he any connection with King's death. was to leave for dinner at the home of the Rev. "I and all citizens of Memphis deeply Billy Kyles, a Negro minister. regret the.murder today of Dr. Martin Luther King," Jones said King ''told me to start the car, said Police Chief Frank Holloman. he was ready to go to dinner. I said . "It's cold King was rushed to the hospital emergency outside, Dr. King. Put your topcoat on," and he room with a bullet wound in the neck. said ''Okay, I will" and smiled. Those were his Mayor Henry Loeb immediately reinstated last words. the dusk to dawn curfew in the city for fear King's "I heard the gun, Dr. King fell on his slaying would spark street violence. Police cor- back. He had been looking directly at the man." doned off a five-block area ruDund the Lorraine Hotel, After the shot, Jones said, he saw a man where King was shot. "with something white on his face" creep away The Rev. Andrew Young, King's top from a thicket across the street. lieutenant, said the Nobel Peace Prize winner was Half an hour after the shooting, police standing on the balcony outside his room when he reported they were pursuing a white, late model fell with a wound in the neck. Young said he and car and that a civilian car -- carrying a radio other aides were in the room at the time. on which he could communicate with police -- had Paul Hess, assistant administrator of closed on the white automobile and opened fire. St. Joseph's Hospital, said: King, a broad-shouldered man with skin the "At 7:00 p.m. (CST) Dr. Martin Luther color of burnished mahogany, won his first major King wxpired in the emergency room as a result of a battle in the war on segregation in Montgomery, gunshot wound in the neck. Other details will have Ala., the cradle of the Confederacy. to come from the coroner's office." The point of no return for the stocky In Atlanta, Mayor Ivan Allen rushed to-- young Negro came in Montgomery, in 1956. King's home and drove his wife to the airport. She King organized and led the famed Montgomery was in the terminal, awaiting a flignt to Memphis bus boycott, a campaign that led to integrated when she was told her husband was dead. seating on city buses in the deep south Alabama King returned to Memphis Wednesday to capital. try to prove he could lead a massive march peacefully It was a victory that many southerners He was at the head of the march last Thursday that found difficult to believe and launched King on erupted into violence that left one dead and 62 an integrationist campaign that made him the injured. best-known civil rights leader in the world. His critics immediately stepped up When he was in a Georgia jail in 1960, his attacks on his planned "Poor People's campaign" on wife, pregnant with their fourth child, received Washington this month, claiming he could not keep the a call from the late John F. Kennedy, then the massive demonstration from turning to violence. · Democratic nominee for President. King's aides said he felt he had to lead Mrs. King told newsmen Kennedy had told her another demonstration here --and keep it nonviolent- he was "very much concerned for both of us. He to prove them wrong. The march-- with 6,000 persons wanted. me to know he was thinking about us and he many bf them labor leaders and union men -- was would do all he could to help.'' planned for Monday. King had vowed to defy a Federal King was released from jail Court injunction banning the march if he could not and Kennedy won thousands of Negro get the judge to 11ft it. helped make him the 43rd President States. King died in the same emergency room where James Meredith was rushed in June 1965, after he was shot down in ambush a few miles south of here at Hernando, Miss. Meredith, however, was not seriously injured. the next day votes that of the United King was the first major civil rights leader to be slain since the ambush killing of Medgar Evers outside his home in Jackson, Miss., in 1962. N. E. UNION AT SHAVE·R