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Tuesday, April 07, 1998 By Tony Norman
When I was 7 years old, I gathered up a couple of friends and set out to solve the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
It was April 1968, a few days after the riots in Philly, but that didn't concern us. Our part of West Philly had remained stable during the city's flirtation with civil unrest, though we'd all heard stories about sections of town still smoldering after days of rage.
But my birthday was a little more than a week away, and the only fire I was interested in seeing were the candles on my birthday cake. Since some of the neighborhood kids were already sniffing around for details of the party, it seemed as good a time as any to enlist their help in solving King's murder.
Years of watching after school cartoons featuring boys doing the impossible had emboldened us. Even if it meant revealing our secret identities as aspiring crime fighters, we were prepared to do it if it would stop our mothers and grandmothers from crying.
Seven of us crouched on the cracked sidewalk shooting marbles that day: Skeeter and Li'l Gregory from around the corner, curly haired brothers Sherman and Kevin, my best friend David and Patty the White Girl from down the street.
Every boys club had to have a white member in those days, and our neighborhoods were still full of freckle-faced candidates, though the riots would eventually change that. Our nickname for the tough Irish Catholic girl whose long brown hair always smelled of vanilla extract was "Patty Duke," in honor of the sitcom star.
For purely economic reasons, her family stayed in the neighborhood long after most of the other whites had escaped to Scranton and Levittown. I remember sitting on my front porch and watching a white family load up their station wagon and stack the roof so that it looked like Jed Clampett's Depression-era jalopy on "The Beverly Hillbillies. I couldn't imagine what they were in such a hurry to get away from, but I'm sure I waved goodbye.
Meanwhile, time was slipping away and we hadn't solved the King assassination. We watched some of the funeral procession on television looking for clues, but none were forthcoming.
But I was impressed by the solemnity of so many white folks expressing their grief on television. Their pain seemed to rival that of members of our families. Still, it seemed bizarre that a "colored man" could illicit such an outpouring of adoration from so many whites. It didn't fit with what we were hearing at our dinner tables about their collective guilt.
For several days we stopped neighbors and friends to ask, since everybody - white or black - was a "suspect," where they were the day King was murdered. To a man (and woman), everyone misunderstood the question.
"Lord, I was folding laundry when it came on the radio..
"My brother called. I just about fell over dead when he told me. "I heard people shouting, `They shot Reverend King.' But killings always come in three's, so who's next?
When my birthday party rolled around, it was relatively sedate by the standard of previous years. Patty was the only white kid who made it. Out in the back yard, James Brown music played while pockets of grownups whispered among themselves. There were a lot of clenched teeth, but fortunately the smell of burning in the air was only barbecue.
Two months later, we heard that MLK's killer was finally caught in England. Our group of crime fighters discussed what we would've done if we'd nabbed James Earl Ray first.
After some arguing, we decided blasting him with ray guns (in honor of his name) wouldn't have been right since Dr. King would've frowned on the idea of using violence.
When we started school the following September, there were sepiatinged drawings of King in every classroom. The teachers insisted that we sing "We Shall Overcome" after the Pledge of Allegiance. It was only then we realized our little murder case was far bigger than we ever imagined. HANDLING: LIB2 ENHANCER: TESTER ================================================================================
11 of 18, 2 Terms
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