It was not just the week nor was it just the US. 1968 itself was one of the worst years of the latter half of the 20th century around the world. The year began with the Tet Offensive which contributed in large part to the terrible year in the US, it completely polarized the American public making not only the anti-war faction much larger and more radical but the pro-war "patriotic" faction much more radical as well, ending up with the worst presidential selection in recent American history between a corrupt Democratic political hack (Hubert Humphrey) and the corrupt Republican hack Richard Nixon, (Nixon was so unpopular that with a tired and disliked Democratic administration in office, a very unpopular war and a political hack as an opponent, he still just barely squeaked out a narrow win.). That year also saw the invasion by the Soviet Union of the Republic of Checoslovakia and the vicious crushing of its hopes and dreams of a more democratic form of goverment. It effectively guaranteed another 30 years of slavery for the people of Eastern Europe. It was also the year that the corrupt PRI dictatorship in Mexico used undercover agents to provoke Mexicos's students into widespread protests in the streets in order to use the Army to gun down thousands so as to supress all dissent prior to the 1968 Olympics there. This is still a huge trauma in the country and considered one of Mexico's blackest moments in history, not only by its citizens in general but by its own Army as well. 1968 was the year of the Isreali Six Day War when the victorious Isrealis conquered Jerusalem, Gaza, the Golan Heights as well as the West Bank, an action which after 40 years of occupation, still reverberates throughout the Middle East. Of course the murders of King and Kennedy were terrible and traumatic incidents which wounded a whole generation of Americans (and even non-Americans like myself) but in truth, the whole year was an unmitigated disaster from start to finish and in fact laid a terrible trauma upon the whole world...........
The Worst Week
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King was still preaching nonviolence, but in the feverish atmosphere of 1968, his brave benevolence was hard to sustain. King had been down, slightly adrift, as the black-power movement became angrier and more militant. On Sunday, March 31—the day LBJ announced he would not run—King had given a moving sermon at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Having won the battle against Jim Crow and legal segregation, he was now urging his people to struggle against the even-harder targets of poverty and violence. He had told a packed cathedral that mankind must face a moral reckoning. "One day we will have to stand before the God of history, and we will talk of things we've done," King said. "Yes, we will be able to say we have built gargantuan bridges to span the seas. We built gigantic buildings to kiss the skies … It seems to me I can hear the God of history saying, 'That was not enough! But I was hungry and ye fed me not. I was naked and ye clothed me not …' "
The week before, a march for the striking sanitation workers in Memphis had turned violent, leaving a 16-year-old boy dead. Waiting for King that afternoon in Memphis when he finally arrived at room 306 of the Lorraine Motel was a delegation from the Invaders, a local youth gang that postured with black-power slogans and paramilitary swagger. The Invaders wanted King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference to give them $200,000 to start a "Liberation School" that would teach guerrilla warfare and martial arts. King's aides coolly regarded the Invaders as shakedown artists. According to King's biographer Taylor Branch, one of King's aides, Andrew Young (later mayor of Atlanta and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations), fended off the young hotheads. "How many people did you kill last year?" he asked the Invaders, in a gently mocking tone. Last week? What are you waiting for? Why not try something real in the meantime? He offered to help them write a funding proposal that King might actually endorse. The meeting ended uneasily.
King was scheduled to speak that night at the Mason Temple at the headquarters of the Church of God in Christ, but he begged off, asking his No. 2, Ralph Abernathy, to stand in his place. The night was thunderstormy, with tornado warnings, and the crowd at the enormous Temple auditorium was disappointingly small. From a pay phone in the vestibule, Abernathy implored King to come, to keep faith with the sanitation workers who had turned out on the cold, wet night. King's entrance caused an "eerie bedlam," wrote Branch. "Cheers from the floor echoed around the thousands of empty seats above, and the whole structure rattled from the pounding elements of wind, thunder, and rain." King came to the microphone at about 9:30, just as the storm was cresting, and launched into a rambling, rather unremarkable speech, until he came to the ending. King mentioned the bomb threat on the flight, and added, "but it doesn't matter now." Branch describes what happened next:
"King paused. 'Because I've been to the mountaintop,' he declared in a trembling voice. Cheers and applause erupted. Some people jerked involuntarily to their feet, and others rose slowly like a choir. 'And I don't mind,' he said, trailing off beneath the second and third waves of response. 'Like anybody I would like to live—a long life—longevity has its place.' The whole building suddenly hushed, which let sounds of thunder and rain fall from the roof. 'But I'm not concerned about that now,' said King. 'I just want God's will.' There was a subdued call of 'Yes!' in the crowd. 'And he's allowed me to go to the mountain,' King cried, building intensity. 'And I've looked over. And I have s-e-e-e-e-e-n the promised land'."
King's eyes were brimming now and a trace of a smile crossed his face. "And I may not get there with you," he shouted, "but I want you to know tonight, ['Yes!'] that as a people we will get to the promised land!" By now the crowd was clapping and crying and preachers were closing in behind him. "So I am happy tonight!" King exclaimed, rushing into his close. "I'm not worried about anything! I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!" He broke off and "stumbled sideways into a hug from Abernathy," writes Branch. "The preachers helped him to a chair, some crying, and tumult washed through" the Temple.
The next day, April 4, an escaped convict named James Earl Ray moved into a rooming house at 424? South Main Street. A guest staying next door to Ray noticed that he was taking frequent trips to the toilet. A small window in the bathroom overlooked the Lorraine Motel. A little before 6 p.m., Ray closeted himself in the bathroom and propped a 30.06 rifle on the window ledge.
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