Jackson never far from memory of the moment King was slain

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2008/jan/18/it-still-02/

By Zack McMillin (Contact)
Friday, January 18, 2008

As many times as Rev. Jesse Jackson has returned to Memphis in the four decades since that awful April 4, 1968, the pain revisits, as fresh and real and relevant as ever.

He was eating lunch at the Four Way Grill on Thursday, the soul-food restaurant on Mississippi Boulevard his mentor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had so appreciated on visits to Memphis in the 1960s. Photos of King remain prominent on the walls, and an old friend and ally in the civil rights movement, labor pioneer Bill Lucy, was there too.

Jackson was one of those on the balcony at the Lorraine Motel when the fatal shots from a sniper's rifle cut down King, who had come to town in 1968 to support the sanitation workers on strike seeking union recognition, dues checkoffs and 10-cent raises.

"It hurts every time; it still hurts," Jackson said. "I never get very far away from it."

Jackson was the featured speaker at Thursday night's opening of AFL-CIO's Martin Luther King Jr. conference, which is seeking to remind its members and the general public about King's relationship with labor and how his focus had moved to advocating for poor and working people in the final year of his life.

"Labor was so central to our struggle for benefits for workers and for wages and health care and it remains the voice for working people," Jackson said.

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