Hutchinson - From King to Obama : witness to a turbulent history : a memoir

It was May 31, 1964. I was 18 and my father said that hed like for me to go with him to an event at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. He said it would be an event that I would long remember. He was right. It was one of those pitch perfect spring days in Los Angeles with a slight morning overcast haze that at that time of the year always burned off by mid-day.

When we pulled into the Coliseum parking lot, I was immediately struck by the size and bustle of the throng that streamed through the gates. It looked like a little United Nations. There were whites, blacks, Asians, and Hispanics. Many of those who rushed by me wore clerical collars, and priestly garments. This was fitting since I noted that there were a large number of priests and nuns among the crowd. They were readily recognizable and familiar to me in their garb. For nine years I had attended two Catholic elementary schools and then Mt. Carmel High school in my freshman year. The schools were on Chicagos South Side.

I realized that this was an event that was special and that it had to do with civil rights. The scenes of blacks marching, picketing, and being assaulted by club welding Southern cops, and Confederate flag-waving white toughs, had become commonplace viewing on the nightly news in 1964. The scenes were jarringly etched into my consciousness. The names of the civil rights battlegrounds had become almost household names; Jackson, Mississippi, Birmingham, Alabama, St. Augustine, Florida, Albany, Georgia, and Greensboro, North Carolina. A year earlier, Mississippi NAACP field director Medgar Evers was gunned down in Jackson and the shooter was a white Citizens Council member, Byron de la Beckwith. After two trials, an all-white jury refused to convict him. This was standard fare then when civil rights workers were maimed or killed. Southern white juries, with rare exceptions, never convicted them.

Though I was a high school student in Los Angeles then, the one name that had become the watchword for the civil rights struggle was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His name was constantly mentioned with reverence by my parents. The event my father was determined that I attend with him was billed as a Religious Witness for Human Dignity. I knew from the many religious types who were in the crowd this was a multi-faith event. Shortly after being seated, all eyes turned to the main Coliseum tunnel entrance. I had played high school football and had attended several L.A. Rams games. In those days the Rams played their home games at the Coliseum. The Rams players had burst through this tunnel onto the playing field. It wasnt the Rams that emerged from the tunnel that day, though. Instead, there was a slow procession of priests, rabbis, and protestant ministers that marched solemnly out of the tunnel onto the Coliseum running track. The crowd immediately roared when they marched into view.

All eyes were immediately locked on the small, short, nattily-dressed man at the head of the procession. Despite the processionals somber mood, the man whom everyone intently watched, smiled broadly and waved to the cheering crowd. We were seated in the front section near the railing. Like many others in the crowd, I stared at Dr. King with a mix of awe and wonderment. This smallish man was the unrivaled symbol of a movement which had grown to global importance and dominated the talk at dinner tables in millions of homes. It also stirred much talk, debate and rancor in many statehouses especially in the South, the halls of Congress and the White House. The debate over civil rights had at once both divided and united blacks and whites as no other cause had done in decades.