Blair teachers recall the day MLK was killed

Today Martin Luther King Jr. would have been 75 years old. To commemerate the event Silver Chips Online asked Blair teachers where they were the day he was killed and how the event affected them.

Dee D'Angelo- "I was in college at the time. I heard about it from someone else. I heard [myself] around dinnertime we had a gathering on the campus with candles and a speaker that night. People just wanted to be together. Kennedy was shot in June so it just felt like any body could be in danger. That's really scary if you grew up in the 50's and 60's where everything is so predictable. In a lot of cities there was unrest."

James Mogge- "I was at home babysitting my little brother. My parents were out playing golf. I was watching Giligan's island or some reruns and they came on and said Martin Luther King Jr. has been shot. Here's the embarrassing part, I didn't know who Martin Luther King was. I was probably nine at the time. When my parents came home I told then Martin Luther King was shot and then I asked them 'Who's martin Luther King?' All of a sudden I was aware there was someone standing up for civil rights and immediately after there are riots. My dad traveled a lot around the country and now there were curfews. He had to be inside by six. The national guard was on the street."

Rondai Ravilious- "The day after he was assassinated we had to leave the neighborhood. There were several African Americans who were killed. I was very young at the time. I was a teenager. It seemed like a time of chaos. It was almost unmanageable. We were still overcoming from the shellshock of Kennedy's death. A lot of people who lived by the 'American Dream' had a hard time coming to terms."

George Vlasits- "I remembered the days afterward. I was in Durham, North Carolina. I was a full time member student organizer for the Southern Student Organizing Commission (SSOC). We organized a protest against racism focusing on the death of Martin Luther King. Durham didn't have any rebellion like Washington. People came out of it with protests."

John Mathwin- "I was in the army in Germany. Somebody came in with the newspaper with the story and a picture of Washington D.C burning. A guy in my bay pointed to the picture and said 'I live there.' It was a blow and there were a lot of racial fights. It was rumored that a group of whites were going to come and raid the dorm, so we took a big rope, we tied it to the window to be able to run out and we all slept with entrenching tools. There was a lot of talk, a lot of bad feelings."