I'm sitting here entering in orders listening to NPR minding my own business. On and off today NPR has been honoring the life of Martin Luther King Jr as today marks the anniversary of his death. Scratchy hissing snippets of him speaking in that immediately recognizable style.
For me Martin Luther King Jr. has always been a historical figure. A man who changed America and gave people hope. Since second grade I have known that he made huge changes in our country and meant a great deal to millions of people but he was still just a historical figure to me. A person whose face is printed on cheap cardboard medallions that people hang up in school hallways during black history month. Heck I was on the MLK JR welcoming committee in High School. I read and learned about his death with the same detachment that one has when reading about Abraham Lincoln's death or deaths of the Salem witches. A sad bit of history that touched the nation.
Today NPR played a sound clip that really put things in to focus for me. The clip was that of Bobby Kennedy who was scheduled to give speech 40 years ago today. Before he went on stage he learned that Martin Luther King Jr had been shot and killed. The people in the audience had been in the auditorium for some time waiting for the speech and had not been exposed to the news of his death. Bobby gets on stage and tells the people that he will not give the speech that he intended to give today because he has some bad news to give to them. You here Bobby tell the crowd that Martin Luther King JR has been shot and killed and the crowd, they wailed. The uncontrollable grief, usually reserved for close family members, was tangible even through hissing pops of an old recording. It bridged the 40 year span between me and that moment in their lives. I for the first time found grief in me for a man who I never met, never saw, and died 40 years ago today.
So here's to the man whose work and life I have always known about but for the first time I truly mourned his loss.
