Clippings from the Kennebec Journal in the days following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. Newspapers.com

“Anguish, Shock, Grief”

A headline from the April 5, 1968, edition of the Kennebec Journal captured some of how Augusta-area residents were feeling following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. the previous day in Memphis, Tennessee.

The article below added more: Fear.

A headline on the front page of the April 5, 1968, edition of the Kennebec Journal describes the reaction to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. the previous day in Memphis, Tennessee.. Newspapers.com

Fear of violence. Fear of civil unrest. Fear that the wheels were coming off the country, and that chaos would overtake social cohesion.

King’s murder rings out decades later as one of the great American tragedies and a symbol of our country’s ongoing struggle to face issues of race, justice and poverty.

In Maine, Martin Luther King Jr. Day has been recognized as a holiday for nearly four decades, and it’s an opportunity to reflect on the impact of his life and his death.

But in 1968 it was just one of many destabilizing events in American life and politics. There were protests, riots, the escalating Vietnam War and a growing political divide. People, including KJ readers, felt that the country was coming apart.

Many were certainly struck with grief, and they blamed the forces of racism, discrimination and exploitation — which King fought against and which eventually led to his death.

Many others blamed King and his movement as it laid bare the hypocrisies of American life. Indeed, King was widely unpopular in the United States in the years before his murder.

Maine Gov. Ken Curtis was one of the first locals to weigh in on the record, calling the assassination a “monstrous act, a needless tragedy” in a story April 5.

The next day, a front-page headline screamed, “Eight Dead As Violence Erupts In Cities.” A photo showed Washington, D.C., in flames.

On April 10, KJ staff writer Stan Eames noted that most of white America grieved King’s death — but not all. He reprinted part’s of the “I have a dream” speech, and called for King’s philosophy of nonviolent protest in the service of social justice to live on.

“‘I have a dream … I have a dream,'” Eames wrote. “God will that it does not crumble into ashes.”

In the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Stan Eames of the Kennebec Journal called for King’s work in social justice to continue. Newspapers.com

Three other letters that day, set below a column wondering if the cost of lobster will ever come down, also praised King and pressed white people to do their part to end discrimination against Black Americans.

But many central Mainers and Americans were more concerned about the riots in American cities and protests on college campuses. Most put the blame on students and Black activists, who they claimed were stirring up discontent; with the Cold War well underway, many feared communists were behind it all.

On April 12, an editorial cartoon showed a boot marked “Civil Riots” stomping on flowers marked “Civil Rights.” An editorial said the North Vietnamese had noted the “violent racial disorder” in our cities.

Near a letter decrying “hippies” and “Card burners,” and another titled, “Headed For Chaos,” John Chamberlain, a syndicated columnist, asked, “Is the cement going out of our society?”

Other writers said support for King and his movement was a call for anarchy. Another called King a dangerous demogogue and a communist, saying it was up to Black leaders to help their communities, not the government.

One writer, with some writing later in support, said the problems of 1968 began 14 years earlier, when the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the separate but equal doctrine in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.

In the days and weeks following the death of Martin Luther King Jr., articles in the KJ reflected anxiety over rising violence in U.S. cities. Newspapers.com

That brought rebukes from a number of readers, including a young Roger J. Katz, who would go on to represent Augusta as mayor and state senator.

Our problems did not arise because of the 1954 ruling — they were only brought to the surface,” Katz wrote.

America needs to work through its problems on race and social justice, Katz wrote, not ignore them.

“It is far better to struggle through ten generations of uneasy transition than to live today in a peaceful state of discrimination,” he wrote.

On April 20, as Page 1 reported that the man wanted for King’s murder and identified as Eric Starvo Galt was in fact a racist drifter named James Earl Ray, another letter writer echoed Katz’s sentiments, and said Black Americans should not have to wait for equality.

“It has been over two hundred years now,” he wrote.

A few days later, as the KJ noted that work had begun on the new campus of the University of Maine at Augusta, a Waterville doctor stirred readers to carry on King’s work, which in the years before his death had begun to swing from racial justice to the eradication of poverty.

“If he was a trouble-maker he was able to rise above questions of race and his concern was real and it was for all poor people,” he wrote.

As the days following the assassination turned into weeks, discussion in the KJ over King’s legacy diminished.

However, on May 8, a writer responded to an earlier letter from a Mr. Desjardins, who had said that the fault for the plight of Black Americans rests with themselves, not racism.

“The so-called gumption that Mr. Desjardins spoke of, to establish a better society between whites and blacks, needs to come from the whites, not blacks,” the letter said. “We did not create a racist society.”

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