Government at all levels largely ignored the report. Liberals
applauded it. Blacks felt that it was merely another report; they
wanted action. Conservatives claimed that it was a prejudiced and
unfair study.
In April of 1968, another rash of riots swept through the
Afro-American community. This time there was a clear and obvious
cause. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was visiting Memphis in
support of a garbage workers' strike, was leaning over his motel's
second-floor balcony railing talking to a colleague below when
suddenly he was struck by a sniper's bullet and killed. Shock and
outrage swept across the nation. Many Afro-Americans felt that they
had been robbed of a friend as well as of their only hope for a better
future.
Robert Kennedy took to the campaign trail for the 1968 Presidential
election in order to bring justice to the poor, both black and white,
and in order to reunite America behind a new sense of purpose and
idealism. In June, after a rally in Los Angeles, he too was shot and
killed. The nation was filled with horror and disbelief. Robert
Kennedy had gained the trust of Afro-Americans more than almost any
other white man of his generation.
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