I was 10, my brother 12, my sister just eight when Martin Luther King was shot to death at a Memphis, Tennessee hotel at 8:05 in the evening on Thursday, April 4, 1968.
My parents had gone out that evening, and my brother and I had been given permission to watch "Dragnet," a TV cop show starring Jack Webb, that didn't come on till nine. Past our bedtimes.
In that more serious era, Dragnet was, of course, pre-empted for news coverage of the assassination/conspiracy that resulted in the death of King at just 39.
I was just 10 and didn't know a lot about King. Frankly, both my brother and I were upset that our favorite TV show wasn't being televised and news of King's death was.
I'm sure there were pre-teens all over the country who were more aware than my brother and I about King, the Civil Rights movement and the rest of the tumult of the 60s.
But we were kids, back then.
At least we had been on the night we lost our innocence.
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