Johnsons JAHRESTAGE - Der Kommentar

Seite/Zeile(n)	Datum/Text
	05. April 1968

957, 6	Martin Luther King - s.K. 928, 12.
957, 8- 960, 10	Gestern abend wurde ... das Blut geworfen - Vgl. den Artikel »Martin Luther King Is Slain In Memphis« der NYT vom 5.6.1968: »Four thousand National Guard troops were ordered into Memphis by Gov. Buford Ellington after the 39-year-old Nobel Prize-winning civil rights leader died. A curfew was imposed on the shocked city of 550,000 inhabitants, 40 per cent of whom are Negro. [...] Police Director Frank Holloman said the assassin might have been a white man who was ›50 to 100 yards away in a flophouse.‹ Chief of Detectives W.P. Huston said a late model white Mustang was believed to have been the killer’s getaway car. [...] A high-powered 30.06-caliber rifle was found about a block from the scene of the shooting, on South Main Street. ›We think it’s the gun,‹ Chief Huston said, reporting it would be turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Dr. King was shot while he leaned over a second-floor railing outside his room at the Lorraine Motel. He was chatting with two friends just before starting for dinner. One of the friends was a musician, and Dr. King had just asked him to play a negro spiritual, ›Precious Lord, Take My Hand,‹ at a rally that was to have been held two hours later in support of striking Memphis sanitationmen. Paul Hess, assistant administrator at St. Joseph’s Hospital, where Dr. King died despite emergency surgery, said the minister had ›received a gunshot wound on the right side of the neck, at the root of the neck, a gaping wound.‹ ›He was pronounced dead at 7:05 P.M. Central standard time (8:05 P.M. New York time) by staff doctors,‹ Mr.Hess said. [...] Dr. King had come back to Memphis Wednesday morning to organize support once again for 1,300 sanitation workers who have been striking since Lincoln’s Birthday. Just a week ago yesterday he led a march in the strikers’ cause that ended in violence. A 16-year-old Negros [sic] was killed, 62 persons were injured and 200 were arrested. Yesterday Dr. King had been in his second-floor room - Number 306 - throughout the day. Just about 6 P.M. he emerged, wearing a silkish-looking black suit and white shirt. Solomon Jones Jr., his driver, had been waiting to take him by car to the home of the Rev. Samuel Kyles of Memphis for dinner. Mr. Jones said later he had observed, ›It’s cold outside, put your topcoat on,‹ and Dr. King had replied, ›O.K., I will.‹ Two Men in Courtyard Dr. King, an open-faced, genial man, leaned over a green iron railing to chat with an associate, Jesse Jackson, standing just below him in a courtyard parking lot. ›Do you know Ben?‹ Mr. Jackson asked, introducing Ben Branch of Chicago, a musician who was to play at tonight’s rally. ›Yes, that’s my man!‹ Dr King glowed. The two men recalled Dr. King’s asking for the playing of the spiritual. ›I really want you to play that tonight,‹ Dr. King said, enthusiastically. The Rev. Ralph W. Abernathy, perhaps Dr. King’s closest friend, was just about to come out of the motel room when the sudden loud noise burst out. Dr. King toppled to the concrete second-floor walkway. Blood gushed from the right jaw and neck area. His necktie had been ripped off by the blast. ›He had just bent over,‹ Mr. Jackson recalled later. ›If he had been standing up, he wouldn’t have been hit in the face.‹ Policemen ›All Over‹ ›When I turned round,‹ Mr. Jackson went on, bitterly, ›I saw police coming from everywhere. They said, ›where did it come from?‹ And I said, ›behind you.‹ The police were coming from where the shot came.‹ [...] Mr. Kyles said Dr. King had stood in the open ›about three minutes.‹ Mr. Jones, the driver, said that a squad car with four policemen in it drove down the street only moments before the gunshot. [...] After the shot, Mr. Jones said, he saw a man ›with something white on his face‹ creep away from a thicket across the street. Someone rushed up with a towel to stem the flow of Dr. King’s blood. Mr. Kyles said he put a blanket over Dr. King, but ›I knew he was gone.‹ [...] Policemen were pouring into the motel area, carrying rifles and shotguns and wearing riot helmets. But the King aides said it seemed to be 10 or 15 minutes before a Fire Department ambulance arrived. Dr. King was apparently still living when he reached the St. Joseph’s Hospital operating room for emergency surgery. He was borne in on a stretcher, the bloody towel over his head. [...] But the Rev. Andrew Young, executive director of Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, recalled there had been some talk Wednesday night about possible harm to Dr. King in Memphis. [...] Mr. Young believed that the fatal shot might have been fired from a passing car. ›It sounded like a firecracker,‹ he said. In a nearby building, a newsman who had been watching a television program thought, however, that ›it was a tremendous blast that sounded like a bomb.‹ There were perhaps 15 persons in the motel courtyard area when Dr. King was shot, all believed to be Negroes and Dr. King’s associates. [...] The police first cordoned off an area of about five blocks around the Lorraine Motel, chosen by Dr. King for his stay here because it is Negro-owned. [...] In Memphis, Dr. King’s chief associates met in his room after he died. [...] They had to step across a drying pool of Dr. King’s blood to enter. Someone had thrown a crumpled pack of cigarettes into the blood.«
957, 8	Memphis - s.K. 610, 9f.
957, 13	Geburtstag Lincolns - s.K. 218, 19.
957, 26f.	Beide Börsen haben ... die new yorker - s.K. 272, 10.
958, 2f.	»Herr du meine ... führe meine Hand« - »Precious Lord, take my hand« wurde zu Kings Begräbnis von Mahalia Jackson gesungen.
959, 11	Nationalgardisten - s.K. 734, 9.
959, 36	Mustang-Modell - s.K. 150, 5.
960, 3	Oswald - Lee Harvey Oswald (18.10.1939-24.11.1963), amerik. Marinesoldat, lebte 1959-62 in der Sowjetunion. John F. Kennedy wurde am 22.11.1963 tödlich verwundet, als er am Texas School Book Depository in Dallas vorbeifuhr, wo Oswald arbeitete. Oswald wurde von der Warren-Kommission 1964 als politischer Einzelgänger zum alleinigen Attentäter Kennedys erklärt, während ein Sonderausschuß des Kongresses (1977-79) zwei Schützen und eine Verschwörung für möglich hielt. Oswald gab die Tat nicht zu und wurde zwei Tage nach seiner Verhaftung von dem Nachtklubbesitzer Jack Ruby im Polizeihauptquartier von Dallas erschossen.
960, 19	Madison Avenue - s.K. 76, 8f.