MLK Assassination and Gov. Rockefeller 1

On April 4, 1968, fifty years ago this month, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. Black anger at the assassination immediately spilled out onto the streets and there was racial unrest in many American cities. On April 7, Arkansas governor Winthrop Rockefeller held a memorial service on the steps of the state Capitol Building, the only southern governor to make such a gesture of mourning and reconciliation. Rockefeller said that King’s death was brought about by the lack of equal education for black and white people, the existence of racially divisive segregated housing and slums, and the need for courts to show justice to all people regardless of color. Rockefeller was determined to have Arkansas lead the way in addressing those issues.