King statue at the MLK National Memorial, Washington, DC
On March 27, 1968, I reported to the downtown Chicago YMCA for the start of six weeks of VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) training. After seven days at the Y, we were sent into the field for five weeks of on-site training before our final placement for the rest of the year. I drew an assignment at an agency on the West Side of Chicago.
I reported for my first day of work on April 3. The next night, April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. Chicago was relatively quiet that night; all hell was to break loose the next day.
I was young, white and stupid, and oblivious to the coming firestorm, so my new roommate and I went grocery shopping for the weekend. We were in the store when a brick crashed through the plate glass window; we left our corn flakes and Snickers behind and ran back to the house where we staying. OEO Regional (Office of Economic Opportunity) was on the phone ordering us to get in a cab immediately and head back to the Y.
I spent the next several days watching the city burn while trying to quell the burning in my heart. I never returned to the West Side of Chicago, being sent instead to Aurora, IL. The assassination changed my life. Literally.
Several months later I rode one of three buses that left Aurora for Washington, DC, where I spent weeks in Resurrection City, the encampment of the Poor People’s Campaign on the national mall. It was easily the most intense and eye-opening experience of my life up to then. I met dozens of hard-working and dedicated people and volunteered in the kitchen, learning how to cook greens for hundreds at a time. I rapped politics til late in the night, participated in workshops and marched on federal buildings.
Dr. King’s spirit was everywhere, changing my life again.
Today I think of him and of how far we have come.
And of how far we have yet to go.
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