My name is Mrs. Austin. I was 23 years old at the time that I heard about Martin Luther King Jr. being shot. I lived in Memphis, Tennessee. Memphis seemed a lot less complex and congested but still with a very large population very similar to what it is like now. There were a few thing that stood out about living in the 1960’s, such as having running water and plumbing in the houses. There was this movie theatre downtown that I always went to with my friends. I also sometimes went shopping and just relaxed. My life appeared to be just starting around this time in my life. I had been married for a few years now, and I just had a little baby girl the year before. My husband was a dental student at the time, so I became a stayathome mom most of the time, since my husband was at school most days. Once my husband graduated and got his dental degrees, he joined the air force. He was sent to fight in the Vietnam War, and he returned in 1970.
A normal day for me consisted of pretty simple tasks. I would get up early in the morning to get my husband up, so he could go to school. This was a usual routine I had before my husband joined the military forces. Then, I would take care of my baby girl for most of the day until my husband came back home from school. I didn’t really work because of how much I was needed at home to take care of my child. My life today is very similar to the life I had in the 1960s. I’m still taking care of a child and not working, so I can take care of her. There is one major difference. It is my age. I’m older now than I was in the 1960s, but I believe that is pretty selfevident.
The day that King was assassinated, I was attending a function at the Peabody Hotel with the wives of some of the other dental students that my husband knew and left the event around 2 PM. We drove past the Lorraine Hotel where Martin Luther King was staying, but I didn’t realize he was staying in that hotel. I got back to my apartment later that day. My baby was with her grandparents in a different part of town, husband was working, so I was home alone. I don’t remember if I heard it on the radio or saw it on the television, but I found out that King had been shot. It was extremely frightening for me, and everyone felt anxious and worried. My neighbors called me up and asked me if I would like to come
down to their apartment and stay with them for a short time, because some people claimed they saw people walking on the roofs. Thankful that my child was in a quieter and calmer part of town, I decided I would join them. Our apartment complex was basically all white. The building was right by a colored neighborhood. Later that night, we heard gunshots coming from the neighborhood. It became a very unsettling night for everyone.
Before King’s death, I didn’t think much of him. I wasn’t really bothered or offended by him in any way. The reason for this is because I was very much involved in my own life. I had just had a baby the year before with a brand new marriage. My life consumed most of my attention, so I never really thought about Martin Luther King Jr. that much. I had never thought about the things that were happening in depth. After he died, I became very sad for him. I understand that James Earl Ray, King’s assassin, shot him because he wanted things not to change and evolve, but that still wasn’t that right way to get what he wanted.
People’s attitudes seemed exceedingly slow to change. It took a long time for any change to start, and even though the change already started, society has to finish changing. Complete equality has not yet been achieved today, and we have not yet gotten there yet. This means equality between ethnicities and genders. There wasn’t a drastic change in my life or point of view, because my husband was stationed in Germany, so I was with him for the time he was there. I became sheltered by the military, because most things in the military were fair and equal, such as the salary rate. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination cause the youth of that generation to grow up slightly faster, because they had to realize what was happening and why. I believe I wasn’t very much bothered by integration. I was a researcher, so I worked with all kinds of races or ethnicities. It never generated any kinds of problems for me to work with other ethnic groups. This is the experience I had when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.