http://ozarkspub.vo.llnwd.net/o37/KSMU/audio/mp3/springfiel_8384.mp3
It was 43 years ago this week that civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, in an act of violence that shocked the country. In Springfield, the 18-year-old president of the local NAACP Youth Council, along with three friends, took it upon themselves to drive down to Atlanta in a Ford Mustang for the funeral.
Wes Pratt says he’ll never forget that trip. He still calls Springfield home today, and sat down with me this afternoon to talk about his memories of that journey, beginning with the April 4, 1968 news that King had been killed.
“I was actually upstairs, and my mother heard it on the television. And she screamed out that they’d shot Martin Luther King—they’d shot Dr. King,” he recalls.
“We were all just shocked. We were absolutely stunned. So it was a powerful, powerful moment,” he said.
Once he and his friends got to Atlanta, they found thousands and thousands of people. They parked a mile and a half away from the Ebenezer Baptist Church and walked to the funeral.
“The church was just packed, so they had speakers set up outside. And I remember people had climbed up on telephone poles to listen better to the actual broadcast of the services,” he says.
He recalls the sense of brotherhood and camaraderie. He recalls there being people from many different racial and ethnic backgrounds, and still remembers the moment the casket was brought out of the church. They placed it on a mule-drawn wagon and went on to the place of interment.
On his way back to Springfield, he and his friends drove through the small town of Cullin, Alabama. His friend was speeding, Pratt says, and lost control of the vehicle on a hairpin curve, crashing the Mustang. They needed medical attention.
A white farmer heard the impact.
“He was kind enough to call the Alabama Highway Patrol, and then he took us to the hospital,” Pratt said.
However, Pratt says the farmer didn’t take the four African American men to the Emergency Room.
“He actually took us to the back door of the hospital,” Pratt says.
“He was very kind, but he just wasn’t comfortable with showing how much of a Good Samaritan he was to maybe some friends and neighbors who may have worked at the hospital. But be that as it may, I’ve always appreciated the fact that he did assist us when we were in a bad way,” Pratt says.
Today, Wes Pratt works for Missouri State University as an equal opportunity officer.