--- title: Memphis on Martin Luther King Anniversary: What Was Missing description: As the city and world marked 50 years since King's death, it could have been easy to miss how he tried to bridge the gaps between movements. canonical: https://time.com/5229201/memphis-mlk-50th/ author: Simon Balto article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-04-05T16:21:02.000Z article:modified_time: 2023-12-12T20:44:43.000Z article:section: History og:title: Memphis on Martin Luther King Anniversary: What Was Missing og:description: "King, like most of us, was not perfect at bridging all of the divides that society artificially constructed around him" og:url: https://time.com/5229201/memphis-mlk-50th/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltefba30b73a56bd12/69892ce422fb854511e2540d/king.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2405 og:image:height: 1353 og:image:alt: 50th Anniversary Of Martin Luther King Jr's Assassination og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Memphis on Martin Luther King Anniversary: What Was Missing twitter:description: "King, like most of us, was not perfect at bridging all of the divides that society artificially constructed around him" twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltefba30b73a56bd12/69892ce422fb854511e2540d/king.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # What Was Missing From Memphis on the 50th Anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Assassination > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-sub-2026q3/newsletters?i=86c8d6ee-f482-4aaa-be3c-dcf9e26fd9e3&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) * TIME Subscriptions: [time.com/subscribe-agent](/c/time-sub-2026q3/subscribe?i=86c8d6ee-f482-4aaa-be3c-dcf9e26fd9e3&cr=time-sub-2026q3-v1) ## Video: A Lasting Legacy [Watch (HLS stream): A Lasting Legacy](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/NGyDN8dT.m3u8) (6:49)  _Published 2013-08-13. Five decades after the March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of social justice for all is still a work in progress._ by [Simon Balto](https://time.com/author/simon-balto/) ## Simon Balto Updated: Dec 12, 2023 8:44 PM UTCPublished: Apr 5, 2018 4:21 PM UTC Five decades after the March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of social justice for all is still a work in progress. by [Simon Balto](https://time.com/author/simon-balto/) ## Simon Balto Updated: Dec 12, 2023 8:44 PM UTCPublished: Apr 5, 2018 4:21 PM UTC On the night of April 3, 1968, as Martin Luther King Jr. delivered [his final public speech](http://time.com/5221314/martin-luther-king-jr-speeches/), rain poured down on Memphis. Inside the walls of Mason Temple, King urged his audience to keep fighting for racial and economic justice — in Memphis, in America, around the world. He concluded by proclaiming that God had given him the opportunity “to go up to the mountain,” from which he’d looked out and seen “the Promised Land.” “I may not get there with you,” he thundered, “but I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.” He was murdered less than 24 hours later. [Fifty years later](http://time.com/5197679/10-historians-martin-luther-king-jr/), on the night of April 3, 2018, the skies opened up over Memphis once again, almost as though history were trying to exert itself with special force. As crowds gathered inside Mason Temple to pay tribute to King, and as organizers at the National Civil Rights Museum (housed in the old Lorraine Motel where King was assassinated) prepared for a full Day of Remembrance for King the next day, lightning cut the sky and the clouds spat rain. The deluge seemed appropriate. By the next morning, the skies had cleared. Outside the union headquarters of AFSCME local 1733, crowds began to gather for a rally to remember King, and to celebrate the [sanitation workers in whose company he died](http://time.com/5221565/martin-luther-king-last-campaign/). The events were spearheaded by AFSCME and the Church of God in Christ, and were organized under the masthead of their “I AM 2018” campaign. The speaker’s rostrum reflected the “I AM” campaign’s goal of economic justice. It also reflected its [origins in the labor movement](http://time.com/5226109/remember-martin-luther-king-jr/). Leaders of many of the major unions in America, including Lee Saunders and Richard Trumka, testified to King’s legacy and of to the need to rebuild and protect a robust union movement in this country. William Barber spoke on behalf of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Bernie Sanders was on hand, as well, linking King’s labors to modern fights for universal healthcare, a living wage and environmental justice. (Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez had the unenviable task of being slotted between them.) In death, as in his life, Dr. King has loomed large in the American psyche. In 2018, he is perceived as universally claimable and has, by consequence, routinely been claimed. Sometimes this leads to deployments of King’s legacy that are [controversial ](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/business/media/mlk-commercial-ram-dodge.html)or just plain [incorrect.](http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2014/04/martin%5Fluther%5Fking%5Fjr%5Fexplicit.html) But progressive social movements of many various stripes have also long claimed King, and with good reason. So, outside AFSCME headquarters on Wednesday, it was impossible not to wonder where those other fights were. This was a program about economic justice and just one program out of many. And labor, of course, deserves its day. It was instrumental in creating an American middle class to begin with, and despite that fact, it’s been under assault for generations. Moreover, it’s true that Martin Luther King died as a martyr to the labor movement (among other things). Union activists are right to claim him. But it was striking that, in a program that stretched for hours, almost no one said the words “Black Lives Matter,” or even talked about that movement — which, consciously or not, takes direct lessons from many of King’s most forceful arguments about and critiques of America. Almost all of the speakers were men, and they were remarkably vague, bordering on silent, about women’s and LGBTQ rights. Greisa Martínez Rosas, Deputy Executive Director of United We Dream, offered a rousing defense of undocumented immigrants, but issues facing Islamic-Americans were mostly absent. While it may seem unreasonable to ask any program to cover every base, the narrow focus of this event — one of the two most high-profile public events happening on the Day of Remembrance — does matter, and it matters quite a lot. As King remembrance events were escalating on April 3, a number of prominent activists, including Black Lives Matter’s Keedran Franklin and Fight for $15’s Ashley Cathey, were [arrested](http://www.wmcactionnews5.com/story/37874435/crowd-protests-ice-treatment-of-immigrants-at-201-poplar) by Memphis Police Department as they protested outside an immigrant detention facility. In the middle of a moment of silence to remember King on Wednesday evening, officers with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office rode motorcycles — casually enough to display no urgency, loudly enough to display little respect — down Main Street in Memphis, less than a hundred yards from the Lorraine Motel balcony. And it was only a week ago that 17-year-old Dorian Harris, after allegedly stealing a beer from a convenience store here, was [shot and killed](https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/news/2018/04/02/memphis-shooting-dorian-harris-anwar-ghazali/480353002/) by a store clerk as he ran away. The clerk never called 911, and Harris’s body laid outside in a Memphis yard for [two days](http://wreg.com/2018/04/01/police-identify-body-found-in-hyde-park-store-clerk-charged-with-murder/) before it was called in. To be in Memphis right now is to be inspired by events unfolding here, and buoyed by the possibilities that they present. But it is also to be reminded of the fact that they will remain only possibilities without hard work spent building lasting coalitions across whatever lines might cleave us from others seeking to build a more beloved community. How and whether Americans successfully build those coalitions remain very urgent questions. And those questions were the ones that went largely unspoken on this day of commemoration. Many of King’s battles still need to be fought, and each deserves its moment in focus. But in order to truly represent his legacy, and move us forward, they must continue to appreciate the interconnected nature of these struggles. Indeed, as King himself [reminded](https://books.google.com/books?id=KwglDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA119&lpg=PA119&dq=we%27re+not+free+until+we%27re+all+free+martin+luther+king&source=bl&ots=0tLo9bt%5FKF&sig=OoeUcm9lB7ZZezoVt-CLEB1i-lE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwicpNbgvqPaAhVJaq0KHUhAB4M4ChDoAQhnMAk#v=onepage&q=we%27re%20not%20free%20until%20we%27re%20all%20free%20martin%20luther%20king&f=false) us, “No one…will be free until we all are free.” At 6:01 on Wednesday night, in front of the Lorraine Motel, bells tolled 39 times, one for each of King’s years. It was a profoundly moving, and profoundly sad, moment. King, like most of us, was not perfect at bridging all of the divides that society artificially constructed around him. But he sensed the urgency of trying to bridge those that he could recognize as bridgeable, and worked to do so throughout his life. That seems like a fortifying, indeed a hopeful, fact. And this notion accords with how many American choose to distill King, considering him through a prism of hope. This makes some sense given King’s public pronouncements of hope (despite his private and public despondency about racism, militarism and capitalism), but hope is actually, of course, not nearly enough. As my friend Charles McKinney, who teaches Africana Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, has been known to say regarding those who simply hope for a better world, “The hope is in the work.” King knew that better than anyone. He hoped, yes. But he also labored relentlessly — to the point of exhaustion and depression, in the face of violence, arrest, incarceration, and in opposition to the intransigence and often active resistance of state, local, and federal-level instruments of government. He was killed while _working toward_ — not hoping for — a better world. The final book that King wrote was entitled _Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?_ That remains the crucial question. King worked to build community, and to dialogue with those who society considered far too “radical” — from rioters to gang members to Black Power activists. He disagreed with all of them. And yet he labored hard, day after day, to understand where they came from and locate the ground they might find in common. That search — for community, and a place to go — remains our central question. _Simon Balto is an Assistant Professor of History and Director of African American Studies at Ball State University. He is the author of the forthcoming_ Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power, _which will be published by the University of North Carolina Press._ ## Transcript >> I remember the day when the March in Washington was all over. We went back down to the White House. President Kennedy invited us back down. And he stood in the door of the Oval Office and greeted each one of us. He was like a proud beaming father that everything had gone so well. >> For months after that, we just saw a really harvested-- the emotional joy of what we have done. >> The joy that we took home with us out of that-- out of that arena inspired us to start thinking about what could we do beyond what we were doing already. And the lesson is not to stop, not to give up. >> If you asked us back then that Barack Obama would be in the White House today, we would say no way. >> When people laughed as Dr. King suggested, we wouldn't have went back home back to the heart of the deep south to intensify efforts to gain a vote, to get a Civil Rights Bill passed, but 18 days after the march was the terrible bombing of the church in Birmingham. About 4 girls were killed on a Sunday morning. That was a sad and dark hour for the movement, but it stirred to us that we had more work to do. >> I'll just say that it encouraged us more. These people are reacting this way against us because we're being effective and so we're gonna keep on doing. We're gonna do even more if we can. We won't let this stop us. We won't let this turn us around. >> We did get the Civil Rights Bill. Eventually, we did get a vote on our side. The quality of life for many people remained the same for many, many years. Other ways to really stop a movement is to kill off its thinkers and they killed Dr. King and they killed Medgar Evers and they killed Bobby Kennedy and John Kennedy. All this was in one fell swoop, eliminated. >> After the civil rights movement, which moved into the entire world movement, other movements were gaining enormous energy, so the women's movement, the environmental movement took shape. The anti- apartheid movement and the will and the belief that they could be successful emanated from the remarkable ability of the civil rights movement to progress. >> I recognized very quickly that the young people and the other people who were in the Occupy Wall Street Movement, they were the stepchildren of Martin Luther King, Jr. They were the stepchildren of the March in Washington. They were trying to raise the consciousness of the country to the inequitable distribution of wealth opportunities very much in the same way that he was trying to do it. >> We need to lead to get out front on some of the big issues and to be a headlight and not a taillight. And people who are speaking up today for immigration reform, for gay rights, control of the proliferation of guns, they have shown some courage. >> The action of the Supreme Court 5 in gutting the essence of the-- of the Voting Rights Act, it's an enormous reversal. It's been one of the most successful pieces of legislation in modern history. >> Enormous change takes time and you have to continue to battle. You don't win a lawsuit or win yet another law in the books and then fold your tents and go home. Oh no, you know, the struggle continues. >> I was part of this mobilization that has never been duplicated again and I wonder why. I wonder why. I'm not blaming young people. Well, yes, I am. But they ought to be doing a bit more. >> I really thought that feeling around Obama was so important to know that it existed. >> I, in retrospect, wish that we've managed to keep him from running for office 'cause he could have run a movement. I think he would have had a better chance at making social change happen if he had approached it and, you know, the way King did. >> What I say to a lot of young people who speak about the fact that the civil rights movement is somehow a thing of the past, I say, " Let me paint a picture for you ." Almost all the movement in that period, almost all critical thought, almost all critical decisions are made by the young. They can wanna take a look at John Lewis and where he was. He was 18. You could take a look at Julian Bond. He was 18. You could take a look at Diane Nash. She was pregnant and then leading a movement. She was the one who designed the freedom rights. And none of these people [ unk ] with political design and with clear thought. These were simple ordinary folks. When young people say, " Where do we find our leaders? Where are the Dr. Kings ?" Well, look where Dr. King resided and where he was found in the first instance and maybe you'll find that there's some more Dr. Kings there. >> I credit the fact that I got schooled, I got brought up in the movement-- in the civil rights movement to give me the perspective. >> That march laid the basis for the modern battles for human rights all across the globe. It cannot be underestimated the fact that individual ordinary people from across America made up their minds, they were gonna step into that movement and step into the streets and come to Washington to raise their grievances in the finest traditions of American democracy. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5229201/memphis-mlk-50th/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5229201/memphis-mlk-50th/"},"headline":"What Was Missing From Memphis on the 50th Anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Assassination","datePublished":"2018-04-05T16:21:02.000Z","dateModified":"2023-12-12T20:44:43.000Z","description":"Searching for coalition politics in the King commemorations","url":"https://time.com/5229201/memphis-mlk-50th/","keywords":["Opinion"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltefba30b73a56bd12/69892ce422fb854511e2540d/king.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Simon Balto","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/simon-balto/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltefba30b73a56bd12/69892ce422fb854511e2540d/king.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"50th Anniversary Of Martin Luther King Jr's Assassination","caption":"Memphis Marks 50th Anniversary Of Martin Luther King Jr's Assassination","creditText":"Joe Raedle—Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/opinion/","name":"Opinion"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5229201/memphis-mlk-50th/","name":"What Was Missing From Memphis on the 50th Anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Assassination"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"A Lasting Legacy","description":"Five decades after the March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of social justice for all is still a work in progress.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/NGyDN8dT/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2013-08-13T14:32:31.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/NGyDN8dT.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/5229201/memphis-mlk-50th/","duration":"PT6M49S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/5229201/memphis-mlk-50th/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```