Comments on: Were you there when they shot MLK? RFK?

By: Harris

Harris — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 19:38:49 +0000

Thinking back some more — the summer of ‘68 and all. I’m with NJL: it was the war. Of course in Ann Arbor, you would expect us to have a little more “liberal” view. Ah, but we can’t very choose our hometowns, now, can we? This was the year of McCarthy and the peace medallion (rolls eyes); hippies were everywhere, and we were all tuned to the radio for the new band (the Who came through town on their first ever tour).

It is funny that we now mark their deaths, but of course at the time it was all about the hub-bub of politics and the war. Another reason we pray for wisdom to discern the time. Of course, that was a lesson I learned later when I was older.

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By: Chas

Chas — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 19:05:33 +0000

I did know, however, that the March of Dimes was supported by Roosevelt and was to eradicate “infantile paralysis”. They eventually developed a vaccine for polio.
I don’t know what it had to do with the program, but the song, “The Old Lamplighter” was a theme in 1940 March of Dimes drive.

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By: Chas

Chas — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 18:42:17 +0000

NT: I was almost fifteen when he died. I was almost grown when I learned he was crippled. Does that say something about the media? Not me, the media.

As a child, though, I had more sense than most Americans. I knew in 1944 that he was too sick to try to lead the country another four years. Yet my dad voted for him. Both Churchill and Stalin were manipulating him for their purposes, not America’s.
Thank God for Harry Truman, I mean that.

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By: Night Train

Night Train — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 16:58:41 +0000

Chas, do you remember what you were doing when you found out that FDR was crippled?

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By: Samuel

Samuel — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:54:54 +0000

I had just finished my first year of college. There were riots in my home town that summer. There were a lot of fears about what was taking place in America at that time. There was a good deal of talk about conspiracies. Vietnam was probably the most emotionally overwhelming problem of concern to the people I knew during that time.

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By: Peter L

Peter L — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:47:07 +0000

I was 11. We were a Democratic family in those days (my dad still is). I don’t remember MLK, as civil rights were not a boig issue. Since we lived in Tucson, the big issue was Cesar Chavez and La Raza Unida calling for a boycott of California lettuce. Also, we were at a rally to trun a golf course into a public park in the Mexican American neighborhood one day when a riot started. My dad grabbed my brother and me and we left hurriedly.

But on the night RFK was shot, my 18 year old sister stayed up until he was pronounced dead early the next morning. She woke us up, saying “He died” in an ominous sort of way.

About the only thing I remember of the Chicago riots was later when one of the Chicago 8 spoke at a rally that fall. All I remember is he used the ‘f’ word a lot.

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By: NJLawyer

NJLawyer — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:47:03 +0000

Theophilus, by the end of next week, I’ll be 56 — for those who can’t add and subtract so quickly. I’ve taken to calling myself “an old lady,” and thankfully, I’ve been corrected quite a bit!

So many of you remember riots after MLK and RFK, but I don’t. Perhaps because I remember the riots in Newark the year before. Nor do I remember problems in school after either assassination. But the antiwar stuff was going strong back then. My father really resented the way the troops were treated. That bothered him as a vet.

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By: donna j

donna j — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 06:15:58 +0000

I was 16 in 1968 and I had gone to bed after watching the California returns the night RFK was killed. I was just drifting off to sleep when my mom, who was still up, came into my bedroom to tell me the news that RFK had been shot.

We were a Republican household, but we were all stunned and saddened that something so horrible had happened (again). Little else was talked about at my high school the next day. It was all terribly sad and jarring. I remember turning the headlights on in my parents’ car whenever I drove that week since radio stations were urging people to do that as a sign of mourning.

My mom at the time worked at the telephone company building right next door to the Ambassador Hotel where RFK was shot.

1968 was one of those historic, watershed years, so much turmoil (Chicago Dem convention) & so much tragedy with the assassinations of RFK & MLK. It really did seem like everything was unraveling.

Also, we didn’t live far from the Watts riots that happened a few years earlier. My dad was working nights back then and there were news reports that the unrest might be spreading to our neighborhood. National Guardsmen had been stationed on the roof of the Sears only a mile from our house and I still remember the ominous sight of the soldiers and their guns. The tension was just incredibly high.

Late one night when the unrest was at its peak, my mom was up late waiting for my dad to come home from work when there was a loud ‘THUMP’ at the back door. Terrified, my mom heard the sound a couple more times before she finally got up the nerve to investigate.

Peering cautiously through the window of the back door, she spotted Tom, our scrappy gray tomcat, slamming himself against the back door.

We usually kept the door ajar for Tom, but it was shut tight and locked that night. Clearly frustrated at being shut out, Tom decided to hurl himself against the door to get our attention. And that he did.

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By: Bob Buckles

Bob Buckles — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 05:50:51 +0000

US Army

US 56693793
Spec-5 E-5 Robert T Buckles
5th Surgical Hospital, Mobile Army

16 Aug 66 through 15 Aug 68

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By: krm

krm — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:40:38 +0000

I was 9 that summer. I don’t specifically either event.

I do remember dad getting home from work in Chicago when the rioting started here. He had his gun out on the seat of the car. He said to mom “I didn’t use it, get packed.” We hurriedly packed and went up to my uncle’s place in Upper Michigan for a week.

We watched the riots on a tiny black & white TV with bad reception adding to the sureality (at home we had a slightly less tiny black & white TV with slightly less bad reception).

Spots in the near west side of Chicago are still a mess from 1968.

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