When Martin Luther King Jr. was shot I was living in Raleigh, Tennessee while attending Memphis Harding Academy for my 9th grade year. Growing up in Raleigh consisted of a small community of just 12 kids while all but one mother stayed at home to attend to the housework. For fun my friends and I played baseball and spent time at our lake fishing and I also had the privilege to go to a country club to golf. Life in 1968 was typically me hanging out with my friends and being outside until dinner was ready. At school we had only white students and all of the schools were completely segregated, I didn't know even one black student and have only seen 2 black people which worked at my father's newspaper business. Unlike my father's business workplaces were also completely segregated. Life was different back then because of segregation and how people observed blacks, my grandma for example thought that blacks were not even smart enough to learn.
When Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, I was scared because my mother was scared for my father since he was still at work when the assassination occurred while we were away visiting family in Kansas City over spring break. My father was working at his newspaper business when it all happened, and heard there were riots breaking out. So my father armed himself with his gun and went into South Memphis in his truck to get the money out of the newspaper rack before it was stolen and fortunately got all of the money and wasn't harmed. My mother and I left soon to be back home with our father, and on our way back we noticed how there were police cars on the interstate every 100 yards. Life was normal after the assignation for me, but overnight I heard about the riots breaking out in South Memphis. The night after King was shot I was scared about something happening to my family because of the riots, but nothing did happen to us fortunately. The city was in a scared and angry state when King was shot, people were scared of the riots and the riots of African-Americans were angry.
Before King's death I agreed with my fathers view on King. My father saw King as a trouble maker for the rally's he led and thought that our country could've had a calmer way of ending segregation. But now I see King as a good man who led the African-Americans into equality and did it in a non-violent way. Life changed after King's death changed dramatically than before. When I attended Memphis State, they had non-segregation and I finally had black friends and really knew black people. Also, when I worked at Sears I worked with black co-workers since the workplaces hired blacks and whites to work. People's attitudes of different races changed toward each other too. In the 70's the Memphis basketball team went to the championship, and this brought the city together and races were at a time of equality. I think that overtime as the years go by races get along more with each other. I think that the death of Martin Luther King Jr. changed Memphis dramatically. It made people think about how to act towards other races and allowed over time for our community to grow and become closer with each other. Without Martin Luther King Jr. I think our city and our country would probably be completely different, but fortunately his impact has made our community and country a better place.