Holy Week — Part 1: Rupture

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body.

Million dollar weekend.

Saturn launch control number one swing arm now being retracted from the Saturn V vehicle

T minus 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 we have ignition sequence five

odds are

you don't know much about the Apollo 6 mission.

If you've ever seen that famous video from outside a rocket detaching from the first stage, just beyond the Earth, then you probably have seen Apollo 6.

It's got a bit of a mixed record as far as space stuff goes.

It was just the second test flight of the Saturn V rocket, one of the most critical components of the entire moon landing program.

On its launch date in 1968, the idea was still new, still uncertain, still dangerous.

Now at 10 nautical miles in altitude, heading out beyond the Earth's atmosphere, we're on our way.

It had been just six years since President Kennedy announced we would go to the moon.

Not because it was easy, but because it was hard.

It turned out that building something like a giant bomb that would send men a quarter million miles away through the vacuum of space was pretty hard.

The launch wasn't as big an event as previous launches.

It was uncrewed, so there was none of the majesty of astronauts walking and smiling.

No names to remember.

There was no nail-biting drama of wondering if the boys might not make it home.

Earlier that week, President Lyndon B.

Johnson announced that he wouldn't run for re-election.

His announcement took away some of the attention from the launch.

Still, this was the experiment that would tell us if the thing was possible at all.

In a country where so much was falling apart socially and politically,

this was the rare moment that might bring people together.

Our first stage

In the broadstrokes, the Apollo 6 mission worked.

The Saturn V rocket did not explode.

The command module made it up to space and came back.

But there was some damage to the rocket.

The mission's flight plan was no longer possible.

Apollo 6 is often described as a failure, but it did end up being important.

The ability to safely manage the problems in the launch gave NASA confidence in the Saturn V.

It meant that when Apollo 11 landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon a year later, it did so with the Saturn V rocket.

In the right light, the Apollo 6 launch might be remembered as a validation of the effort to go to space, maybe the greatest scientific endeavor humanity has ever attempted.

It was a spring evening, the week before Passover,

10 days before Easter,

a time of renewal, a time of change.

But The Apollo 6 is not really remembered at all

because there was a bigger story on April 4th.

Hello.

The Reverend King has been shot.

Uh yes, this is Ken Reed

of Westinghouse Broadcasting in Washington, and we received word about uh the shooting of uh Dr.

Martin Luther King

We have no other information about his condition or where he is.

You don't know when, when, when, or how, or his condition.

You're just about as ignorant as the rest of us are all on this, huh?

I'm sorry, I'm going to have to hang up.

All right,

let's go.

We finally pull up on this.

A ticket has been confirmed that the Reverend King has been shot right.

Just after 7 p.m.

Eastern Time, Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

was shot on the balcony of his room at the Lorain Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.

A bullet from a 3006 Remington Game Master rifle traveled through his face and spine.

His closest friends tried to care for him and reassure him.

as help came as police fanned out into the city

looking for the gunman Dr.

Jackson said he had just asked Dr.

King if he was ready for dinner when a bullet struck Dr.

King in the face, the impact lifting him off his feet.

He slumped to the floor without a word.

They rushed King to St.

Joseph's hospital,

but there wasn't much to be done.

Ironically, Dr.

King said, just an hour after the shooting, he died.

He was 39 years old.

From the Atlantic, I'm Van Newkirk.

This is Holy Week.

Part 1

Rupture

The news of his assassination moved lightning fast to radio and TV stations across the country.

For the next minutes, hours, and days,

there was no other story.

This was all that mattered.

Martin Luther King Jr.

was killed tonight in special report on Martin Luther King Jr.

Everywhere in America, daily life stopped.

Dinners turned cold.

Families watched the news with dread.

People spilled out from homes, from stores, from restaurants, into the streets.

Politicians scrambled to say something and to comfort people who were facing despair.

They understood that this would send America into crisis.

The criminal act that took his life

brings shame to our country.

I pray that his family

can find comfort in the memory of all he tried to do for the land he loved so well.

I have just for black folks who were around in 1968

the moment is seared into memory.

It's the dark thought that comes with all the MLK Boulevards, with the calendars and posters and records or speeches, or any time they hear Stevie Wonder's happy birthday song.

It's been over 50 years since then, but for many people, it feels like yesterday.

Barbara Fleming at the Queen of Boston were both kids in Northeast DC when it happened.

They remember it well.

That was major, major news.

It was, they stopped everything on TV.

Didn't have four channels, but it came on all the channels.

How did it happen?

Who did it?

What do they know?

You know, we were glued to the television.

Topra Carew was a young architect in D.C.

trying his best to make black neighborhoods beautiful.

He remembers.

It was just excruciating, you know, because not only are you feeling it physically, you're feeling it psychologically because it has just thwarted your spiritual investment, your life investment.

Roland Smith was in a jail cell in Maryland.

He remembers.

I heard crying and

panic panic and everything.

And this guy shook me.

He says, Roland, Roland, they killed Martin Luther King.

Robert Burt and John Burrell Smith were hundreds of miles apart.

But on that night, it was like they were in the same room.

I remember Walter Cronkite coming on television,

interrupting the program to announce that Dr.

King had just been shot and killed.

Walter Cronkite is the first face I see.

And he's telling us that Dr.

King has just been shot.

I remember my mother breaking down and crying on the sofa.

I can remember, you know, waves of sorrow, anger welling up in my

chest at that time.

Numbness is about the best description I could get it, because there weren't any words.

Almost universally, when I talk to black people who remember the assassination of Martin Luther King, they're still wrestling with grief.

And there's a pattern in how that grief manifested.

First came the shock, the numbness,

then came despair.

What are we going to do?

But then

came fire.

At that moment, a rage jerked its way through my body that I had never felt before.

You could feel the energy, man.

The energy was just

terrible man

in many ways the story of the civil rights movement is a story about disasters and violence assassinations bombings riots lynchings and brutality all take center stage

but I've found that King's death is overlooked It doesn't get the same space that it has in so many people's memories.

In real time, that event changed hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of lives.

Just after the killing, journalists in Memphis asked King's associates to make meaning of what just happened.

And to Jesse Jackson, King's murder was nothing short of cataclysm.

Do you think that this will have any dramatic effect on the relations between the white and black in this community?

Well, obviously it will.

There were those who never believed in nonviolence because they never understood the depth of that method of solving problems in the world.

Dr.

King was by far the most articulate spokesman on earth in that regards, and to some extent, Dr.

King has been a buffer the last few years between the black community and the white community.

White people do not know it, but the white people's best friend is dead.

To me, King's assassination has always stood at the crossroads of chance and destiny.

There are few events in history that seem both so predetermined and so random.

In order to even be on the balcony where he was shot, King had to make a detour in his last campaign through Memphis.

He had to choose to stay in the tiny black-owned Lorain Motel in a room with a balcony, Room 306.

That room number had to be reported on the news for the assassin to hear.

From Bessie Brewer's flophouse across the street, the assassin had to watch and wait.

If King did come out for long enough, the assassin had to run to another room to pull the trigger on his rifle.

He had one shot.

If the killer had tripped or been out of breath, if King had taken a longer nap, if the breeze had blown differently,

the mind wanders.

But it all feels so inevitable, too.

For weeks, King had been delivering a sermon eulogizing himself.

Just the night before his death, during his mountaintop speech, he foreshadowed his own mortality.

His eyes had seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Over the years, he had been jailed, stabbed, beaten, surveilled.

Rumor has it, the autopsy showed that his heart resembled that of a much older man,

that years of unimaginable toil and stress were already working to kill him, even if a bullet hadn't.

It's simply hard to imagine any past, any America, where Martin Luther King lives.

The inevitability of it all makes it hard to look straight at what actually happened when King was killed and why it all matters.

In this difficult day,

in this difficult time for the United States,

it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are,

what direction we want to move in.

United Press International, Memphis.

Police and fire department companies are scrambling in answer to reports of spreading.

Widespread violence and looting broke out in two areas of New York City tonight in the wake of the slaying of Dr.

Martin Luther King.

6,000 guardsmen had been alerted during the afternoon as the vandalism and looting reached alarming proportions.

Morning, the first violent acts were reported as small gangs of youths roamed the still riot-scarred sections of Detroit, throwing bricks, bottles, and rocks.

At least 4,000 National Guard and federal troops are in this uneasy town tonight, and more stand ready.

I immediately hit the street, man.

I didn't know what was going to happen.

After King was assassinated, black neighborhoods erupted for days.

New York, Memphis, D.C., Chicago, Baltimore.

In all, over 100 places went up.

They were called riots or rebellions, sometimes now, uprisings, whatever you call them.

And for whatever political reasons, the week was one of the most consequential.

in American history.

Hundreds of Negroes were lining the streets, apparently in reaction to news of Dr.

King.

People that lived in the neighborhood were coming outside.

Throwing a rock, throwing a bar.

It was scary.

Mothers and fathers coming out.

Older men, older women.

I couldn't get in touch with my parents.

I couldn't get in touch with my aunt.

I noticed some windows breaking and I looked and the Negroes had started looting stores in the area, mainly pawn shops and clothing stores.

We all were just like,

This is a release.

It felt like the world was in chaos.

They then spotted me and a very big burly Negro said, what are you doing?

And I said, well, I'm not doing anything.

I'm just leaving.

And they said, well, you better run.

A white man killed

a prominent person in our life.

That prominent person had taken on an almost prophetic role.

It's easy to see why his his death became a sort of religious event.

Dr.

King was a Baptist preacher.

His philosophy of non-violence taught that his own suffering could be redemptive.

More and more people viewed him as a sort of messiah.

He even died during the Easter season.

Across the country, the temptation to make King a martyr for white America's sins was irresistible.

But in America's ghettos, that sin had not been washed away

As a child,

you knew you took the loss, but it didn't hit you in the pit of your heart.

As it does today when I sit back and think about all that he went through for us,

I hope that all Americans tonight

will search their hearts

as they ponder

this most tragic incident.

By nightfall, there was a soldier on every corner.

At least 100 fires have been ignited.

Several are burning out of control at this hour.

In your neighborhood.

In your neighborhood, where you're trying to make beauty.

You're trying to make art.

Hey, how are you doing?

This is James Lewis.

What?

Right.

This is like aliens have just landed in the neighborhood.

It's believed by the Memphis Police Department that an emergency situation does exist.

And at this time, we are asking that all people of Memphis and Shelby County observe.

And as we put into effect our curfew, we request that all persons, unless it's absolutely an emergency to be on the street, to go to their homes and stay there until tomorrow and when things hopefully will be in a better situation.

That week, flags flew at half-mast.

Crowds recited and played back King's speeches.

They chanted his name.

Choirs came together to sing songs honoring him, trying to keep people together.

Millions of Americans mourned.

But they didn't just mourn the man.

They mourned a future that suddenly seemed impossible.

I was a hospital employee, so I wound up having to report to work.

It was, you know, kind of chaotic in the hospital.

I remember going to the top floor of the Washington hospital then

and looking out in one direction, seeing the smoke billowing from the

buildings that had been set on fire.

I see the military vehicles because DC was under martial law.

And then in the other direction, I could see the Capitol Dome with the flag flying.

And I just kind of remember saying to myself,

this is supposed to be the capital of the free world.

You know, just thinking, what did our country come to?

You know, I was just kind of feeling that

sense of loss and anxiety.

The story we are often given transforms King's death from a tragedy into a sort of redemption.

The final chapter of a victorious movement for justice.

but

that story is wrong

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