MEMPHIS, Tenn. — “Dad, don’t go.”
Those were the words Martin Luther King III recalls saying to his father on the morning of April 4, 1968. Dr. King’s response to his 10-year-old son, “Don’t worry, I’ll be back.,” King III said at Mason Temple COGIC in Memphis on the eve of his father’s assassination 50 years ago.
“He didn’t come back,” the son said.
The weather in Memphis on Tuesday was not unlike the 1968 evening when Dr. King delivered his foreboding “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” sermon without notes or preparation. He was murdered the next day.
King III, the eldest of the children, flanked by his sister Bernice and his wife and daughter Yolanda, told a crowd of about 3,000 Mason Temple, the place where King gave his last speech, ‘Mountaintop,’ that being on the same stage his father stood had him “a little emotional” and “also excited.”
“We’ve got some difficult days ahead. We know we must work to realize the dream he envisioned. It was for a just and peaceful world,” said King III at the Mountaintop Commemoration ceremony at Mason Temple.
In between prerecorded remarks given by former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and other speakers, clips of King’s last speech played while some cried and rejoiced hearing his words in the place they originated.
“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.”
King exclaimed to recitations from the congregation much in the fashion of southern church. The same excerpt was replayed in Mason Temple as the mood changed from jubilant and hopeful to more pensive -almost somber – as King’s ominous message echoed through the place of worship. “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!”
Standing next to her brother, Dr. Bernice King recounted tales that could lead one to believe that same proverbial cloud that hovers over Memphis has rained misfortunate on the family of one of America’s most prominent leaders.
She calmly begins, “Let me just say that many people don’t know that the trauma we have dealt with as a family has been overwhelming.We lost Daddy to an assassin’s bullet. We lost an uncle [A.D. King] mysteriously in a swimming pool because he knew something about that assassination.” The King family also lost their grandmother, Alberta King in 1974. She was fatally shot as she sat at an organ in Ebenezer Baptist Church.
After asking the church for prayers as her family continues to push through the grieving process, King reveals what she says would have been the title of a sermon King was slated to deliver on April 7, 1968.
“When my father spoke those prophetic words 50 years ago, many people don’t know he made a phone call to my grandmother with the title of his next speech,” said King.
The title was slated to be “America May Go to Hell.”
She said, “I think as I look at the landscape of our world today, America may still go to hell. So, 50 years later, I am here to declare that America must be born again, and it is time for America to repent.”
