in '65 and '68? (90s, Washington, state, events)

[buildings_and_bridges]

I got the idea for this thread when I read a post on a Martin Luther King thread in the politics forum here. This might seem cliche, but all I ever hear is the "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" so I thought I'd ask posters in this forum--

Where were you and what were you doing when you found out that Malcolm X and Martin Luther King had been murdered?

I wasn't alive during the sixties so I don't have a story to tell; I would be interested to read others'.

[ontheroad]

Malcolm X died in February 1965; it must have been cold, but thus far I can't remember where I was or what I was doing. I'll keep trying!

On the day Martin Luther King died, I was at the New York Academy of Medicine on 103rd Street at Fifth Avenue in New York City. I don't recall how I heard, unless there was a radio on in the library, but somehow the shocking news reached me.

I left the building, and remember how I needed and wanted to be outside:

I walked along Fifth Avenue, tearfully and entered Central Park with hundreds of other mourners to join together to weep at the great loss of a great man.

[BlueWillowPlate]

All I remember of Malcolm X's death is a lot of magazine and newspaper articles around the house--I was about ten years old.

Martin Luther King's assassination was more memorable. (That entire year was memorable.) I was 13, living on Long Island, and my main memory is being shocked at the violence of his death. But I do not have any memory of our school doing anything in King's honor, or my teachers saying anything.

[ESFP]

I was only 11, but I remember one of my dad's friends from Chicago brought his home movie (I think on 8mm) after Dr. Martin Luther King's death, showing a mob coming toward him, breaking everything in sight. That was shocking, as he filmed until he had to run from it. I remember it was like a horror movie. Truthfully, I'd never heard of Malcom X until 1992, when Spike Lee's movie with Denzel Washington showed. He died when I was only 8 years old, though. I wish I were old enough to have known more while it was happening, rather than hearing about it on movies. What you see now is one person's interpretation only, not necessarily the same as being there.

[recycled]

I don't remember the events surrounding the death of Malcolm X in 1965, but I do remember the assassination of MLK. I was in the 8th grade and our teachers told the students about what happened in the school auditorium. Even at the age of 13, most students at that time had a pretty good idea about who he was and that he was a key figure in the civil rights movement. Our school in San Francisco was made up of students of many races and there was a pretty good awareness of how important of a person he was. I think most people realized immediately that his passing would be an important event in history, even though history often takes a long time to recognize an event or a person as historically significant.

[ptsum]

I was in Vietnam when Malcolm X. was assassinated in 1965 so I don't remember too much about that, but only April 4, 1968 when Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee I was living in Prince George's County, Maryland. Prince George's County is right next to the District of Columbia and I remember the riots shortly thereafter, I remember seeing the smoke from the fires in Washington, DC and was thinking, "how is this possible" and why would people do such a thing, at the time it made no sense to be burning your own buildings,home and businesses. I also remember seeing along the county borderlines the roadblocks, the governor of Maryland had called out the National Guard and had them positioned at all of the county borders along the District of Columbia, had set up roadblocks and was not allowing anybody that was from the District of Columbia to come into the state of Maryland. The DC National Guard had been called up and were patrolling the streets within Washington, DC and were given orders to shoot on sight anybody they thought that was a looter or rioter. The Maryland National Guard were given orders to shoot anybody who tried to get through any of the roadblocks without stopping. All of this I remember.

[HighPlainsDrifter73]

Originally Posted by ESFP

I was only 11, but I remember one of my dad's friends from Chicago brought his home movie (I think on 8mm) after Dr. Martin Luther King's death, showing a mob coming toward him, breaking everything in sight. That was shocking, as he filmed until he had to run from it. I remember it was like a horror movie. Truthfully, I'd never heard of Malcom X until 1992, when Spike Lee's movie with Denzel Washington showed. He died when I was only 8 years old, though. I wish I were old enough to have known more while it was happening, rather than hearing about it on movies. What you see now is one person's interpretation only, not necessarily the same as being there.

Same here. I never heard of Malcolm X until the early 90s. I still couldn't tell you who he is or what he did. I was pretty young when he died.

[loose cannon]

I was days a away from being a month old on April 4th 1968. I had no concept of who he was at the time. Perhaps news of the event and my parents talking about it while I was in the crib reached my subconscious.