This Easter, the joyous day when Christians celebrate the miracle of resurrection, the calendar also holds a sad reminder of life cut short, the life of a 20th-century man of faith.
Forty-two years ago, on April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot to death on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tenn. Reading the history of King’s assassination last week, I was reminded of what brought King to Memphis. It was to lend support to striking sanitation workers.
Around here last week, the news was also filled with talk of a possible strike by garbage collectors. That topic, trash collectors’ labor issues, was one of the few similarities I saw in a revealing comparison of The Everett Herald from April 1968 and how this newspaper looks today.
Using a microfilm reader at the Everett Public Library on Friday, I was startled by the coverage of the King assassination 42 years ago — or, more accurately, the lack of local coverage — and yet, not surprised.
I remember that week well, as much for a personal loss as for the national tragedy. It was the spring of my eighth-grade year at Spokane’s Sacajawea Junior High. Dr. King was killed the week my grandmother died. My father, a colonel in the Washington Air National Guard at the time, was at a Guard meeting in Atlanta when the assassination occurred. He had to stay longer than planned as some cities experienced unrest in the wake of King’s murder.
Pages of The Everett Herald from the days after April 4, 1968, look much like I recall Spokane’s Spokesman-Review newspaper from the 1960s. A national story was just that — something that happened far from our Northwest communities.
What’s missing from the 1968 papers are any local stories of how the shock of King’s death affected people here. Seeing those papers now, it was a glaring omission.
King was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. in Memphis. The news didn’t appear in The Everett Herald until April 5, 1968. On April 4, the day of the killing, this newspaper’s Snohomish County Section had a large photo of Sen. Henry M. Jackson, an Everett native, with his two children as they visited President Lyndon Johnson at the White House.
By the time The Everett Herald hit porches April 5, 1968, readers saw this banner headline: “Clark Hopeful of Finding Slayer.” That was the paper’s first official word of King’s death, with Attorney General Ramsay Clark’s comments on his confidence that the killer would be caught. There were several small photos of King, and another national story, “Sunday Day of Mourning.”
In the local section that first day after King’s death, there was this: “Dispute Flares Over Pool.”
By April 6, 1968, the national news was focused on racial violence in Washington, D.C. A small AP story with the headline “Vandals Hit in Seattle” included news of fires, “which authorities said were set by gasoline bombs,” and “outbursts of rock throwing.” Oddly, this local story contained no mention of King or any racial strife.
The Everett Herald’s editorial page that day had no mention of King, either. There were two editorials on April 6, 1968, one about “Totem Poles,” the other titled “A Sense of Humor” with this bit of wisdom: “Maybe it’s time we all loosened up a bit in our approach to living.”
On April 8, 1968, the day before The Everett Herald’s front page had news of King’s funeral in Atlanta, this small AP story was on the front of the Snohomish County Section: “Seattle Honors King.” It said Gov. Dan Evans attended the gathering of about 8,000 people, which was moved from the Seattle Center Arena to Seattle Center’s Memorial Stadium to accommodate the crowd.
There were no photos of the Seattle event. Instead, there was a large photo of “Marysville Royalty” and a story with this news: “Katherine Smith Named Miss Marysville 1968.”
Newspapers were different then. There was national news and there was local news. Did no one think that one might affect the other?
Everett certainly had an African-American community in 1968. The Second Baptist Church, spiritual home to generations of black families in Snohomish County, was founded in 1901.
Sometimes when I hear about racial slurs or other signs of hate in our society, I wonder if we’ve made any progress. We have. Look back. Think back.
On April 3, 1968, the night before King died, he delivered what’s now known as his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech. It ended this way:
“I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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