I interviewed Jim S., my grandfather. He lived in Jonesboro Arkansas about an hour outside Memphis when King was assassinated. He said nothing really changed for him when MLK was shot, but he did see a lot of racial tension grow more strongly through other people around him. When I asked him to describe his life in 1968 he said a typical day for him was go to school, eat out with friends, and go to work. Nothing changed majorly for him. He said MLK was in Memphis to march for the sanitation act when he was shot. My grandfather was told by friend that he was shot. He does not remember anything significant at the moment he was told. It was not as significant or mind blowing to him at the time when he found out he was shot as in comparison to the Twin Towers falling down. My grandfather went to on all white school and that is how almost all the schools were, blacks had their own and whites had their own. He said if blacks went to the movies they had to sit in the balcony and they could only skate on Thursday nights at the skating rink. He believes MLK became a whole lot more famous and given the "hero" status much later on after his death when people received he was for a good cause. He lived during the integration period when they were trying to intergrade blacks and whites. He said some blacks were just as against it as much as some whites. They thought every type of person should have their own space. He said blacks fought hard for what they wanted. He said people saw King as a good man overall because the blacks did not tell everything about him. Apparently he had affairs but the blacks did not want the whites to know. His movement was nonviolent, but my interviewee said people took advantage of that and made them violent, so therefore riots broke out all over the US. My grandfather said a lot of people rejected him because of the riots that started even though they were not started by him. He said around when the assignation happened there was a Race War going on in some parts of the country where whites killed blacks frequently. He said it was not uncommon to see dead bodies in some parts where he traveled through. My grandfather said there was a black man who whistled at a white women and the whites beat him to death so bad you could not tell who he was. He said later on in his life people started to see blacks and whites as equals more but they still wanted each race to have different schools and areas in which they did things. He said during this time period it was rare to see integrational marriage between people. It was frowned upon by a lot of people but he thinks King helped start the process of intertwining the opposite race couples together. Today it is much more wildly excepted in today's society. He said his life did not change much after his death. He and his friends, who he said were all white because they had no association with blacks, keep doing their normal routines and daily activities. My grandfather said he thinks he grew to understand the movement that MLK was staring to start later on in his life.