Memories

Sports Radio is broadcasting memories of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr today by prominent athletes. Most of them weren't alive during the 60s so they don't have a first-hand perspective of that tumultous time. As a college student, then a soldier, and finally an engineer back then, I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't appreciate the man as much as I should have. Forty years later, I know that he was right.

On the day that Dr King was assassinated, we junior Chemical Engineering students were more concerned with the scheduled exam in Thermodynamics II. Thermo II was a brutal course. The median exam score was about 50%. Rather than delay the exam and spend the period discussing the horrible events in Memphis, we voted to get it over with and take the exam. Had we devoted that hour to the principles of non-violent social change rather than the finer points of the Carnot Cycle, we would be better people (and engineers for that matter) today.

As an ROTC student with a punched ticket to SE Asia, I questioned Dr King's opposition to the Viet Nam war. Then I went there and realized that Dr King was correct. Forty years later, I'm wearing athletic shoes made in Viet Nam and eating tuna imported from a cannery there. What did 60,000 of my contemporaries die for anyway?

I had a project expanding a facility in Memphis in the 70s. I had to go to City Hall to obtain the original drawings from its 1965 construction. The floor plan included a "Janitor's Closet" replete with urinals and water closets. I asked our Plant Manager about it and he said, "That's the Colored Bathroom. We just can't call it that on the drawings". That was the mind set in Memphis in those days. What courage Dr King had to travel to Memphis, Birmingham, Selma, etc. and face that.

I didn't realize it at the time, but you were right, Dr King.