MLK Assassination and Gov. Rockefeller 2

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. Despite invitations none of Arkansas’s congressmen attended. Over 3,000 people did turn out to a service that lasted 90 minutes. Rockefeller told those gathered, “It is here where we meet with the legislature to plan for the future. It is here where we must have concern for each and every citizen of the State of Arkansas.”