A man and his dream

Nate Miller Jr. passed enlarged black and white photos that depict the days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

Sadness, anger and fear permeate the faces of those in the photos.

But Miller's thoughts were on the scene one floor above him as he stood at the former rooming house in Memphis, Tenn., where James Earl Ray is accused of aiming a rifle at King and fatally shooting the civil rights leader as he left his room at the Lorraine Motel across the street.

"Coming here for the first time, I walked up to the boarding house and thought I'd be mad - and even wanted to be mad," said Miller, who will soon move from New Jersey to Atlanta. "But when I walked up to the spot where he fired the shot from the bathroom window, I could only think 'Why? Why did you do this?' "

As many as 10,000 visitors are expected today at the Lorraine Motel, now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum. It has been 40 years today since King lay prone on the balcony of his second floor motel room, a towel wrapped around his head as his associates pointed toward the direction where they heard the gunfire. It's another image captured in photo that is forever etched into the collective memory of the civil rights movement.

C.D. Hamilton, of Russellville, was among many who worried what would happen to the movement without King's momentum. Hamilton had marched with King in Selma and was there when police officers and state troopers turned marchers away from the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma with tear gas and billy clubs. And just before they attended a meeting together at First Baptist Church in Selma, King put his arm around Hamilton and greeted him by name, chatting with him as they sat side by side in the pulpit.

"I saw the movement from inside the movement," Hamilton said. "It stalled for a while (after King's death), trying to find its direction, and it is still looking for the leadership role that we had (under King)."

A movement stalled was visible in Memphis - people ran to the streets as news of the shooting spread.

"It was so emotional for me that I just took off, crying," said Tobacco Brown, who was 12 years old at the time. "I soon realized I was several blocks away from home. I had been going to neighbors and friends, telling them Dr. King had been shot and was taken to the hospital."

Leva White, of Florence, was visiting Memphis with a friend that day.

"People were shopping and milling about normally when we went in the department store," she said. "When we came out, people were on the streets, running, hollering. We didn't have any idea what was going on. It was just chaos. People were waving their hands, shouting and carrying on. I was frightened."

White and her friend heard the news when they arrived at the Peabody Hotel. The disturbance on the street continued through that night.

"We came home the next morning. We just got the heck out," she said.

Larry Nelson, a history professor at the University of North Alabama, said King's death before reaching age 40 has contributed to King's iconic status. Like the assassination of John F. Kennedy, people to this day wonder how an assassin's weapon might have twisted destiny, he said. Nelson said there were numerous times in the months and years after King's death when he thought, "We miss him," with "we" being the nation.

"When he died in that tragic way - which we wish he hadn't - then he preserved his legacy as JFK did," Nelson said. "He maintained a standard of nonviolence (which was) positive, not negative. King left us with that. He left us with that go-to content of character mark."

Charles Dale, of Russellville, was a friend of King's who was packing his suitcase to join King in Memphis when he heard the news that King was dead.

"I was just sick," said Dale. "I cried. I was going from room to room trying to figure out what to do, but there was nothing I could do. Finally, I just sat down, said a little prayer and composed myself."

Dale said he has asked himself many times what would have happened if King had lived.

"Then I ask the question, 'Why, God?' But everything happens for a reason and it was (God's) will that Dr. King died," Dale said.

Bob England, a history instructor at Northwest-Shoals Community College in Muscle Shoals, said King's life and work are more important than his death.

"Dr. King was really a character from the progressive era," England said. "He had this idea that goes all the way back to his Mississippi speech that integration was a good thing and was a goal to achieve."

Those who say they have been impacted by the civil rights movement include individuals who were born after April 4, 1968.

"I feel an indebtedness," said 36-year-old St. Paul, Minn., resident Jermaine Davis. "This man was willing to do what he did, not just for people of color, but for everyone."

Davis visited the museum Wednesday and said some exhibits are difficult to face, such as a Ku Klux Klan outfit and a photo of the lynching of two black men.

"When I see this museum, being a person of color, I feel sad at the history, but it motivates me to tell people about it and prevent it from happening again," Davis said.

Talking about the civil rights movement can help "build a bridge" among all races, he said.

Katie Ruberto, of Eagan, Minn., was with Davis as part of a diversity training program provided by their employer, Best Buy.

Ruberto was visibly moved by the exhibits.

"Every time I walk in here, the consistent question I feel is 'How come I didn't know about this?' " she said. "My parents, my parents' friends, my school, didn't teach me that. Why didn't I know all the people and things that happened?"

Visitors to the museum include the very young.

"It was very interesting that all of this happened before we got here so we have the freedom to sit anywhere on a bus," said 12-year-old Alexis Johnson, who was on spring break vacation with her family from Miami.

The eyes of her brother, 11-year-old Myles Johnson, widened when he talked about specific photos of his fellow African-Americans. "Seeing the people getting hit, and the pictures of people getting attacked by dogs and sprayed with water" were photos that impacted him the most.

Stephanie Mayfield, a fifth-grade teacher at Russellville Elementary School, teaches her students about the civil rights movement.

"I ... would bring in what happened in Alabama - Birmingham and Montgomery," she said.

Mayfield said that annually, as a part of Black History Month, teachers make bulletin boards depicting the life of King and the civil rights movement as a lead into upcoming studies.

"Our studies center around the struggle for equality and we use Dr. King to show the students how the struggle evolved."

The exterior of the National Civil Rights Museum looks much as the Lorraine Motel did 40 years ago, sitting peacefully at the intersection of Butler and Mulberry streets. There's a large white wreath hanging from the balcony outside Room 306.

Once inside, however, there are moving displays of the Civil Rights Era. Sections are dedicated to the struggles in Birmingham and Montgomery. You can climb aboard a bus and see an image of Rosa Parks seated near the front. There's another bus displaying the damage it sustained when it fell victim to an explosion that was an effort to prevent a group of "Freedom Riders" from coming South.

There are speeches to listen to and photos to view that offer a wide range of examples of the struggles and successes of the movement.

You can see jail cells, like those King stayed in, and protest signs proclaiming "I am a man," which was the chant of the sanitation workers in Memphis whose strike brought King to the city when he was assassinated. You also can look into King's room, which provides a view of the boarding house across the street.

It's that boarding house that provides one of the most ominous exhibits. It's the scene of a simple bathroom of the time, with a slightly rusted toilet and stained bathtub. It was in that bathtub where Ray is said to have stood with a rifle nosed outside of the 2-inch opening of the slightly raised window.

There still is an indention on the windowsill, made by the rifle's barrel, as he waited for King to step outside his hotel room.

History has shown, however, that a fatal shot didn't murder the civil rights movement.

Milton Franklin coached at Reedtown High School, an all-black Russellville school in the segregated days of Alabama. He remembers how Reedtown players could use the school system's gymnasium, but weren't allowed to shower there, and couldn't use the heat. Players sometimes had to pay their own expenses for bus rides to road games.

In the pre-integration days of Sheffield, Franklin coached at the all-black Sterling High School, where he was without assistants. Not even medical assistance was available when a player was injured.

In post-integration years, Franklin went on to coach at Sheffield High School and today is a longtime member of the city's parks and recreation board.

He said the early days of integration really didn't bring a lot of problems in north Alabama - there was a threat of a black athlete boycott when black cheerleaders were not allowed on the squad. By the end of that week, the squad was integrated.

"We still have a luncheon on occasion in which the teachers - black and white - of that era meet and talk about old times," Franklin said.

Allison Fouche, media coordinator for the National Civil Rights Museum, said King's legacy will survive.

"Dr. King was a martyr to the cause. His legacy will live on," Dale said. "That's why there will be millions of people, white and black (in Memphis today) to celebrate his legacy."

Fouche said the museum opened in 1991 when a group of investors felt the need to turn the site of a tragedy into a museum of triumph. The hotel was in foreclosure, Fouche said, mostly empty in the aftermath of Kings death. Now some 200,000 visitors tour the museum every year.

"I was born after 1968, but my parents passed along those stories for us not to forget," Fouche said. "It's important to have a museum here to make sure the nation remembers.

"We didn't want this place to just be a shrine where people came and lighted candles. Every time I walk over by his room, it does something to me. It puts it into perspective and reminds us that here we are in everyday life sweating the small stuff, and here he did all this."

Hamilton said national events give evidence that some of King's dream has been reached.

"His resurrection is slowly happening, which is a testament to his legacy," Hamilton said. "When you look at Memphis this weekend and see the masses of multi-color races that will be there paying tribute to a man who came from African decent, (King's) effort was not in vain. His dream is still inspiring and moving us all toward a great awakening."

Bernie Delinski can be reached at 740-5739 or bernie.delinski@timesdaily.com.

Tom Smith can be reached at 740-5757 or tom.smith@timesdaily.com.