In the 1960's, Janice E. lived in Orange Mound in Memphis, Tennessee.
She was at her house sitting on the couch when she heard the news that King was finally pronounced dead. The year 1968, for her was a typical work day. She would go to work and come back home to raise her child. She currently works at Horn Lake Middle School and is a teachers assistant. If the racism had not have stopped, she would not be able to work there now because Mississippi was a very racist state.
She remembers the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. well. She was sitting at her house when she heard that Dr. King had been assassinated. She remembers after it was announced that he was dead, it soon got dark outside and began to snow. She remembered that before king was assassinated, it was always sunny outside or warm and after he died it got dark and gloomy and began to snow. She said there was thick snow and it stayed for about a week, and she thought it was very unusual.
She had a reaction of shock and confusion, because she thought that Dr. King came to help people and for someone to kill him made no sense. The city was hectic the night of King's assassination, and she and her mother went to go a pick up a family member from work as well as others.
She thought and still thinks the same thing about King before and after his death. She thinks that Dr. King came to help people and not hurt. He came to Memphis because of the sanitation problem with blacks. She attended Dr. King's last speech at Mason Temple The Mountaintop. The sanitation strike happened because of how blacks were being treated. They would have garbage tubs and would have men to pick them up and put them on their shoulders and you could see liquids or foods coming out of the tubs that they were carrying. After his speech The Mountaintop, there was a group, the Mobilizers, who started a riot on Beale Street. They were throwing bricks and breaking windows of stores and people began to loot. She was with her sister, Sandra, and they tried to get out of the chaos and ran but they ended up finding themselves run into a dead end and had to turn back around and find their way through the crowd. When they got back in the crowd they saw this man with a lot of fabric because there were a lot of tailor shops down Beale Street, and he stole fabric. Be dropped a roll of fabric and Janice noticed it and said, "You dropped one!" And he told her thank you, and he picked it up. But during and after this riot was over, there were many people being arrested every single day for so many different reasons. In the 1960's if it rained, black's were not allowed inside to take cover. She saw one man having to climb inside of a garbage truck just to have shelter from the rain and was eventually killed because the people said that they didn't know he was inside.
Shortly after King's death, she went to another march. This time the march was peaceful as she described it only being able to hear people's footsteps. She saw Bill Cosby, Robert Culp, Jesse Jackson and many other famous people at the march. But she said no one made a very big deal out of seeing them. They simply saw them and kept marching. The attitude of people dramatically changed after the assassination of Dr. King. She says that it opened up a large opportunity for blacks to get better jobs and even if they didn't get better jobs, they got better pay. She said it opened the eyes of white people to see and really understand how harshly black people were actually being treated. She said for most white people it made them change their views of blacks completely but there were still some that did not change and continued to be racist.