Civil Rights Leaders Recount MLK's Assassination

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., leader of the Civil Rights Movement, was assassinated 43 years ago, on April 4, 1968.

U.S. Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.) and broadcasting executive Xernona Clayton Brady, both personal friends of King, remember the tragedy well.

The Civil Rights leaders shared their memories at the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists 29th Pioneer Black Journalist Awards, held at on Sunday. 

"I had the task of driving Mr. King to the airport to go to Memphis," Brady said. "So I was one of the last persons in Atlanta to see him."

Brady said when word got to Atlanta about the murder of King, Coretta Scott King asked her to stay with the children. Brady helped to console Mrs. King during the difficult time, intercepting her phone calls and staying with her. 

"Dr. King was fearless," Brady said. "He was cloaked in the armor of 'I am doing the right thing.'"

Lewis said he was campaigning for Robert Kennedy in Indiana when he got the news. 

"It was one of the saddest, darkest times in my life," said Lewis, who wore the Presidential Medal of Freedom around his neck on Sunday. 

"If it hadn't been for Martin Luther King Jr., I don't know what would have happened to many of us. This man liberated us. He freed us. He taught us to stand up and say no to segregation and racial discrimination.

"But when I was growing up, my mother and father and grandparents would say, 'Don't get in trouble. Don't get in the way.'"

Lewis said he would ask his parents about the signs that said "White men" or "Colored Men."

"And Dr. King inspired me to get in trouble, to get in the way," Lewis said. "And I've been getting in trouble ever since."

Lewis first met King in 1957 when he was 17 years old. Lewis wanted to attend Troy State College, so he submitted his application and high school transcript. 

"I never heard a word from the school," Lewis said, "so I wrote a letter to Dr. King ... told Dr. King I needed his help. He wrote me back and sent me a round-trip Greyhound bus ticket and invited me to come to Montgomery to meet with him."

King "was a wonderful, unbelievable human being," Lewis said. 

Lewis soon got involved with the sit-ins and the freedom rides.

By 1963, Lewis was dubbed one of the Big Six leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. He is the only one of the six still alive. At the age of 23, Lewis helped organize and spoke at the March to Washington in August 1963. At the time, he was president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. 

"These people were fearless," Brady said. "We just really need to honor the fact that they were unafraid, just fearlessly went into the battle just trying to get rights."

Lewis said on Aug. 28, the anniversary of the March to Washington, there will be a memorial unveiled in Washington, D.C., to honor King. 

"It is going to be the most visited memorial in Washington," Lewis said.