Pophistory: music, movies, history, and life.
At 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray shot and killed Martin Luther King Jr. At the time, the Civil Rights leader stood on the second-floor balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. King died around an hour later at St. Joseph’s Hospital. Two months would pass before Ray was captured at … Continue reading “RFK (and Aeschylus) on MLK Assassination”
On September 25, 1960, Clyde Kennard was arrested in Mississippi and charged with stealing $25 worth of chicken feed. An all-white jury then convicted the black man of the crime. And he was sentenced to seven years of hard labor at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, otherwise known as “Parchman Farm.” Kennard eventually would be released … Continue reading “The Tragic Civil Rights Hero Clyde Kennard”
On July 2 in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The important act, which had survived heated discussion in the Senate and the House of Representatives, made racial segregation in public places illegal. The law had an even broader impact. It also prohibited discrimination on race, color, religion, … Continue reading “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and “We Shall Overcome””
Less than five years after John F. Kennedy was killed on November 22, 1963, the country lost Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy to the bullets of assassins in 1968. Later that year, in tribute to the fallen men, Dion released the song, “Abraham, Martin, and John,” which became a hit in a … Continue reading “Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend John?”
The first interracial kiss on broadcast television is often cited as having occurred in a Star Trek episode “Plato’s Stepchildren.” The episode featured a kiss between Nichelle Nichols as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura and William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk. Maybe they were able to break this new ground because the alien Platonians used their … Continue reading ““First” Interracial Kiss on TV”