A stunned nation reacts to death with shock, anguish
New York (AP)—From President Johnson to a lady weeping in Detroit, the nation reacted to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Thursday night with anguish, shock and pleas that his death would not trigger the violence he deplored.
“We have been saddened,” President Johnson told the nation on radio and television. “I ask every citizen to reject the blind violence that has struck Dr. King, who lived by non-violence.”
The president said he was postponing his trip to Hawaii, for a Vietnam strategy conference, until Friday. He had been scheduled to leave about midnight Thursday.
Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey said the slaying “brings shame to our country. An apostle of non-violence has been the victim of violence.” The vice president, however, said Dr. King’s death will bring new strength to the cause he fought for.
Mrs. Rosa Parks, one of the earliest prominent figures in the modern civil rights movement, wept at her Detroit home: “I can’t talk now, I just can’t talk.”
“Martin is dead,” said James Farmer, former national director of the Congress of Racial Equality. “God help us all.
“We kill our conscience, we cut open our soul. I can’t say what is in my heart — anger, fear, love for him and sorrow for his family and the family of black people.”
Churches opened their doors and readied special services in Dr. King’s honor. The Protestant Council of the City of New York asked that all churches remain open Friday and Saturday so that “all citizens may bring supplication to God that the ideals of this man’s life will not be lost.”
James Meredith, who was shot in June 1966 during a voter registration march in Mississippi, said, “This is America’s answer to the peaceful, non-violent way of obtaining rights in this country.”
Gov. John B. Connally Jr. of Texas, victim of a sniper’s bullet with President John F. Kennedy, said Dr. King “contributed much to the chaos and turbulence in this country, but he did not deserve this fate . ... ”
Roy Wilkins, executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the NAACP is “shocked and deeply grieved by the dastardly murder of Dr. Martin Luther King . ... It will not stay the civil rights movement; it will instead spur it to greater activity.”
Leontyne Price, a soprano for the Metropolitan Opera, and a Negro, said: “What Dr. Martin Luther King stood for and was, can never be killed with a bullet.”
Whitney Young, executive director of the National Urban League: “We are unspeakably shocked by the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, one of the greatest leaders of our time. This is a bitter reflection on America. We fear for our country.”
Floyd McKissick, national director of CORE, said that with Dr. King’s death, non-violence “is now a dead philosophy.
“This is racism in the most extreme form, it is truly American racism,” McKissick said. “We make no predictions, but, mark my word, black Americans of all sorts and beliefs loved Martin Luther King.”