Colvin Classics: Why We Must Never Forget MLK On April 4

By Leonard E. Colvin
Chief Reporter Emeritus
New Journal and Guide

Publisher’s Note:   April 4, 2024  marks the 56th anniversary of the day Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot to death. We are reprinting this Colvin Classics from our April 2, 2003 edition written to honor the life of Dr. King. This article has been slightly edited for clarity.

On January 20, America observes the birth and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, the central leader of the Civil Rights Movement, which unfolded during the 1950s and 60s.

April 4 marks the tragic anniversary of the day Dr. King was shot to death (in 1968) as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in downtown Memphis, Tennessee. Dr. King was in the city supporting the city’s sanitation workers, who were primarily Black and on strike, seeking to force the city to raise wages and improve their working conditions.

Historians and civil rights activists have complained about how the nation is enthralled with the day of King’s birth, while the tragic day of his death in the spring of 1968 has been forgotten over the years.

Casual references may be made in the mainstream and Black media, or quiet observances may be held by an increasingly smaller number of groups, including the King Center in Atlanta or the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which King co-founded in 1957.

Just how should the nation observe the day of King’s passing?

This question was posed recently by the New Journal and Guide to a number of people of varying ages who are current and longtime activists and ordinary citizens in Hampton Roads.

Andrew Shannon is President of the Peninsula SCLC. He is one of the youngest SCLC presidents in the nation. Also, he is the Virginia Vice President of the SCLC.

“I think observing King’s work on his birthday, death, and year-round is important,” he said. “Each day, I think we should be doing something to make Dr. King’s dream become a reality. Not just in the middle of January and each first week of April. Recall that before this man died, he helped this nation realize what it stood for: freedom and equality for all.”

Shannon said   when King died on the night of April 4, 1968, “he was in Memphis helping sanitation workers. I ask how many Black leaders today would go out and stand up for what, some called the least among us. As the Bible says ‘when you serve the least of God’s childre – that means the garbage workers, the poor and the homeless – you serve Him.’”

Shannon said the Peninsula SCLC and other units have “some of the same issues facing Blacks in the 1960s as they   did two generations ago.”

On the day King died, Dr. Milton Reid, who founded the Virginia Chapter of the SCLC in 1963 and was a friend of King’s, said he was in his study (at New Calvary Baptist Church in Norfolk), where he pastored.

There he received the news of his friend’s death. King was due to arrive in Norfolk that following Saturday to work on the Poor People’s March. Reid was the Virginia Organizer of the campaign. Thousands across the nation were planning on invading Washington, D.C., to bring the plight of the poor to the nation’s political leadership.

Dr Reid said, “There are at least three things Americans could do on April 4.

“First, King was a man of Peace, and we should protest this unjust war being waged in Iraq.

“Second, we should be on the steps of the Supreme Court protesting the destruction of affirmative action, which has helped with equalizing the nation’s employment and educational playing fields.

“Third, we should take a very hard look at ourselves and seek to determine why we still have psychological blinders on,” he said. “We sit back and wait for others to answer the questions about problems facing our people … we are unable to pursue our own freedom and destiny years after King died.”

“There is not much difference between life and death in a sense…one is active, and the other is not, said local poet and retired educator Barbara Marie Green.

“We recall great men by recalling their deeds and their work and they are profound after the physical is gone, we do so spiritually in our minds. That is why we keep them alive … to help us. That is how King should be respected, as well.”

A year before King was murdered, Green recalled living in Brooklyn and planning on going to Manhattan with her mother to attend a rally where King was to speak at the Concord Baptist Church.

“Mother and I sat in the balcony, and when King was introduced, she said, ‘oh, he looks like a little boy,’ I recall her saying.”

“But when he spoke, he had a thunderous voice. He was small in stature, but he stood 100 feet tall with his words and ideas. I recall it like it was yesterday. You could see he was so special and committed to his work.”

Vivian Brown was born two years after King’s death. She is well aware of the gap in the generational awareness of his life and work.

Many people have been taught about King’s work and life instead of witnessing it with their own eyes or reading firsthand.

 But Brown, a trained lawyer, recalled as a child in her Virginia Beach home that her family would sit and listen to his speeches on his birthday under a huge portrait of King that still dominates the wall of that house today.

“That helped me and other kids get involved in the NAACP and volunteer for organizations that help fulfill Dr. King’s dream,” said Brown, the project director of the AF’ram Festival.

“I think many people of my generation have fallen short of what people like Dr. King and others sacrificed to help us achieve the rights and access we have today. Each of us should commit to joining some organization and focus on making some difference in the lives of our community, especially our children, on that day. That is how we can realize the Deam of Dr. King.”

Several years ago, Lucinda Pitt overheard an exchange between her son and his friend who was discussing the history of civil rights and how Black activists like King had fought for some of the social and political rights.

“My son was talking about the civil rights history of the country,” she recalled. “Then the other young man said, ‘I don’t give a damn about that bull … back then. This is today.’ It startled and hurt me at the same time.”

Pitt was the civic leader of the now closed privately owned Fairwood Homes  Apartment Complex, a low-income housing community in Portsmouth when its owners were unable to fix many of the structural flaws in units of the complex cited by the city.

“A lot of people do not understand the importance of King’s life, let alone why he died,” she said. “We should spend that day teaching young people about King’s work and our history. King and people like him paved the way for people like him, who is 22 years old. But he does not understand Jim Crow, how Blacks in 1965 achieved full voting rights. Finally, he digs mauled old women seeking to march for freedom.”