MLK died, city seethed

Forty years ago, riots erupted in Raleigh after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The revolt was short, but memories of it persist

Eunice Joyner was in Memorial Auditorium in downtown Raleigh at a meeting of the N.C. Teachers Association when someone came on stage to make an announcement. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated.

It was Thursday, April 4, 1968, and Joyner, an elementary school teacher, felt her heart break.

"What is this country coming to that people can get shot because of their beliefs?" she remembers thinking. "It was very, very hurtful to me."

King's assassination -- 40 years ago today outside a Memphis hotel room -- sparked a wave of riots in downtown Raleigh and in cities across North Carolina and the nation. Within hours of the news, people began assembling

on the streets of downtown Raleigh, venting sadness, anger and frustration.

In the 40 years of mending since, many African-Americans have seen progress: integration in all sectors of society, lower poverty rates, a growing black middle class. But more work is needed to raise educational standards, deter crime and improve health, leaders said. Such issues are on the agenda of the state chapter of the NAACP, including an anti-poverty drive modeled after King's "Poor People's Campaign," which the slain civil rights leader was pressing at the time of his death.

"We have not reached the crest of the hill," said Vernon Malone, a state senator representing Wake County. "There's a lot of racism to be overcome."

Malone will not forget the day King died. He was shopping at a drugstore in Cameron Village when he heard the news. A white man approached Malone, who is black, and said, "Don't you think you ought to go home?"

"There was a feeling that there would be repercussions," Malone said, and he wondered what kind of backlash King's death would bring. Malone said many people were angry -- even people who didn't participate in rioting -- that a leader who stood against violence was cut down by an assassin's bullet and cut short of his goals.

Just four years earlier, the Civil Rights Act banned discrimination in public accommodations. It was followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In many ways, the hallmarks of segregation were being dismantled -- in large part because of the galvanizing force of King's sermons and calls to action.

A slide backward

On the day of his assassination, progress did not seem inevitable. In fact, it looked as though it might be reversed.

"There was a hopelessness that came out," said Mickey Michaux, a state representative from Durham.

For Michaux, who had met King several times, the death was personal.

"A friend like that, you don't lose them every day," he said. "There's no way to describe that feeling."

In the hours following King's murder, student protesters from Shaw University and St. Augustine's College converged on downtown Raleigh and began clashing with waiting police officers. Bricks and stones flew into Fayette- ville Street shops. Cars were overturned. Buildings were set on fire. About 1,200 National Guardsmen helped Raleigh police and state troopers quell the riots. As the troops blocked downtown streets, Mayor Travis Tomlinson called for a curfew. Gov. Dan Moore shuttered ABC stores.

"It was mayhem downtown, from one end of the street to the other," said Ken Cooke, a photographer for The News & Observer who took photos of the scene. He said he slept at the newspaper office for three nights, because downtown was closed to traffic and the curfew barred his movement after nightfall.

Across the nation, similar scenes of rioting erupted, including in Washington, Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Chicago. The National Guard was called into five other North Carolina cities in addition to Raleigh; Durham had no riots on the first night, Michaux recalled, but isolated incidents occurred later.

The unrest in Raleigh lasted only a few days. In all, 33 people were arrested, and more than 20 people were treated at local hospitals for injuries, most of them minor.

By Sunday, churches were full and memorial services were ubiquitous.

"It led people already committed to civil rights to feel a deeper, more urgent commitment than before," said the Rev. Robert Seymour, retired pastor of Binkley Memorial Baptist Church in Chapel Hill.

As people assessed the situation, he said, many determined King's death should inspire good and not evil.

Looking back on those momentous days 40 years ago, Eunice Joyner has mixed feelings. Things did get better for African-Americans in many ways, but the vestiges of discrimination persist.

On the front page of The News & Observer on Thursday, she noted a story of an innocent black man -- Glen Chapman -- released after 14 years on death row. A disproportionate number of death row inmates are black, she said, and she wonders how many more have been wrongly convicted.

"We're still waiting for people to be treated equally," she said. "No matter who they are."