Editor's Notes: 40 years later, MLK’s life, death impact everyone

My wife’s grandfather was chief of staff at the hospital where Martin Luther King Jr. was rushed after being shot in Memphis, Tenn., 40 years ago.

Dr. Harold Feinstein came to the hospital from the golf course, where he was playing with prominent national doctors who were in town coincidentally for seminars. He reluctantly certified King’s death and fielded questions from the media about conspiracy theories.

Why were so many doctors in Memphis at the same time? Were they privy to information about specific threats against King? With so many great doctors around, why couldn’t they save King’s life?

In actuality, my wife’s grandfather told me graphic details about what he saw. It was horrifying. King was killed instantly when a sniper shot him in the neck as he stood on the balcony at the Lorraine Motel. Later, doctors and others found out James Earl Ray, supposedly working alone, had shot King with a rifle from the run-down boarding house across the street.

The assassination was one of the darkest moments in American history. The articulate, passionate leader for civil rights did not make it to the mountain top or the promised land. King’s death galvanized the movement and forced Americans to face up to racism and reject it.

Unfortunately, my wife’s grandfather recalled celebrations in Memphis, as well as heartbreak, after King’s slaying. King was a source of resentment and hatred, so segregationists cheered the murder.

King’s opposition to the Vietnam War had alienated President Lyndon Johnson by 1968. The FBI wiretapped him. Opponents of integration labeled him a troublemaker at best and a Communist at worst.

As many of you living in Green Valley remember, it was a different America, one white and one for everyone else. Separate and unequal.

I was a child in 1968. Five events from that year helped shape my life and political beliefs: George Wallace’s third-party candidacy for president, King’s assassination, Robert Kennedy’s assassination, riots in Detroit, and the Detroit Tigers’ 1968 World Series championship.

Wallace fueled segregation with his run for president and divided the country until he repudiated racism in the mid-1970s. The assassinations and riots were some of the darkest moments in my life, but the Tigers brought a racially divided Detroit together to celebrate anything for the first time since the end of World War II.

I stepped back last week to examine 1968, wondering if we’ve made progress in dealing with racism in daily life. In my opinion, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama’s broad support in his race for the White House proves we’re light years removed from where we were. We’re not color blind, but we’re making strides.

I thought it was progressive for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to admit he was wrong to oppose a federal holiday to honor King. McCain was in Memphis on Friday to pay homage to King on the 40th anniversary of his death. McCain was booed and criticized for his lack of passion, but his tone reflected a somberness rarely associated with the 71-year-old maverick.

McCain realizes he will have to search his soul in the national debate on racial issues in the presidential election, especially if Obama wins the Democratic nomination.

“Martin Luther King Jr. was not a man to flinch from harsh truth, and the same is required of all who come here to see where he was in the last hours of his life,” McCain said, standing beneath the balcony at the Lorraine Motel, now a civil rights museum. “We look up to that balcony, we remember that night, and we are still left with a feeling of loss.”

McCain has had trouble talking about controversial moments in his past. By acknowledging he was wrong about King, McCain symbolizes a generation of skeptics who have come to embrace racial justice and equality. Blacks undoubtedly will support Obama over McCain. The historical significance of Americans nominating a black for president would be monumental.

If elected, McCain will not turn back the clock on civil rights. He has been a modern-day reformer in fighting for Hispanic rights in the dispute over illegal immigration. His push for border reform nearly crippled his campaign last year. McCain knows what it’s like to be a lone wolf, howling for change.

Meanwhile, everywhere I go, I see more prosperous and confident black families. Thanks to King’s fight for civil rights, essentially sacrificing his life for the cause, blacks can dream about living in better homes and growing up to run for president.

Some blacks remain bitter about their plight. Obama’s wife, Michelle, deservedly was chastised for saying, “What we have learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback. It is making a comeback. And let me tell you something �” for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.”

Obama’s preacher, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., rightfully was ostracized for lashing out against a justice system biased toward blacks, saying, “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law, and then wants us to sing God Bless America? No, no, no! Not God bless America. God damn America!”

Those who continue to divide America, like Obama’s preacher, threaten King’s legacy. King was successful, in the end, because he appealed to our sense of right and wrong. Every American has rights under the Constitution, whether they’re red, yellow, black or white.

My wife’s grandfather died in 1998. Until he passed away, he talked frequently about King and the impact of the assassination. Obviously, King’s life and death resonate today.

“When I was growing up as a Jew in the early 1900s, I had to fight my way to school and home from school,” he said in a videotaped interview we did of his life in the 1994. “I came to realize �” and many from my generation came to realize �” that Martin Luther King’s fight wasn’t only for blacks. It was not white against black. It was for anyone victimized by prejudice.”

Contact Editor James Bennett at 547-9770 or jbennett@gvnews.com. Respond by e-mailing letters@gvnews.com.