I was 16 when Dr. King was killed. I was a sophomore at Hazard High School in Hazard, Kentucky. I remember that day very clearly. It was a beautiful April morning. Our parents deposited us at school as usual. What wasn’t usual was that the high school was ringed with marked cars of the Kentucky State Police. I don’t know what they were expecting us to do. Hazard High was already integrated. We all had black friends at school.

We, us kids, were all just kind of stunned and quiet. We listened to the news and we knew what had happened. I had the downtown paper route in those days and I always read the paper in the morning. I was a news junkie even then. Dr. King had taken a rifle shot to the throat. It was not a survivable wound. Later, law enforcement would identify a skeezy little white guy as the assassin. Somehow, catching and convicting him brought no comfort. There was no sense of closure. He was just a hateful nothing who had taken the life of a great man.

At the time that he died, Dr. King was already evolving away from being a hard-core civil rights champion. He was thinking and talking more and more about war, peace and poverty. Some say that this pivot was what got him killed. Remember that Vietnam was raging. 1968 was the year of the Tet Offensive which prompted Walter Cronkite to pronounce the war lost on national TV. These were dark times, and now Dr. King was gone. We all wondered when everything was going to fly apart. It was apocalyptic.

I won’t say I understood Dr. King at the time. I didn’t. As a young white male in the South, I was the picture of white privilege. It took me years to understand this. I know that Dr. King did not hate me personally, but he fought the system I represented, as well he should.

There was a huge change in our relationships when Dr. King was killed. I had friends, both male and female, who were black. I hope that these relationships were genuine. I certainly felt that they were. After Dr. King was killed those friendships turned frosty. It was as if we, the whites, had taken something from the blacks that was irreplaceable. For this, we could not be forgiven. There was always a distance after that. We all remained cordial to each other but the closeness was gone.

Dr. King was a hero of the first order. He championed non-violent social action and he changed the world. I think we all took him for granted at the time, or viewed him as “that troublesome negro.” At a time when the country felt like it was about to explode, Dr. King came along teaching peace and forgiveness. He taught a kind of love that was dynamic and engaged. His was a truly pure version of Christianity. He inspired everyone. Even those who didn’t like him or his cause would listen when he spoke. He had the prophetic gift.

I guess I can say that I’m glad that I got to share the planet with him for a while. I wish I could tell him that I was sorry about what happened to him, and thank him for what he did.