Events Mark King’s Death 30 Years Ago

Friends and followers of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. marked the 30th anniversary of his death Saturday by finishing a march for justice he never lived to complete.

King was murdered in Memphis on April 4, 1968, while helping organize a strike by city sanitation workers. A protest march, with King in the lead, had been planned four days later.

Saturday’s 4,000 marchers followed much the same route the original demonstration was to take. The march was among several held across the country Saturday to honor King’s memory.

President Clinton marked the anniversary by concluding his weekly radio address with a tribute to “one of America’s greatest heroes.”

“His dream, deeply rooted in the American dream, is a dream for all Americans,” said Clinton, who just completed a 12-day trip to Africa. “It’s a dream, as I recently saw, shared by millions and millions of people around the world.

“Let us here at home always strive to heed Dr. King’s words and live up to his legacy,” Clinton said.

James Nelson, 34, carried in the Memphis march a replica of the famous “I Am a Man” sign favored by strikers in 1968.

“This is history, and I want to be part of it,” Nelson said. “I want to make sure people my age . . . don’t forget the dream. I don’t want to let Dr. King down.”

The Rev. Samuel “Billy” Kyles, chief organizer of a series of anniversary events called “Pilgrimage to Memphis,” led the marchers under overcast skies with the Rev. Jesse Jackson; Memphis Mayor W.W. Herenton, the city’s first elected black mayor; and Washington Mayor Marion Barry, a Memphis native.

The crowd, stretching for more than half a dozen blocks, sang “We Shall Overcome,” “Ain’t Nobody Gonna Turn Us Around” and other standards of the civil rights movement.

Many carried pictures of King or signs saying, “Remember the Man and the Message.”

King’s last march, on March 28 in Memphis, ended in violence when a group of rowdy young protesters began breaking store windows. Police moved in with clubs and tear gas.

The National Guard was called in the next day and the city was put under a curfew. King left town vowing to return to stage another march, this one peaceful.

He never got the chance.

King was felled by a single rifle slug on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, now the National Civil Rights Museum, while preparing to go to dinner with Kyles, Jackson and other associates.

James Earl Ray, a prison escapee from Missouri, pleaded guilty to killing King and is serving a 99-year sentence at a Nashville prison.

Jackson, addressing a rally at the end of the commemorative march, urged listeners to ask themselves what King would be doing now if he were alive.

King would be fighting still, he said, for better health care and economic equality and for “renewal rather than revenge.”

In Atlanta, about 300 people gathered at King’s tomb. Two wreaths were laid at the foot of the tomb at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.

Among those present was 16-year-old Chafee Owens, a member of a Chattanooga, Tenn., Girl Scout troop. “Martin Luther King was a very strong person who uplifted a whole bunch of spirits,” she said. “If we would have listened to him, this would be a better place.”