Martin, Bobby and John

As young man at UCLA, walking across campus one day, on a grassy slope I saw MLK addressing a group of about 50 students. I ambled on over. I got within 20 feet of him. He looked compact, smooth as a pebble, well-dressed. I wasn't religious, and he was a preacher, and he preached in a style different from what I was used to. The style struck me, a kind of surfer, as strange--yet of all the American leaders of my youth, King was the one I respected most. 

I'd met JFK, and of course he was a phenomenon. He's the only President I recall who actually interested people. I'm not talking about his major speeches, which had a manufactured craft to them. His press conferences, where he spoke off the cuff, were actually funny. He seemed amused by them.  Bobby Kennedy's rise came later as he learned more empathy; he was crushed by the murder of his brother, which somehow translated into a fresh aware of the economic injustice built into the American system. He would have been President, and then he was murdered, too.

No one doubted the courage of the Kennedys, but King's courage awed me. I didn't understand how he and the people marching with him could risk their lives. They walked peacefully into attack dogs and clubs and shotguns. I still don't know how they did it. The most I ever did was walk into tear gas. They were committed to die, to give up their lives if need be, in the name of nonviolent change. And they did die, and change came. 

King was, among other things, more multidimensional than I could quickly follow. It wasn't hard to see that his position of civil rights was right. But then he added a commitment to economic justice. To some of his followers his support of unions diluted the civil rights push and alienated several of the big shots who had supported civil rights. And then he came out against the Vietnam War, almost the first important figure to do so. He did this too early, so to speak. Most of the country wasn't ready yet. Many liberals asked, "Why doesn't he stick to civil rights?"   And then he was gone.