--- title: Martin Luther King Jr's Assassination: Read 9 Moving Responses description: TIME readers wrote to the magazine in the aftermath of the 1968 crime canonical: https://time.com/3758959/mlk-assassination-letters/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-04-04T15:00:13.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:59:34.904Z article:section: History og:title: Martin Luther King Jr's Assassination: Read 9 Moving Responses og:description: TIME readers wrote to the magazine in the aftermath of the 1968 crime og:url: https://time.com/3758959/mlk-assassination-letters/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2268a2204391fead/6987854c06f2c1c0e53349c0/1101570218_400.jpg?branch=production&width=400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 400 og:image:height: 225 og:image:alt: Feb. 18, 1957 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Martin Luther King Jr's Assassination: Read 9 Moving Responses twitter:description: TIME readers wrote to the magazine in the aftermath of the 1968 crime twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2268a2204391fead/6987854c06f2c1c0e53349c0/1101570218_400.jpg?branch=production&width=400&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # 9 Moving Reactions to Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1968 Assassination > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: The March on Washington: The Movement Begins [Watch (HLS stream): The March on Washington: The Movement Begins](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/eYWENlb4.m3u8) (6:26)  _Published 2014-04-07. The March on Washington was a peaceful demonstration for racial equality. But it would not have happened without the beatings, arrests and violent struggle for civil rights that had already engulfed the Deep South._  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Apr 4, 2015 3:00 PM UTC  King's first appearance on the cover of TIME, on Feb. 18, 1957 King's first appearance on the cover of TIME, on Feb. 18, 1957 Cover Credit: BORIS CHALIAPIN  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Apr 4, 2015 3:00 PM UTC When Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis on April 4, 1968, it was, TIME declared, “both a symbol and a symptom of the nation’s racial malaise.” King had been in the Tennessee city to support a garbage-collectors’ strike, and was staying at an inexpensive motel, having been chastened for originally booking a stay at a place perceived as too fancy. He stepped out onto the motel “to take the evening air,” per TIME, and talk with co-workers. It was then that a bullet left a nearby building and found the civil-rights leader. In the tumultuous weeks that followed the assassination, TIME readers responded with a flood of letters to the editor. Some of the most moving, from the [April 19](http://time.com/vault/issue/1968-04-19/page/12/) and [April 26](http://time.com/vault/issue/1968-04-26/page/21/) issues, are below. From Joyce K. Laird of Lafayette, Calif.: --- > “” --- From John Barry of Los Angeles: --- > “” --- From James Thompson, a pastor in West Branch, Iowa: --- > “” --- From Dorothy S. Saunders of Cherry Hill, N.J.: --- > “” --- From Douglas P. Adams, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: --- > “” --- From Deborah Preble of Pasadena, Calif.: --- > “” --- From Mrs. John Vadnais of St. Paul: --- > “” --- From Rev. Lewis P. Bohler Jr. of Los Angeles: --- > “” --- From P. Sudhir of Madras, India: --- > “” --- **_Read TIME’s full coverage of the assassination, here in the TIME Vault:_** [April 12, 1968](http://time.com/vault/issue/1968-04-12/page/1/) ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, there's not anything more powerful than the marching feet of a determined people. We shall not be moved. As a kid, there was not much I could aspire to. We were diminished in the way we thought we could access power. And be part of the American fabric. [ NOISE ] And so, this gigantic march. We were saying to the world, this Land of great opportunity. This land of liberty, has an asterisk beside it. It is a land of freedom for everybody else, except black people. [ CROSSTALK ] Do you want to be free? Yes! Do you want to be free? Yes! Do you want to be free? Yes! [ CROSSTALK ] [ MUSIC ] Prior to Martin Luther King, Jr ., the United States was like a dysfunctional drug addict or alcoholic. You become addicted to racial segregation. [ MUSIC ] The end of the second World War, you were under the belief, if we were triumphant over Fascism, that the men and women returned from that conflict. Would be celebrated and honored When I was growing up in rural Alabama and would see those signs that was there. White waiting, colored waiting. White men, colored men. I would ask my mother, my father, my grandparents why they would say, that's the way it is, don't get in the way. I first knew of Dr. King the way everybody knew of Dr. King. All of a sudden one day in the midst of this turmoil in some far away place called Montgomery. Dr. King was pressed into service and took over the leadership of the Montgomery bus boycott, and we heard that almost immediately because not only did he, accept the leadership. But he pressed this idea that we should do it nonviolently. I was deeply inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Junior to find a way to get in the way. So, I used non violence by sitting on a lunch counter stool, by going on the freedom ride. To get in the way. The Freedom Ride was an attempt to break the segregation laws on interstate transportation on buses and on trains. There were six whites on the Freedom Ride and seven blacks we would sit together the black and white and Rock Hill South Carolina is where we encountered the first violence with John Lewis being. Pretty well beaten up. Federal government finally intervened and these early victories only encouraged us that we could do other things. They were very smart, media wise, because they dressed up. They put the ties on, they put jackets on. They were looking good. And they are going up against the authority. They're going against the man That was tremendously exciting to us as young, white southerners. As the non- violent uh, concept grew, parallel to that was also the growth of, eye for an eye violence. And there were many who, were quite bright, and quite gifted and honorable men and women. We saw violence as an answer. That just did not quite sit comfortably with the code that others of us had. Saying that although racism was a cruel experience, we could not fight it by becoming racists. [ NOISE ] In Birmingham, Alabama, the nation was cheated with television images. Of black and white boys and girls having high pressure fire hoses , slam them up against the walls as they were peacefully demonstrating to end segregation. Police dogs biting them. These pictures were circulated all around the world. [ NOISE ] But those demonstrations were like a. Spark that ignited a prairie fire of black protests across the country. And Kennedy, on the one hand he's trying to win Africans and people and say, we're a better system than Communism, and at the same time there was this harsh treatment of black people that just didn't square in the final equation. And the more we were fiesty in our demands of government, the more it revealed the weaknesses in our construct. What started out, as the Black Negro protest, had developed into a Negro revolution. There was a feeling that we would not be able to break the deep south. So, that march on Washington was to be the culmination of all of this intense organizing. It really has to be a moral crusade for the country. The struggle for freedom in the United States had to move to the center of power. To where the predsident and the congress were that no matter how many demonstrations took place In Montgomery and in Birmingham, and in places all around the South. That until you could change the central government, significant things wouldn't happen. The march on Washington was an accumulation of all this cuz here would have been the biggest display of America in its most democratic moment. Making a choice, and it was something that was emerging as, a great demonstration as to the will of the people. [ MUSIC ] [ UNKNOWN ] That that day, erupted, into violence. Then our cause would be seriously. [ UNKNOWN ] reversed. And hard to come by again. 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