Remembering Martin Luther King's Assassination in New Orleans

On April 4, 1968, I was a junior at Tulane University in New Orleans. The civil rights movement in Memphis and the garbage strike was not front page news in New Orleans at the time. The impact of the things Martin Luther King did for the Civil Rights movement and the impact of his activities were not at all obvious to me at the time because there were strides being made at my high school in New Orleans.

I was raised in New Orleans and attended an all-male, predominately black Catholic high school named St. Augustine, founded and run by the Josephite Priests. The school was and already quite famous for its academic and athletic accomplishments in 1965. The school was featured in an article in Time Magazine.

I remember my class posing for the group picture on the school steps. The band was well-known and "The Marching 100," led by Lionel Hampton, was highly respected in the community and nationwide.

The basketball game between Jesuit High School, which was the champion of the white high school basketball league, and the St. Augustine Purple Knights was portrayed in the movie Passing Glory, produced by St. Augustine and Tulane alumnus Harold Sylvester, who was a sophomore in 1965. The movie allowed for some poetic license and was not entirely accurate. The very accurate description of that game can be found reported by Russell L. Stockard Sr.

In the spring of 1961, the archbishop declared that all Catholic schools in New Orleans would be integrated. I was chosen to be one of the first black students to attend Jesuit High at the start of the 1962 school term -- my sophomore year. Primarily because of my mother's concerns, I remained at St. Augustine High School and that turned out to be the best thing for me and a pivotal point in my life. I graduated in 1965 as Valedictorian and enrolled at Tulane University. There were not many blacks at Tulane, and I was probably the 5th or 6th undergraduate to attend Tulane.

The Vietnam War dominates my memories of my first years at Tulane as a member of the AFROTC. The black student enrollment increased dramatically from 1965 to 1968.

When Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968, the city was stunned like most of the nation. The threat of blacks going on a rampage were predicted by the media. There was a tremendous amount of anger expressed by leaders in the black community. I remember people telling you that if you were black, you needed to put some type of sign on your house so that the predicted rampaging crowds of angry black people wouldn't attack you and burn your house. The threat and outrage seemed real, but I remember my father saying he wasn't putting anything on his house, and we would deal with anybody who tried to attack us or our family or our property.

The threats of mass attacks and destruction did not materialize in New Orleans, in my recollection, as black leaders and clergymen made a plea for order and control. The impact of Dr. King's actions in the garbage strike and his assassination -- as a result of his presence in Memphis to support the striking workers -- was not as apparent in New Orleans as it obviously was in Memphis at the time.

I do not recall mass demonstrations or violence in New Orleans or at Tulane University or any other university that caused cancellations of classes. Even though some students had been successful prior to Dr. King's assassination, more success ensued as a result of what he did.

Many of those students from St. Augustine have established themselves as professionals in all walks of life, including politics, medicine, law, athletics, music, theater and on and on. The impact of Dr. Martin Luther King and the legacy he left has enriched the city of New Orleans and led to tremendous changes over the 40 years since April 4, 1968. That is not to say that problems don't still exist and that great strides can not continue to be made in race relations.