Clarence Mitchell, a 28-year-old state Senator from Baltimore, was 131 miles away, working on behalf of another Black political trailblazer, when the lightning bolt of history flashed from Memphis, Tenn. and shook up the world.
“I was in Richmond, Va. on April 4th of 1968,” he recalled. “I was to speak at a voter registration rally in Richmond for then-city councilman Henry Marsh, an African-American who went on to become the first Black mayor of Richmond.”
The public accommodations victories Blacks had enjoyed in Maryland had not yet trickled down to their neighbors to the South.
“In those days the civil rights bill had been passed but, you couldn’t stay in hotels – a number of the states weren’t complying – so I was staying at his (Marsh’s) home,” said Mitchell, now the patriarch of the Mitchell family, one of Baltimore’s great political dynasties. “We were watching television preparing to go to the rally when we found out on the news that Martin Luther King had been assassinated.”
Marsh and Mitchell decided to go on with the voter registration rally (which evolved into a prayer service for King) because they believed that’s what King would have wanted.
But, news of his death sent waves of shock and anger through the Black community.
“I was devastated – he was such a strong leader – but he lived the love that he preached,” Mitchell said. “He treated everybody that he associated with in the movement as though they were somebody. All the young men that were working in the movement, he called them doctor, it gave them a feeling of self-empowerment, `Dr. King called me doctor.’ It was a psychological thing that you thought about and you conducted yourself as though you had a doctorate.”
But, like Mitchell many young Black men and older Black men that King had touched so profoundly with his words and actions had also been devastated by his murder. In those harrowing days after his assassination most of them adhered to his principles of non-violence and civic disobedience, but others took to the streets as their rage exploded upon the nation’s cities.
“I got back to Baltimore that evening. I was driving from the White House and I went through 14th Street, I went through the Black community in D.C., and fires were breaking out,” Mitchell remembered. “Folks were battling – kicking out windows – that sort of thing. As I was driving into Baltimore, the same thing was beginning to occur there. I drove over on Pennsylvania Avenue and I drove over to East Baltimore and there were quite a few people in the streets. This was the beginning of something that was very detrimental and my concern was for the people.”
Mitchell and his uncle Parren Mitchell were among many Black elected officials who hit the streets in Baltimore trying to quell the destruction and confronting rioters face to face.
“We were out there day and night, basically talking to people trying to persuade them to stay off the streets and stop the destruction because all of the destruction was taking place in our community,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell says that he and his uncle were able to dissuade many of those bent on destruction because they were not strangers to their community.
“Basically, they were compliant because we had been out in the streets when there were no riots – they weren’t seeing us for the first time,” Mitchell said. The News American (a now defunct daily newspaper), did a full page article on me calling me the king of the streets and they thought that was negative. But, it was true – I was always in the streets –I was out there accessible to the people.”
Despite a strictly-enforced 4 p.m. curfew and the presence of thousands of National Guard troops, looting continued for days.
“Once the mob mentality takes hold – there were people out there participating in the riots who weren’t even grieving for King,” Mitchell said. “They were using the riots as a means to get a refrigerator, or get a fan and it spoke to the poverty that was endemic in this city and how much we still needed to do.”
However, in an ironic twist of fate one of Baltimore’s most notorious drug kingpins helped bring law and order back to the city.
“Little Melvin (Williams) had talked to some of the guys to come together,” Mitchell said. “The hustlers of the day came from East Baltimore, they came from South Baltimore and they came from West Baltimore and they made appeals to the communities that they came from to stop the riots,” Mitchell added. “The next day the riots had stopped.”
After four days of rioting, four people had been killed, 700 injured, about 1,000 businesses had been looted or burned and 5,800 people had been arrested.
It has been 40 years since the riots sparked by King’s death swept the nation. But, Mitchell sees a strong connection between the civil right martyr’s legacy and the man who weeks ago delivered one of the most important speeches on race since King’s “I Have a Dream,” speech.
“The fact is many leaders – Dr. King among them – paved the way for Barack Obama to be where he is today,” Mitchell said.
“If you look back on all those civil rights workers who registered people to vote in the South and who empowered them, you can go to county after county where Black folks control the county,” Mitchell added. “Barack Obama is now the recipient of the hard work and the commitment of the civil rights leaders of all hues from CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to the NAACP.”
Mitchell also remembers a recent experience with the Senator from Illinois that conjured up memories of the slain civil rights leader.
“I was at the rally that was held for him (Obama) at the First Mariner Arena,” Mitchell said. “This is the same feeling I had when Martin Luther King had a rally here (then the Baltimore Civic Center). This place was electrified and I had the same feeling almost 40 years later.”
Indeed, that rally where King spoke took place April 22, 1966 at the Baltimore Civic Center. Like today the promise of change was in the air when King addressed the euphoric crowd. But 40 years later, many would argue that few of the gaping wounds created by hundreds of years of U.S.-sanctioned racism have fully healed and for many the lessons of the past have been lost on subsequent generations.
“We, as a community, now take for granted the gains that were made during that time. My grandmother (Dr. Lillie Carroll Jackson), taught us eternal vigilance is the price of freedom and after we had made gains we would have to fight to keep them,” Mitchell said.
“It is important for us to stay strong – the young people of today have not learned that lesson. We don’t have an activist movement in the city today – it’s here but the leadership is not,” Mitchell added. “Over these 40 years, there’s been tremendous progress. No, we aren’t where we need to be, but we are a helluva’ long way from where we were 40 years ago.”