Great story on CNN of the 50th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr and his close friends Rev. Jesse Jackson and civil rights leader Andrew Young who were present when he was assassinated on April 4, 1968 at The Lorraine Motel in Memphis.
After I became an editorial photographer I was able to meet and photographed these civil rights legends.
I am also proud to say that those college kids, with both men in the photo, are students from my former college, now Southern Adventist University, which I attended in Tennessee.
I was not living in the USA in 1968. But in 1977 I was and there is another Memphis story with its own "king."
During the summer of 1977 I took a science class in Memphis, TN. On August 16th, 1977, a day after my class was over I boarded a packet Greyhound bus heading east to Chattanooga, TN.
Without any warning, less than a mile before the city limit, the bus driver pulled over, got out of his seat and with tears flowing out of his eyes was facing us.
We didn't understand his strange behavior or the meaning of it until he softly spoke with a painful face, "The King just died."
Been a foreigner and still learning English I must have been the only clueless person in the bus and all I could think was, " There are no kings or queens in the USA." So I asked my fellow passenger, who was also crying like the rest, who was the king.
"Elvis just died" came the fast replied.
Then I cried too, not for Elvis or all the kings and queens from the past... it felt like a funeral and I couldn't have been the only person with a dried face.
CNN goo.gl/ojL75W
Photo by Andrea Morales ©