It was a bit after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, that we got word that Martin Luther King had been assassinated. I was with a group of about 200 University of Georgia students that had taken over the Administration Building two days earlier in a protest that had gotten national attention. I was home on leave from the Air Force and had been visiting my old college roommate, who had become president of Students for a Democratic Society since I had left for the service. He was one of the protest organizers.
The news of King’s death took the wind out of the protest pretty quickly and we drifted off to various “hippie houses” off campus. The one my roommate lived in was in Watkinsville, south of Athens. All I remember of the house is that it had pillars painted in day-glo colors and an old Hudson Hornet on the front lawn.
Later, as we sat around wondering what was going to happen to the world and us after this tragedy, I stumbled on a friend in a back bedroom pouring gasoline into Coke bottles and stuffing bits of ripped t-shirts into them. He had put the wick of a benzadrine inhaler into a beer he was drinking and was pretty high. “What the hell are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m going to create diversionary tactics for the black revolution,” he responded. I guess you had to be there.
