April 1968: King leaves legacy in Northern Kentucky before assassination highlights divide

BY RICK ROBINSON | LINK nky GUEST AUTHOR

The life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. remains an integral part of American society. As so many of the marches and protests he led are legendary in the Civil Rights Movement, his time in Kentucky is often overlooked or forgotten.

And while his appearances in the Commonwealth were in Louisville and Frankfort, the impact of his visits were felt statewide.

King’s visits to Kentucky began early in his career. In 1957, he was the commencement speaker at Kentucky State University. He was 28 years old at the time. He told the graduates they were “traveling towards the promised land of social integration, of freedom, and of justice.”

In the mid-60s, King’s brother, Rev. A.D King, became the pastor of a church in Louisville. Martin Luther King’s visits to Kentucky became more frequent. On a cold March day in 1964, King led a march on the state capitol in Frankfort.

King was joined in the march by Major League Baseball legend Jackie Robinson, the singing trio Peter, Paul and Mary and over 10,000 marchers.

Northern Kentucky participated in the rally as local churches sent busloads of people to join in the march. An estimated 300 people from the region attended. For those that could not attend the march in Frankfort, local prayer vigils were held. There were calls for the Kentucky General Assembly to adopt a state civil rights law. Although initial efforts to pass such a law failed to get out of committee, in 1966 Kentucky became the first southern state to adopt a state civil rights law.

The passage garnered much local support. State Senate Pro-Tempore James Ware (D) of Lakeside Park said, “I am reluctant to deprive others of rights which I enjoy.”

King’s presence in Kentucky was never more impactful than in 1967, when he led a series of marches in Louisville advocating for a fair housing ordinance in the city. While King did not attend each march personally, they were occurring on a nightly basis. Police lines separated protesters and hecklers. Arrests were made. Tear gas was dispensed into crowds. At one event, Louisville native Muhammad Ali spoke.

“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.”

Martin Luther King

April 3, 1968

The Louisville marches of 1967 came to a head during Kentucky Derby week, when protesters threatened to disrupt the annual Run for the Roses. King appeared in Louisville that week and spoke to marchers.

“If we are engaged in a righteous and just struggle for freedom, we know the jails can’t stop us,” King said. “We have tried to get the city to do what it ought to do. And since it refused, we have to let them know that we are not afraid to fill up the jails.”

“No housing ordinance, No Derby” was the rally cry.

During the week preceding the 1967 Kentucky Derby, robed and hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan appeared at Churchill Downs offering aid to local police in main- taining law and order. On the morning of the first Saturday in May, over fears of violence, King called off the Derby Day protest. Later in the summer of 1967, just prior to passage on a city housing non-discrimination ordinance, King was back in Louisville registering voters. It was his final appearance in Kentucky.

On April 4, 1968, following a speech the night before in support of striking sanitation workers, Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed outside his room at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.

The days preceding and following King’s murder remain etched in America’s collective conscience.

The speech Dr. King gave the night before he was shot was an eerie foreshadowing of what was to come. After recounting several times when he was concerned for his safety, he told those assembled:

“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

The next day, residents of Northern Kentucky (and the world) learned King had been assassinated.

In the spring of 1968, Bob McCray was a 17-year-old student at Newport High School struggling with his own path in life. On one hand, he closely followed the non-violent teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. The other hand was a bit more complicated. As it was with many young African American people at the time, the voices of the radical Black Panther Party spoke to him.

“I was personally torn,” McCray recalled,

“between peaceful opposition to racism or radical violence.”

McCray had written a high school term paper on the Black Panther Party.

“There were so many voices … H. Rap Brown … Bobby Seale … Huey Newton … who believed peaceful means would not accomplish anything,” McCray wrote. “They spoke in a way that made us proud to be black.”

McCray grew up in the west side of Newport and remembers his tight knit minority neighborhood as being shocked over King’s death. Even today, McCray struggles to express the deep pain his family experienced.

“My family ... my brother … my mom … my sisters,” he closed his eyes and formed his words carefully, “we were distraught beyond comfort.”

In the days following King’s murder, McCray recalls marchers from Covington attempting to cross the Fourth Street Bridge into Newport, only to be turned away by black residents of Newport’s west end.

“A bunch of our people met them at the bridge and let them know they were not welcome in Newport,” McCray said. The encounter on the bridge was not violent. “I think it was because Newport’s black and white community had a unique relationship. Back then everybody knew everybody, and we respected each other.”

King’s assassination set McCray on a journey to becoming the first black police officer in Newport. He retired after 36 years on the force.

McCray’s perspective of a tight knit minority community is important to understanding life in Northern Kentucky in 1968.

Northern Kentucky is far more diverse today than it was in 1968.

In Campbell County at the time, the African American population of just over 800 was less than 1% of the county’s total population and almost all minority families lived in McCray’s neighborhood on the west side of Newport. In Kenton and Boone Counties the minority population was under 3% and under 0.5%, respectively. In all three counties, other minorities were nearly non-existent in census data.

Across the Licking River from McCray’s Newport home lived Covington’s Arnold Simpson. The future State Representative was a sophomore at Holmes High School in 1968. He echoed McCray’s comments about Covington being a small, segregated minority community where everyone knew each other.

Reflecting on the times Simpson thinks of 1968 as “the great clash of ideas … a merging of two societies, each quite unfamiliar with the other.”

On one side were people who wanted to maintain the status quo.

On the other side was “a revolution of independent thought of what should happen.”

Arnold Simpson’s father – Jim Simpson –was a groundbreaking minority business leader in Northern Kentucky who taught his son that in order to further a dialogue about race you had to first get a seat at the table. The elder Simpson taught his son by example by being very active in Northern Kentucky.

He served on many boards and commissions, including being the Chairman of the Northern Kentucky/Greater Cincinnati Airport Board and was the first African American person to serve on Covington’s City Council.

In an interview, the younger Simpson laughed at the thought of him being involved in any of the violence occurring following King’s death.

“My parents kept me on a pretty short leash,” Simpson said.

Newspaper coverage by The Kentucky Post and Times Star was limited to the aftermath of King’s death. There was not a single story declaring King’s murder. Local readers looking for stories about King’s shooting or the search for his killer were directed to visit the newspaper’s Cincinnati edition. The stories that were written for local readers were a mixed bag of stories that often contradicted each other.

Editorially, the Kentucky Post and Times Star commented on the riots in Cincinnati by heralding the violence did not cross the river. “Order in Kentucky” was the headline. Of course, the order was somewhat forced. The bridges connecting Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky were policed by National Guardsmen. Car searches were conducted, guns were confiscated that, according to a police spokesman, were “mostly from white people going to Cincinnati to work.”

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The rose-colored editorial was betrayed by the newspaper’s actual stories. Firebombs were hurled in Covington, which then set up a special telephone line to deal with emergencies. Newport adopted emergency ordinances. The river towns and other cities with little or no racial population also adopted curfews. Schools were closed and buses were searched. Students from Holmes High School slashed seats on buses. Florence remained open.

While the disruption in Northern Kentucky was minimal compared to what other cities across the nation were experiencing, tensions were undeniably high. Headlines trumpeted the preparedness of city police departments.

One local city official declared, “If anyone starts looting, we’ll start shooting.”

Rep. Gene Snyder (R) praised Chicago mayor Richard Daley (D) who had issued a shoot to kill order for arsonists and a shoot to maim order for looters.

Much of the emphasis in stories was placed on the fact that liquor sales had been restrained.

“Our curbing of liquor sales is not aimed at the Negro population, but at anyone who might want to start trouble,” one official said.

But in the days following King’s death, life in Northern Kentucky was not all fear of violence and looting. A light shone through for some. Many Northern Kentuckians –black and white – were coming together in the name of racial harmony.

“If all men shall recognize that the abrupt and abhorrent manner by which Dr. King was removed from the crusade to which he dedicated all his talent and physical energy is the fruit of prejudice, then his death shall not have been in vain,” Covington bishop Richard Ackerman said, “His struggle for social justice is now baptized in his blood and it shall be strengthened by it.”

Interfaith memorial services and marches across Northern Kentucky were held. At one such event, over 200 marchers were separated from hecklers by police. State Senator Clyde Middleton (R) attended the march with his young sons.

“I came to join in dedication to Mr. King,” Middleton is quoted as saying. “If we don’t join with them, we’ll have many difficult years ahead.”

Local civil rights activist Alice Shimfessel feared that the younger marchers in the crowd would not follow King’s lead of non-violence. “I’m afraid to think what will happen if things don’t get better,” she said.

Rev. Richard Fowler, who currently serves on LINK nky’s editorial board, was raised in Covington, where he graduated from a segregated high school. He and his wife were in Los Angeles visiting family when he learned of King’s assassination and remembers being in a blur disconnected from time and reality.

“Many people can tell you exactly where they were at the time they learned,” he said. “I can’t.”

He does recall experiencing a wide range of emotions from anger to anguish and the “strange feeling of being attached and detached all at the same time.”

A final pronouncement from The Kentucky

Post and Times Star on King’s killing and its aftermath came in a tone deaf editorial entitled “Count Our Blessings” wherein the newspaper stated we should be grateful for the blessing of racial peace. The premise of the editorial was racial violence in our region did not happen because:

“The races live in mutual friendship and respect here in the upper Bluegrass – as indeed they do throughout the commonwealth.” The remaining language of the editorial is chillingly patronizing and refers to the area’s minority population as “responsible, industrious, intelligent and law-abiding” and lacking the “hoodlum element” present in other cities.

And while all this was happening in Northern Kentucky, the war in Southeast Asia continued.

Another soldier being followed by the Kentucky Post and Times Star, Army Specialist 4th Class Charles Crowder from Campbell County received a shrapnel wound to his head. In a letter to his parents, he said it was a booby trap along a road that was set off by a dog. A more sobering account of the war was told by Lance Corporal Max Wharton of Lakeside Park. The sniper recounted his days in the jungles of Vietnam. “Every time you get shot at is a new experience and every time you see somebody get killed it changes you.

In the final week of April, a tragic tornado hit Falmouth. The Kentucky Post and Times Star brought the storm to its readers with pictures and first-hand accounts of the devastation. Also, the newspaper did an extensive series on the state of Catholic education in the Dioceses. These articles capture the newspaper at its finest.