Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Ramadan 17, 1445 H
broken clouds
weather
OMAN
23°C / 23°C
EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

America remembers Martin Luther King Jr, 50 years on

1299270
1299270
minus
plus

Memphis: Americans on Wednesday marked 50 years since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, paying tribute to the civil rights leader and reflecting on how 21st century advocates might carry his legacy forward.


In a country still torn over issues of race and class, thousands of demonstrators rallied in Memphis, Tennessee where the pastor and Nobel Peace Prize winner was slain aged 39 on a motel balcony by a white supremacist sniper on April 4, 1968, as well as in Washington where he delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech.


“When we look at the state of race relations, we’ve made dramatic progress in 50 years — but we’re nowhere near where we need to be,” King’s activist son, Martin Luther King III, told ABC from Memphis, where he took part in a symbolic march.


“He would know that we as a nation can, must and will do better.”


Lionised today for his heroic campaigns against racism and segregation, King was a controversial, radical activist who with a mantra of non-violence ardently campaigned against poverty and economic injustice, including what he called the continued “exploitation of the poor,” and US wars abroad.


His birthday is a national holiday, and a 30-foot statue in his likeness towers in Washington as a tribute to his life and work.


On the anniversary’s eve prominent civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson — speaking from Memphis’s Lorraine Motel balcony, where King was gunned down — said “the sore is still raw” from the fatal shooting.


“It’s always a source of pain and anxiety,” said Jackson, who was a member of King’s entourage and was at the motel when he was murdered.


“It happened so suddenly, in the middle of a conversation, on the way to dinner. He’ll always be 39.”


But his legacy, Jackson said, survives in the hearts and actions of demonstrators today wielding flags of racial, social and economic justice.


King catapulted into the national spotlight by taking the lead on a year-long boycott against racial segregation on local buses. He is perhaps best known for the “I Have a Dream” speech he delivered to some 250,000 demonstrators on August 28, 1963 as part of the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.”


One year later he became the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner at 35 for his non-violent resistance.


Prior to King’s assassination, which triggered an outpouring of grief and riots in more than 100 cities, he had travelled to Memphis to support sanitation workers striking for better conditions and higher pay.


Elmore Nickleberry, now 86, is today one of the last participants in that strike still on the job.


“The mood was mighty bad when he got killed. People started hollering, started crying,” Nickleberry said.


He recalled that poignant moment of tension and pain, but Nickleberry said it is King’s call for non-violent action that lives on. “That’s what I remember today.”


King’s focus on economic justice was a rallying point on Wednesday, as union workers marched for fair wages and activists lamented the concentration of poverty within black communities. — AFP


SHARE ARTICLE
arrow up
home icon