"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase."
- Martin Luther King, Sept. 1962. #MLK
I was a young seven-year old kid living in #Memphis with my family that April night in 1968 when we returned home from a trip to #McDonalds and like so many nights before, I raced to the TV set in the living room to beat my two younger sisters to be the one who turned on the TV.
Who was going to be the "boss of the TV," as we called it among the three of us.
(We didn't have a TV with a remote control!)
As my parents walked in and settled down on the family couch, to see what was on TV, literally, within one minute, came the Breaking News that Dr. King had been shot elsewhere in the city.
And the news only got worse as the night went on as news soon confirmed that Dr. King had died as a result of the assassination attempt, and soon there was widespread looting and violence in Memphis, the very things he had adamantly opposed.
Eventually came the news that the city was under curfew, and sometime before midnight, because my family lived in a new-ish apt. complex that was on the same road as the nearby Armory, my parents and I and many of our neighbors watched in silence from the sidewalk/curb as tanks driven by members of the mobilized National Guard drove towards downtown Memphis, because the city's powers-that-be had decided that this would show the people who was boss.
Memphis sanitation strike met with hostility, misunderstanding from media
Tom Charlier, Memphis Commercial AppealUpdated March 30, 2018
As my mother tells the story, one of my neighbors remarked on the irony of U.S. Army tanks being used to try to stop violence by Americans who were upset about the murder of a great man who had won the #NobelPeacePrize.
It was the first time I remember ever hearing this strange word: #irony.
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