Martin Luther King Jr was a minister and prominent civil rights leader who advocated for the advancement of Civil Rights for African American people. On April 03, 1968, Dr. King traveled to Memphis to speak on behalf on African American Sanitarian Workers who were striking in efforts to receive equal wages. That day, he delivered his last sermon at Mason Temple in Memphis; not known as the famous "I've Been to the Mountaintop" address. The very next day, he was assassinated, here in the City, at the Lorraine Motel.
Martin Luther King Junior, his actions, and April 04, 1968, the day Dr. King died, are all things my Grandmother, Mary Belchia, says "she will never forget". She says having lived in "South Memphis all of her life" at the time, "Memphis was not a special place"; and "the racial inequality that existed in Memphis was what she would call, commonplace".
By her account, her life growing up a black child in Memphis had not been ideal; nor was it ideal for her in the late sixties when the Civil Rights Movement was at its "peak". The majority of her days as a young girl had been spent working in fields, picking cotton, to help support her family. Because of that, she was kept out of school for weeks sometimes months at a time. She believes that her parents saw this as "the only way to survive".
Consequently; she says that she received a "less than adequate education" and never "graduated high school". However she recounts that she was "fortunate enough to find employment in a hospital kitchen" while still in her "early twenties". She believes that it was because she was "a pretty fair skinned black with long hair" that she had been shown favor. She believes this because she says that she and a "few others of the same complexion were allowed to serve trays in the rooms of whites, while others of darker complexion were confined to the kitchen'; and still she recalls, that black workers were paid "significantly less" than that of white workers who held lateral positions.
During the beginning of the Civil Rights movement, my Grandmother says she saw MLK Jr. "as a man working in vein trying to do what only GOD would be able to do". Although as time went on; by her own admission, her "opinion of him changed" and during the period just before and after his assassination, her "respect for the man and the cause he was fighting for, heightened".
On the day of his assignation, my grandmother, then 26 years old, married with one child of her own, was at home when she first heard the news. Although she didn't riot throughout the day and night like many people did, she did "quietly mourn" because she felt that 'it was unfair that a man standing up for other people should die'. That night my grandmother received little sleep due to worry that the riots would "expand" to the area that she lived in; but no ill-fate befell her.
In retrospect, my grandmother feels that MLK Jr. was a "good man who set forth a great change in the goal of equality". She does now feel that people to act differently towards each other "to some degree". She also feels that the attitude of the general population has taken a major change compared to the time of her generation. She feels that in the end MLK Jr. had the right idea. And her reason for feeling this is because at the beginning and at the end of each day we are all "God's children".