Announcer: Direct from our news in Washington, in color, this is the CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite and Russ Hodge in Memphis, Tennessee, Dan Rather in New York...
More »Announcer: Direct from our news in Washington, in color, this is the CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite and Russ Hodge in Memphis, Tennessee, Dan Rather in New York, Bernard in Saigon, Marvin Calvin, Wellington, New Zealand and…South Vietnam.
Walter Cronkite: Good evening. Dr. Martin Luther King, the apostle of non violence in the civil rights movement has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee. Police have issued an all points bulletin for a well dressed young white man seen running from the scene. Officers also reportedly chased and fired on a radio equipment car containing two white men. Dr. King was standing on the balcony of a second floor hotel room when according to a companion a shot was fired from across the street. In the friend’s words, the bullet exploded in his face. Police, who had been keeping a close watch over the noble peace prize winner because of Memphis' turbulent racial situation, were on the scene almost immediately. They rushed the 39 year old Negro leader to a hospital where he died of a bullet wound to the neck. Police said they found a high powered hunting rifle about a block from the hotel but it was not immediately identified as the murder weapon. Mayor Henry Lowe has reinstated the dusk to dawn curfew he imposed on the city last week when a march led by Dr. King erupted in violence. Governor Buford Ellington has called out 4,000 National Guardsman. Police report that the murder has touched off sporadic acts of violence in the Negro section of the city. In a nationwide television address, President Johnson expressed the nation’s shock.
President Johnson: America is shocked and saddened by the brutal slaying tonight of Dr. Martin Luther King. I ask every citizen to reject the blind violence that has struck Dr. King who lived by non-violence.
Walter Cronkite: Dr. King had returned to Memphis only yesterday determined to prove that he could lead a peaceful mass march in support of striking sanitation workers most of whom are Negros. Dr. King had this to say last night about the situation in Memphis.
Dr. King: Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic first amendment privileges because they haven’t committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of a symbol. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for a right.
Walter Cronkite: There was shock in Harlem tonight when word of Dr. King’s murder reached the nation’s largest Negro community. Men, women and children poured into the streets, they appeared dazed, many were crying.
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