A Long Road: 50 Years of Experience from Five African American K-State Alumni Chapter 4

David Griffin: Sixty-eight was a lot of revolutionary kind of things going on, you know, the war, Vietnam was cooking up very heavily, black power, a racial divide if you will, a lot of things going across America in sixty-eight that we had had. Sixty-three, Kennedy being assassinated, in sixty-eight Martin Luther King being assassinated, as a matter of fact I was 80 miles from Memphis when Dr. King was shot, and I remember very clearly driving with several of my athletic friends listening to the radio, we were jamming, had the radio booming high, and it cut off, and the news brief came on that Dr. King had been shot, and it was such a shock to hear that, we didn't believe it, we did not believe it, but it took a very few seconds to understand and believe that it was real. And so that even divided attitudes and opinions about race relations, just tore the fiber during that time, and so everything was centered around hatred and violence and suspicion, and non-acceptance, and that was hard to deal with.

Juanita McGowan: I was in school but I was at an evening program and I remember they came running in saying Dr. King has been shot, Dr King has been shot, and I was like you're just in shock, no this cannot be true. Too young to truly understand the magnitude of what that meant, what that would mean for society, what would that mean for the voice? What would that mean for the movement? I think only until later and as I understood the Civil Rights Movement and Dr. King's contributions but shocked, hurt, but too young to truly understand what a great man he was. 

Charles Rankin: I was studying in my home in Wichita, Kansas. I remember it well, it was a Thursday night and they came across the TV that he's been shot. Concerned, concerned because during that period of time there were incidents in which riotous conditions broke out in several communities across this country and they were addressed from the vantage point of power. Wichita had its own experiences in which the National guard was patrolling the North East community, with their Jeeps, with guns, some of the kids had, and they were kids, teenagers had thrown rocks at cars coming through the North East section of that community, and when, King's event occurred I immediately knew that the cities in this country were going to erupt, and they did. Some people didn't subscribe to, or believe in the nonviolence movement, and some people did believe in that movement, but the reaction was to punish people who may have killed him, and not punish them per say, but take advantage of just disrupting the community. A lot of looting, a lot of breaking up of people's property and things. 

Cathy Greene: We had spring break in April, and we were driving to Colorado, me and another lady, and we heard on the radio about the assassination, I'll never forget that. I knew that he lived on edge, but I was shocked that that happened. He accomplished a lot with the civil rights era but he was focusing on the Vietnam war and bringing about peace. But he was in Memphis trying to help sanitation workers get better benefits and higher pay. My husband and I, my fiancee at the time, were on our way to be with his family, and I remember getting back on the campus, we were, blacks on that campus, we were more proactive and trying to get equal rights and the campus itself, there wasn't, uh, it was very accepting of us, but we were, it really got our attention to be part of the movement to continue the movement.

Veryl Switzer: I was teaching at that time in Chicago, and as a result of Dr. King's visit I believe, that could have been one of the reasons I came back to K-State. I had a lot of activities taking place in Chicago. K-State people came after me, Ernie Barrett, he was the assistant athletic director, he came to Chicago to visit me about coming back to K-State to work. So I was recruited probably harder then, than I was recruited when I was in college but anyway, I agreed to come back, made a visit. Agreed to come back and to help set up some programs for minorities and blacks. 

I think he was encouraged, and the president of the University, I think were given encouragement, by Dr. Martin Luther King that they ought to integrate their program here. I was the first black administrator to be a part of K-State's program when they finally hired me, and I set up a special program for black students recruitment, because they weren't being recruited. So that was one of the reasons why I could make a contribution to the administrative program and bring in, increase the number of black students.