Where did you live? what was it like?
I lived in Memphis. Memphis was an extremely cordial yet racist community and didn't even know it. We had segregated bathrooms. if you went to a department store and walked through you would see a sign that said “mens room white only,” and then you would see another sign, “mens room, colored only.” You would see the water fountains “white only, colored only.” Our zoo, 6 times a week was for whites only, and one day a week was for coloreds. Same thing for the fairgrounds. Its hard to believe today, but that was the culture. In general, Memphis was kinda a small town, but a little bigger. Had three or four different Big Department store, and was by then, thriving.
Describe your life back in 1968. What was a typical day for you like in 1968? School? Work? How was it different from today?
I was in my last year of college, and I was working part time at a shoe store on Main street, so I would get up and go to work, go to the shoe store, and go home, it was pretty easy.
What do you remember about the day King was assassinated? What was different than normal? How did you feel? What did you think? Where were you when you heard? How did you react? How did people around you react. What was the city like?
I wasn't actually in Memphis the day he was shot. I was invited to Norfolk to present a paper to the National Convention of the American Psychology association. I was traveling between Memphis and Norfolk, and had to switch planes in Washington. I spent the day with family in Washington, switched planes, and went on to Norfolk. Gave my speech the next day, and I was coming home and it was late at night, maybe 1 in the morning, and I hadnt heard anything about the assassination. I turned on the radio, and of course, they were talking about hit, but only in pronouns. I didn’t know WHO had been shot. “he was this, and he was great, and he did that, He’s a terrible loss to the community, he, he, he, but I didn’t know who HE was. Then finally they said Martin Luther King, and then it hit me because I felt like he was a friend. He wouldn’t know me if we were walking down the street, but I definitely knew him. So of course I was afraid, because they said Memphis was burning. I called my sister in Memphis, and she said everything was fine, don't worry about it. I got back to Memphis the day after though.
That whole event was a big deal for Memphis, and it also caused a great deal of denial for Memphis, because we didn’t want to be the next Dallas. What I mean for that, was Dallas was the center of attention for the Kennedy assassination, and we didn't want that negative spotlight afterwards either. So we didn’t want to be the Dallas of the country.
What did you think of Martin Before and after his death?
My college roommate, Roger Cooper, was a night employee for the local CBS station, WREC, and His job from 7 at night till 6 in the morning, and come on every twenty minutes on the radio and say “you are listening to WREC, radio 60 Memphis!” So he calls me at 3 in the morning and says “George get your butt down here, CBS is coming in and they need someone to drive them and show them around, and they will pay you twenty bucks an hour. Good god man, I was down there minutes after he called. So they had a whole team of camera guys from Atlanta with cameras the size of a house And Jon Hart who was a really famous correspondent back then. So they were here to cover the Memphis to Jackson Civil Rights March (The March against fear). So every Ten miles that they marched, my job was to drive the film back to Memphis, where it would be developed, and then it would be sent to New York to air. So other people from the Civil Rights Movement would come to the march to speak and inspire the people, and at one point, Martin Luther King came in and spoke, and generated the crowd. He was there for three or four days. I used to sit around at night and sing freedom songs with them! And I kept saying to Jon Hart, “We really shouldn't be doing this with the,, we are supposed to be covering them!” As much as I loved singing with them, I didn’t think it was the journalistic thing to do. In the meantime, both Jon and Reverend King were both from Atlanta, and they knew each other well. So I kinda became part of that group because of Jon. One night, I said something to Reverend King, remember he was just reverend at the time, and he said a sentence to me that I will never forget. He said, “Just call me Martin, George. So I felt a certain closeness to him, which I felt when he was killed. It was a very personal thing to me.
I thought of Martin as an Icon. He grew in stature. As he approached his death, it was just an amazing time, and he was an amazing person. to think of the 100 thousand people to march that day, nothing like that had ever happened. He was bigger than life in terms of what he stood for and accomplished.
Did life change at all after his death? Did people act differently or view problems differently? Do you think people’s attitudes changed?
I wish I could tell you that people changed in Memphis, but they didn’t. Everything stayed the same. The assassination was just an episode, that didn't change the minds of many people.