MEMORIES FROM 

50 YEARS AGO

In 1968 we lived in Minnesota and I worked in downtown Minneapolis. Here is some of my memories from this week fifty years ago.  Since  I was on a leadership development track at a large company we moved frequently as I was sent to various departments and locations. Since we would be in each location only 12-18 months my wife and I had decided to get involved in each community as soon as we arrived. Here we got involved in politics and participation in Dr King's crusade.

Many weekend found us in civil rights marches and solidarity building events. We even traveled to Milwaukee Wisconsin to join relatives in civil rights marches and rallies there. The murder of Dr King on April fourth triggered a very emotional response in the community. There was a palpable sense of grief, anger and fear in the community. The city wisely decided to not overreact to the anger and fear and actively supported a community memorial for Dr King to be held in a downtown park on a workday during lunch hour.

I told my boss that I planned to attend the memorial and might be gone longer than the normal lunch hour and that if he had a problem with that I would take a vacation day. He assured me I could attend the Memorial without taking a vacation day.  He asked me if the Black employees would want to attend. I had talked with each of them about Dr King the day following the assassination. I told him that the younger men were angry and the older men were fear filled. He asked me to check with them about attending as a group.

I talked with the black employees and we planned to attend the service together. An older black employee did not want to go out of fear that there would be retribution, if not from the company, from fellow employees. The boss granted permission for us to leave 15 minutes early and return as soon as possible after the memorial service.

The memorial did not end the anger and fear but did allow the grief felt by the Black community, much of the white community and many of our governmental leaders to be shared. It also allowed us to honor, publicly,  the Christian Martyr that had given us such hope of solidarity with our neighbors.

Twenty years later I was travelling on company business and found myself seated next to an executive from another department of my company on a long flight. As we talked the subject of our respective careers and we shared details of where we had been station and accomplished. At one point he asked me, "where you that first line supervisor in Minneapolis that led a walkout?" I had never heard that one. An example of how the rumor mill works in a company. While there was a major union walkout while I was in Minneapolis, I never thought of this employee group attending a community memorial service for Martin Luther King as a "walkout".

May the spirit of Dr King help us rebuild the solidarity that he preached and lived.