For this project, I interviewed my grandmother, Stormy B. The following is a narrative explaining what she told me during this narrative. When Dr. King died she was 14 years old in the eighth grade. She lived in east Memphis with her mother, father, and brother.
Where she lived, it was a quiet, friendly suburban neighborhood where everyone knew each other. It was a safer time, and people struck up conversations with strangers, knew their neighbors, and everyone trusted each other. Her average day started at 6:30, even though she didn't have to get to school until 8:00. This was because the whole family ate breakfast to get her before her dad went to work. She typically walked to school with a neighbor. She told me that even though some parts about the time were good, others were bad. Eighth grade was one of her worst school years, because the Vietnam war had just started. This meant that many men were either drafted, or lost the jobs. This included her dad so the. So the money was tight.
My grandmother said that she had never heard of Dr. King before the assassination. This was because she really didn't keep up with the current events, as you could only read the newspaper or listen to the radio, and she always listened to music on the radio, not listen to news. When she heard about the assassination, she couldn't imagine why anyone would kill a person like that, after she caught up on peri he was and what he did. She said it reminded her of Kennedy's assassination. After they turned on the news and heard that there was a curfew because of the rioting and looting, she and her family got scared. Like many people of their generation, my grandmother's parents, my great grandparents, were a little racist. This made her parents even more nervous than she was.