On Martin Luther King’s anniversary, we reflect on hate, speech and fragile minds | NJ.com
Perhaps the best way to observe this year’s anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birth, given the current political climate, is to reconsider the circumstances surrounding his death. Those circumstances have much to teach us, not just about the America of 1968, when King was assassinated, but about the America of today, which is charting an eerily similar course.
I learned about the circumstances surrounding King’s death while in college. Between my sophomore and junior years, I worked as an intern for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the committee charged with re-investigating the murders of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
As an intern, I was permitted to review ballistics evidence from the Kennedy case in the National Archives and to sit with various conspiracy theorists prior to their formal interviews. “Look!” I recall one nutty professor-type shouting and answering my question of “So who do you think killed the president?” by producing a photo of Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt juxtaposed with a grainy photo of an alleged shooter from the grassy knoll.