In late December of 2020 and early January of this year, I traveled over 3,000 miles from the east coast of the United States to El Paso, Texas and back again to take in an America In Transition. In nearly every major American city I visited along the way there was at least one street, avenue, or boulevard named after Martin Luther King, Jr.
The streets are so named as a memorial to King's dedication to the cause of civil rights and to signal that the community where the avenues are located are committed to that same cause. Some of the King streets, in recent months, have been stenciled in yellow block letters declaring Black Lives Matter. So the fight goes on.
Memphis is the southern city where King's life came to an end on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. It was considered one of the few places in town where Black people could stay safely. King had stayed in room 306 often. It was easy to predict he would be there again which made him an open target.
On the evening of April 4, 1968 a lone gunman fired one shot from a rooming house across the street hitting King in the side of his face. He was declared dead a few hours later while under-going emergency surgery.
Above: Top and bottom - outside Room 306. Middle - rooming house where shot was fired from and the path the bullet took marked in the pavement. The site of the assassination is now The National Civil Rights Museum.
As news of the assassination spread around the country, riots erupted, particularly in predominantly Black sections of major cities. Washington, D.C. suffered some of the worst damage and even today, you can drive down H Street, a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol, and see the remnants of some of the damage.
For many Americans that battle still rages on. I mention the violence in Washington, D.C., because from the location of the riots of 1968 you can see the location of the riots of 2021.
Most people would agree that since 1968 the country has made progress in race relations and civil rights, but there is no doubt that differences over racial issues still divide us. The election of Donald Trump was seen by many as a reaction to the administration of Barack Obama, the country's first Black president.
The riots at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, were carried out by a mostly white crowd carrying the Confederate flag and other symbols of segregation. The Black Lives Matter movement is a response to police killings of Black people under questionable circumstances. President Joe Biden has declared "systemic racism" one of the four crises of our time.
The death of King came toward the end of a decade of political violence in this country marked by the assassination of the president, and the targeting of civil rights leaders, and presidential candidates. Today, Republican members of Congress are demanding the right to carry guns on the House floor, while their colleagues of color don't feel safe in the U.S. Capitol.
It seems we have been lulled into a false belief that the battles fought by King, the election of Obama, and now Kamala Harris, are signs that we have moved beyond issues of race in America. Those issues, it appears, have never gone away, they have only been festering beneath the surface and have once again broken out into the open.
I stood outside room 306 of the Lorraine Motel on the day voters in Georgia were deciding to send Raphael Warnock to the U.S. Senate. Warnock, a Black man, has been the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where King served. The next day, January 6, a riotous mob attacked the Capitol in Washington.
The heavy weight of consequence presses down on you as you take in the scene at a place like the Lorraine Motel and think about what happened here, what has happened since, and consider the twists and interconnectedness of history. King to Warnock. Obama to Trump to Biden and Harris.
I can only conclude that to say there is still work to be done is an understatement. It gives us too much credit.
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© Dean Pagani 2021
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© Dean Pagani 2021