1968, Part of History

I lived in downtown Memphis from 1967 to 1969. If you know me, if you know Memphis, if you know history and if you can read between the lines you know that I was a young white boy living in a black community. I was one lonely outsider.

We lived in Coast Guard Housing on the banks of the Mississippi. These grounds; ala Elvis's house too, are now a museum; Elvis's house is a Elvis museum, mine is a wrougth iron metal museum, but a museum nonetheless. As were the times we were bussed to an all white school in the suburbs. Again making me one lonely outsider.

In my neighborhood, I was a ghost, a boy who showed up on the playground and no where else. At school I was a ghost, a boy who showed up at school and no where else. Perhaps this is where the vigor to which I applied myself to after school sports came from, better to join the team and go through grueling practices than to go home to ghost land.

I was a sixth grader in 1968. It was spring. It was April. Memphis was in the midst of a garbage strike. The garbage strike was more about race than it was wages. Garbage men were black men and black men were undeserving of a living wage in Memphis, in 1968. In 1968 the man who delivered our newspapers was older than my father and would tip his hat to me, say "paperboy" and hand me the paper and avert his eyes.

I was a ghost on the playground on the day Martin Luther King was gunned down. Playing basketball with the neighbor hood kids. It was not time to come home, but my brother came by anyway to tell me to come home. I argued regarding the time and my brother kept repeating the order to come home and seemed to have developed a weird twitch as he spoke causing his eyes to behave erratically and his head to bob towards our house. I obeyed and went home to the news. We spent the night cooped in our house, an armed Coast Guard watch on our grounds as we watched our black and white TV and the world explode in Detroit, LA and other "urban" areas across America. Memphis, with the presence of Martin Luther King's non-violent supporters was calm.

Experiencing this event was horrible and Memphis was a horrible place to experience this event. To this day the discussion of the event horrified me in relation to the openness of selected white opinion as to why, how come and what the assassination should and would mean. Mature men who held positions of power over me lost much respect in my young eyes as they spoke their minds and opinions as to what had just happened. Perhaps this is where my hesitancy to place trust in those in power positions was seeded.