Welcome to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memphis Schools Oral History Collaborative. Harding Academy, a local Memphis school, founded the project in 2014. The initiative aims to chronicle the experiences of average Memphians on April 4, 1968, the day Dr. King was assassinated. What did they see? What do they remember? How did it change the way they viewed Memphis? Race? Our country?
After initiating the project, Harding was joined by eleven other schools: Craigmont High, Cordova Middle, Evangelical Christian School, Lausanne Collegiate School, Margolin Hebrew Academy, Overton High, Schilling Farms Middle, Southwind High, St. Agnes School, St. Dominic School, and White Station High. Local broadcasting station WKNO (PBS) also joined the project in an advisory capacity. Turnitin.com sponsored the project by allowing all submissions to be run through their plagiarism checker matrix.
Explore our site and discover stories from Memphis on April 4, 1968. All narratives are composed by students in Memphis area schools after conducting oral history interviews with people who were living in Memphis on that day. Visit the Stories page to view them. Visit the Supporters page to find out more about some of our key sponsors.
For more information, email Project Coordinator, Scott Frizzell at frizzell.scott@hardingacademymemphis.org.