Dark Foreboding

After the march was destroyed on the 28th, top staff leaders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference flew into Memphis and began intensive preparations for a new attempt at a march on Friday, April 5. At the suggestion of Bayard Rustin of the A. Philip Randolph Institute and Victor Gotbaum of the New York Council of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFL-CIO, the date of the march was postponed to Monday. The two men promised a rally of labor and civil rights forces from across the nation.

Meanwhile, Federal District Court Judge Bailey Brown, at the request of city officials, had issued on Wednesday, April 3, a temporary restraining order which prohibited Dr. King and his aides and "all nonresidents acting in concert" with them from "organizing or engaging" in the massive parade. Dr. King promptly labeled the order a "basic denial of First Amendment privileges" and said that he planned to ignore it, if attorneys could not get it lifted.

That night Dr. King, addressing the 2,000 people who came to Mason Temple in the rain, was in a somber, reflective mood. He said:

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop, I won't mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's Will.

And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land.

I many not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.

So I'm happy tonight.. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

Baxton Bryant, Executive Director of the Tennessee Council on Human Relations, said shortly after the meeting ended that the civil rights leader "sounded as though he were giving his own eulogy." Others concurred.

That premonition was all too accurate, as the world now knows. It was the last speech of Dr. Martin Luther King. Twenty-one hours later, an assassin -- believed to be white -- shot Dr. King to death as he stood on the balcony of his hotel room.