In 1968, 44 years ago today, civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
I remember that day, and its aftermath, as clearly as one can remember an event that happened at least a generation ago.
My family and I lived in that unique community I have talked about so often here, Rochdale Village, in South Jamaica, Queens, New York. It was a mixed community surrounded by one of the longest standing black communities in the United States.
I was 10 years old, just a few days away from my 11th birthday. I don't remember what we were watching on TV, but my parents, myself and my sister were in our living room all watching the same program. We had a black and white Dumont TV, and although it was a pretty old TV even by the standards of 1968, it still played pretty well.
Whatever we were watching was on Channel 2, the local CBS outlet and the flagship station of the entire network.
Anyway, an announcer broke into the program we were watching, and said something like the following:
"Reports are that civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has been fatally shot in Memphis, Tennessee."
I honestly don't remember if the word "fatally" was used, because I don't remember whether at that time whether it was announced if he was dead yet.
But it was at least announced that he was shot.
(The video that accompanies this Rant was not what I just described, but it is the best I can do to bring this all into perspective. I remember that whatever we were watching was broken into as a "Special Report," so I don't think this was it, but I use it to illustrate my point.)
"Oh my God, oh my God," said my mother over and over and over again.
You have to understand the delicate balance that my family and I, and hundreds of other families both black and white, lived in within this community.
Rochdale Village was an experimental community. Very basically, it was created to see if white middle class families could live, and prosper, within a predominantly black community.
Yes, there were many blacks who lived in Rochdale Village, but the majority of people living in this community were white, and a majority of the whites were Jews, so it was something of a novel community.
We did not live in a gated community, welcomed those living on the outskirts of the community into our schools, our retail establishments, and into our community as a whole.
Many on the outside welcomed us, but probably many more hated us for infiltrating their community.
So any incident, however large or small, that would tip this delicate balance was sure to be something to pay close attention to.
So when it was made public that Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, my mother pretty much knew that it was the beginning of the end of our time in this community.
And oh how right she was.
I was a kid, and maybe I didn't fully get it. I had white friends and black friends there, Jewish friends and non-Jewish friends, and really, all that I cared about at the time was whether we had enough kids for two full teams in stickball, or punchball, or what team we were playing against in Little League.
Sure, I guess I did see some interesting things beyond that, but heck, I was 10 years old, so my world was a pretty small one.
But my world changed the very next day at school.
What I remember from that day was that the Black Panthers demanded that the name of our school be changed to the Martin Luther King Jr. School, and it that request wasn't complied with, then they were going to blow up the school. (No, it wasn't complied with and no, the school was never bombed.)
I remember being addressed in school that day about the incident that had happened, and we all seemed to take it in for what it was, a horrible event that impacted us all.
Leaving school that day, I remember someone I knew being chased by another person with a long knife or machete, with the weapon holder yelling, "You killed my father."
I remember most of us, myself included, running home after school that day.
I also remember the sorrow I felt about the whole thing. Maybe that was the time where I changed from a little kid to a much more mature human being, but the aftermath kind of made one grow up quickly.
It was as if the heart and soul of the development died with King, a man who would have applauded this development I lived in as a step in the right direction.
(I also seem to remember that King was scheduled to visit our community later in the year, recognizing that this was a place that he wanted to know more about, and on our side, elevating our community, showing the world a community that could work if given the chance.)
Living there was never the same.
Those who hated us from the outset continued to hate us, but they had something to point to for their festering hate.
They felt that all whites were to blame for his murder, and don't tell me about profiling; many of us became targets because we were white and Jewish.
And I have found out in recent years that the antagonism towards blacks who lived in the development also ramped up; many who hated us hated them too, characterizing them as "Uncle Toms" and probably much worse.
Crime ran rampant in our community, mainly smaller crimes like being hit up for money and having things stolen from us. A lot of this crime, due to its petty nature, never got reported, but it existed. I was a victim any number of times.
Anarchy ran rampant in the schools. I can't tell you how many times we were mugged, assaulted and pointed out for being white within the walls of the public school and junior high school.
Look, times were changing to begin with, but the day Martin Luther King died was the beginning of the end for this community. It was our "American Pie" in a way; not to lessen the day's importance, but for comparison's sake, it was our "Day the Community Died."
After a number of incidents involving every member of my family, we had had enough, and by July 1971, we moved to Long Island, where initially, we found that things weren't that much better than they were in Queens. We were the first Jewish family on our block, and yes, the prejudicial treatment continued for several years afterward.
Many of my friends moved out of the old neighborhood by the mid 1970s, and quite frankly, I haven't been back there in about 36 years or so. I am still friendly with many people from that development, but we have all scattered, throughout New York or in Florida or other parts of the country and overseas.
It was a wonderful place to grow up in, but you grew up fast there ... very fast.
So I remember Martin Luther King's death with sadness on several levels. First, a man who had something positive to say was vanquished by a madman's bullet, and secondly (and honestly, almost more important to me), because it signaled the end of my neighborhood, or at least the neighborhood as I knew it.
Rochdale Village still stands today, but as a nearly all-black neighborhood. It is strong in that regard, but the experiment in black and white was over years ago. Whether it passed or failed is up to further examination, and I still don't have a clear answer myself.
But I can tell you that Martin Luther King's death was both my coming of age and also the breaking point for the community that I lived in, and even these 40-plus years later, it still reverberates with me, and for many others who lived there, both blacks and whites.
It was a day and time period that I will never forget.
And I do mean never.
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