Will A. was age 22 in 1968, he lived in East Memphis. He lived in poor neighborhood and there were a lot of blacks. He said that the sanitation was bad. He also felt there was a lot of tension in the area of memphis.
He was a barber in the nearby area, he had just finished barber school so he was anxious to get started. He said most of the customers were black and that there weren't many whites in the area. He feels that nothing has changed much today.
On the day that Martin Luther King Jr. Was assassinated felt that the night was different and that you could almost feel something wrong in the air. He was in the shop cutting hair when someone burst with the bad news. He claimed that a lady burst out crying in the shop and that things got sadder as the night went on.
He says that the night that he was assassinated, it was very gloomy. He saw people mad and rioting. He felt it would be better if he stayed at home and listen to the radio. Will thought that King was a great leader & a powerful man. He feels that King was a martyr and was killed before it was his time. After the killing he felt that people were even more anxious to obtain justice and felt like the government was out to get them.