The Assassination of Martin Luther King
and My Road to Perdition
An Essay By Paul R. Abramson
A True Story
Paul R. Abramson is a Professor of Psychology at UCLA
and the lead singer and lyricist of the band Crying 4 Kafka.
When I was 18 years old I hitchhiked from Miami, Florida to Los Angeles, California. It was spring break, April 4th 1968, to be exact. I was a freshman at the University of Miami.
Two friends joined me. The very first person who gave us a ride brought us to Memphis, Tennessee. It was not a direct route to Los Angeles, but it was progress, or so we thought, and we took it anyway. Little did we know, at 6pm that evening, Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. When we arrived at 10pm, the city was under siege. William Blake’s Parlor of Horror, or so it seemed to me.
How can any of this be true, I wondered? The poisoned fruit of slavery, and its centuries of anguish, still evident in bloodletting and brutality. How many heroes have to be sacrificed on the altar of liberty before we guarantee equality for all?
We didn’t sleep in Memphis. We didn’t sleep at all, in fact. We just kept walking until we got to a tiny town near the Arkansas border, and then convinced the owner of a small diner, at 5am no less, to make breakfast for us. By the time we walked back to the highway, now heading toward West Memphis, Arkansas, we witnessed what looked like Armageddon on the move. Armored tanks, literally, driving down the freeway heading towards Memphis, Tennessee.
How can any of this be true, I continued to wonder? The assassination of an American hero, armored tanks on our highways, and hellfire at our doors? It seemed an awfully steep price to have to pay for racial animus.
While still trying to wrap my head around ambassadors of hate, and the violence they abet, I put my thumb out again, and the next ride we received was from a person with dwarfism. A very friendly guy, who best all of all, was driving straight to LA. We had such a blast listening to his stories, and even stopped for sight-seeing at the Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert. Martin Luther King, however, was never far from my thoughts. Why, I wondered, do so many people try to seize their utopias by committing murders?
When we got to LA, we “crashed” at an apartment on Rossmore Avenue. It wasn’t far from where Vine Street converges with Sunset Boulevard. The Kaleidoscope, a music venue on Sunset, caught my eye. The Doors happened to be playing there in a couple of days. People Are Strange, indeed.
I couldn’t afford a ticket, so I didn’t think much about the Doors, until a guy named Johnny, who also lived in the Rossmore apartment said, Don’t worry. We only need to buy one ticket. That fucker goes inside and then opens the side door. That’s when everybody runs in.
That’s exactly what I did. I ran in and saw The Lizard King, Jim Morrison, in his prime. That experience, interestingly enough, was just as baffling as everything else on this trip, though admittedly, in Morrison’s case, it was simply surreal.
Not having much to do on Easter Sunday, I went back to the Kaleidoscope. The James Cotton Blues band was performing, and I actually paid three dollars for my ticket. Once inside I discovered that only nine people were in the audience. Halfway through his set, Mr. Cotton put down his harp and said, Man, don’t get hung up about Easter.
The following day I went to an agency that paid drivers to deliver cars across the country. I’m heading back to Miami I told them. You’re in luck, the woman said, we have a 55 Thunderbird that needs to be driven back to West Palm Beach, Florida.
Since one of my friends was not returning to college, the other joined me for the drive back. It was, hopefully, going to be a welcome return from my road to perdition. I had enough of being on a path that visualized unconquerable hate. Even unfolding against the backdrop of a vibrant dream could never erase the way it all began.