April 5th, 1968
My hand stopped, simply stopped in mid-air. I was pulling my old Chevy into a parking space behind Lubbock High, headed for speech team practice. Oratory. Debate. Extemporaneous speech. As I reached to turn off the radio, the news came crackling from the speakers: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis. The news stunned me, and I crumpled toward the steering wheel. My mind could not fully take it in, so my body took the blow, absorbed the impact. My heart broke, though not because the news was unexpected. We all knew that Dr. King had lived with death threats for years. His house had been bombed, after all, and he had traveled to Memphis to stand with and stand for sanitation workers. He was planning a…