Forty-three years ago Monday, the world lost Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to an assassin’s bullet while the Nobel Peace Prize laureate was on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tenn.
Evidence of his work’s
influence on civil equality and social justice can be found in the nation’s
civil rights and voting rights laws. It can also be found in housing ordinances
adopted by the city of Chicago. King had come here to protest slum and
discriminatory housing.
To commemorate his work
with housing issues in Chicago and other urban areas in the North, the Lawndale
Community Development Corporation recently opened the Dr. King Legacy
Apartments at 1550 S. Hamlin on the West Side. It is the same address where
King, his wife and several supporters took up residence during the civil rights
icon’s 1966 visit.
Martin Luther King III,
the oldest King son, was the keynote speaker for the West Side organization’s
gala event held Sunday. There, the Defender talked with King III about the effects of his
father’s death on their family and how the son is continuing his father’s
legacy.
“My mother lost a husband
on that day, we lost a father but the nation gained a message and hopefully a
beginning of an understanding of a movement that is still going on,” King III
told the Defender. He was 10
years old when his father was killed.
He recalled that Dr. King
was a family man who sometimes took time from his work as promoter of
non-violent social and civil equality, and as pastor or Ebenezer Baptist Church
in Atlanta, to be with his wife and children.
“Dad didn’t have a large
quantity of time but the quality was what made things very significant for us,”
he said. Dr. and Mrs. King had four children: Yolanda, Martin III, Dexter and
Bernice.
King III remembers bike
riding with his father and brother. He recalls his father teaching all of them
to swim at the local YMCA. He has memories of playing football and sometimes
baseball with his dad.
Some weekends, they all
talked around the table about the work Dr. King was involved in –– after having family bible study, said King III,
who also traveled with his father and said he even came to Chicago with him.
“I would watch him
interact with people. He was a very serious people person,” said King III, now
a husband and father himself.
The King children were
young when their father took on racism and became an outspoken leader in the
fight for equal rights. But King III said his father’s work was put in
perspective for them when they couldn’t go to the Fun Town amusement park in
Atlanta. It was for whites-only at one point in time. But the Kings would pass
it often, taking Dr. King to the airport.
“Dad was always letting us
know ‘I’m working hard to break down those barriers so you you’ll be able to go
to Fun Town,’” King III said. And the day came when they were able to go.
King III is proud of his
father’s work and said he feels compelled to continue it. Still, on that
fateful day April 4, 1968, his life was forever changed.
“The human side of me…I
certainly wish that I had the opportunity to have a father. God knows I miss my
father, the fact that I did not have the opportunity talk to him about the
political situation of our world. That he didn’t have the opportunity to see me
graduate from Morehouse. But the commitment and the cause is far greater than
my own personal (grief),” he explained.
King III said that work
still remains to be done to address poverty and racism, and he has taken up the
cause. Now 54 years old, he feels the best way to honor his father is to
remember that there is still work to do. He explained that Barack Obama being
elected president was “a great accomplishment. But it was not the fulfillment
of the dream, as some people thought. In fact, it was nowhere near the
fulfillment.”
Now King III heads the
King Center in Atlanta, which was started by his mother – who died in 2006 –
and highlights Dr. King’s life and legacy. Dr. King and Coretta Scott King are
both buried there.
He acknowledged the
fractured relationship the King children share –– including Yolanda, before her
2007 death. But they are on the mend, he said.
Things with him, Dexter
and Bernice are “going pretty good. We are rebuilding our relationship to some
degree. It takes time,” he said. “Even in the midst of a conflict we are still
brother and sister and very much love each other.” King III said their
differences were “philosophical” and grew out of the way his brother Dexter
used to run the King Center. “Bernice and I felt excluded,” he admitted.
Copyright 2011 Chicago
Defender
