A Tragic Turn: Six Leaders and the Death of Martin Luther King, Jr.

By Daniel T. Miller PhD

When Martin Luther King, Jr. was tragically killed, six people who were leaders made decisions on coping with the event. They were just like you. Their stories are your stories. Their thoughts, actions, and choices then can help make you a better leader for today and tomorrow. Relive their fateful day of April 4, 1968 to gain a unique perspective on your own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 24, 2008
• ISBN: 9781468568196

Daniel T. Miller PhD

Daniel T. Miller is a consulting leadership historian. He founded and operates Historical Solutions LLC, serving clients in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Dan’s work emphasizes the use of history to enrich and enhance the leadership of his clients. His services include seminars, workshops, individual coaching, and customized research and writing. Dan and his wife Kelly live in Indianapolis, Indiana with their daughters Haley and Ava.

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© 2008 DANIEL T. MILLER, PhD. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 4/22/2008

ISBN: 978-1-4343-7327-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-6819-6 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2008902987

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Start of a New Day

Running Behind

In Flight

The Drive

The Speech

Falling Asleep

Taking Away from the People and the Experience

Around the Campfire

Texts of Speeches by Abraham Lincoln, Robert Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan

Sources

About the Author

I dedicate this book to my wife, Kelly, and daughter, Haley. I love you both dearly. Together, you are the first reason God put me on this earth.

Acknowledgements

This book depended on the efforts of many people. Robert DeGroff and the team at AuthorHouse were excellent partners on this project. The staffs at the Indianapolis Marion County Public Library, Indiana State Library, Indiana Historical Society, and Hamilton County Public Library East were also very helpful. The people whom I interviewed as part of my research were integral to the book’s completion; I owe each of them a personal debt of gratitude. Peter Noot demonstrated his exceptional editing skills in strengthening the text. My daughter Haley listened to stories about April 4, 1968. Her reactions helped guide me, as did her wonderful nature. Above all, my wife, Dr. Kelly Miller, did what she always does—encourage, listen, collaborate, suggest, and uplift. I need no other reason to believe in God—to know that faith is real—than to recognize Kelly’s role in my life. And toward that end, it is my profound wish that my mother and father, both passed on and awaiting, have enjoyed this work. I’ll thank them personally later.

Introduction

It was a dream of Martin Luther King’s. But instead of a world free of bigotry, this time he had dreamed of death. On April 3, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, Martin Luther King told the crowd at Mason Temple that he had foreseen his own end. With no notes, nothing written, he was revealing his heart to them.

I’ve been to the mountaintop, he cried out. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve se-e-e-e-e-n the promised land. As the crowd stamped, exhorting him on, they became one with the speaker in a symphony of sound and emotion that filled the church. I may not get there with ya, but I want ya to know tonight… that we as a people will get to the promised land!

Outside, thunder growled, lightning flashed, and hanging low were the blackish-green clouds of tornadoes. So I’m not worried, I’m not fearin’ any man—my e-e-y-y-y-e-e-s-s have seen the glory of the comin’ of the Lord!

He collapsed into the arms of friends next to the podium. In less than 24 hours, King would collapse again, that time never to rise again.

The death of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, was an event of enormous importance. His murder ended the life of a man with vision. It was a death that sent chaos into the midst of American cities and strained further the already tense frame of mind of the American people. In a decade that featured more than its share of drama, April 4, 1968, marked an intersection of tragedy, confusion, and peril.

In this book we will examine the effect that King’s death had on six people that night. These people were leaders, meaning that they had followers who were drawn by power, influence, or both. On the night of April 4, 1968, the six leaders had little in common except being in the same city—Indianapolis, Indiana—and hearing the news that King had been shot. I will extract from the past the story of their night. My purpose is to suggest how each of us might benefit from their experience.

The six leaders were Robert Kennedy, U.S. senator from New York; Richard Lugar, mayor of Indianapolis; Dr. Frank Lloyd, director of medical research at Methodist Hospital and specialist in obstetrics and gynecology in Indianapolis; Paul Cantwell, Marion County commissioner and local Democratic Party official; Carol Olson, night-shift nursing supervisor at Community Hospital in Indianapolis; and Charles Snooky Hendricks, a local social activist and small-time criminal. They represent a cross-section of American life and leadership.

The thesis of this book is that the same event can affect different leaders in diverse ways. Their differences will reflect age, gender, experience, temperament, background, livelihood, aspiration, and other factors. These factors often will change in a leader—some rising, some falling—in a constantly shifting pattern. That is how life goes.

We will see also the effects of an event on various levels of leadership. Leaders will appear from several levels—family, neighborhood, locality, regional, national, and international. The event itself will blend into smaller, preexisting events on the ground. In the heat of the moment, the line between past and present will dissolve.

Start of a New Day

I am not bound to please thee with my answers.

William Shakespeare

A leader must be heard above the din, the noise made by the worries and woes of followers.

He wanted to be Leader of the Free World. That’s what they called the president of the United States in 1968.

To see this guy in the street, you wouldn’t have thought of him as a potential American president. He was paper thin, five feet eight inches tall, with lines and wrinkles etched on his face and a new haircut left too close to his scalp. At age forty-two, Robert Kennedy looked more like an overworked accountant, or maybe a retired bantamweight fighter, than he did a possible Democratic Party nominee for the presidency.

Whichever he seemed to be, boxer or bean-counter, Kennedy wanted to be president. That’s why, at approximately 1:00 p.m. on Thursday, April 4, he would speak to an auditorium of students, faculty, and general onlookers on the campus of the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. The tone of the crowd was one of excitement and anticipation.

If you were to take a microphone around the auditorium and ask the people there if Robert Kennedy was a leader, you would have heard eager voices, mostly of college age, shout Yes, yes! A raw energy and passion would circulate within their answers. If given the chance, many of the people would have rushed the stage to get a closer look at the man, perhaps even reaching for a piece of his clothes, a button.

Was this real? If you’re asking about the button, you know it was real; if you’re asking about the atmosphere in the crowd, it was just as tangible as the button. These people genuinely wanted to be where he was. They felt a rush of adrenaline in sharing whatever space he occupied. For the seconds or minutes when they were nearest to him in time and place—especially place—a sense of joy and pleasure overwhelmed them. If he just said the word, gave the go-ahead, they would have tried to do things that in other circumstances they wouldn’t have thought possible. They would take him at his word. They were his followers in a unique and particular form. And the adulation wasn’t contrived.

Without question, Robert Kennedy was a leader on this early afternoon of April 4. At the least, he had these followers, which was part of the definition of leadership. The odd thing, though, was that Kennedy’s previous experience of leadership didn’t automatically accord with the exuberant, nearly manic following evident in the Notre Dame auditorium. In many ways, it was difficult to trace his path to leadership—his path to the lectern on the auditorium stage.

He was the seventh of nine children in a rabidly competitive family. His parents, especially his father, dominated the family and geared the group around the two oldest sons, Joseph Jr. and John. Much of Robert Kennedy’s youth was an exercise in struggling to hold his own. The power of his older