25 YEARS: GIRARDEANS RECALL KING'S ASSASSINATION

Twenty-five years ago today, as he stepped out on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was struck down by an assassin's bullet.

The event stunned a confused nation, which then watched in horror as cities throughout America erupted in flames and rioting. King represented hope for the hopeless, and although an apostle of non-violence when the dreamer was killed, many feared, so too was the dream.

"I was more hurt than anything else at the fact that Dr. King was assassinated. I remember thinking, `How could this happen to a man of peace?'" said Dorothy Hardy, an educator and counselor in Cape Girardeau who remembers with clarity the evening of April 4, 1968. "It was a day that impacted my life, as it did so many other African Americans."

Beth Mapes, a Cape Girardeau nurse, said the cool Memphis night 25 years ago continues to evoke vivid images of the chaos of doctors and nurses working desperately to revive a dying man.

Mapes was a 23-year-old surgical nurse at St. Joseph Hospital in Memphis the night King was brought to the emergency room with mortal wounds.

"At the time, everyone reported that he was DOA (dead on arrival)," she recalled. "But that wasn't true. He did have a heart beat for 10 to 15 minutes after he arrived at St. Joseph."

A short time after Mapes was called to the emergency room with the hospital's surgeons, she was asked to introduce the civil rights leader's compatriots, Dr. Ralph David Abernathy and Jesse Jackson, to the doctors who worked on King.

"The thing that really sticks in my mind was the national guardsmen that were standing outside the emergency room with rifles with fixed bayonets," Mapes said. "In Memphis, riots broke out everywhere following the shooting, and Beale Street was in flames.

"All the National Guardsmen were there and no one was allowed in the streets."

Hardy lived in Cincinnati at the time, where she worked as a counselor primarily for black youth. "We had riots in Cincinnati as we did around the nation," Hardy said. "We had this anger that just exploded."

As someone who was active in community affairs, Hardy was asked by city leaders to help defray the chaos.

"They asked us to get in the streets and try to stop the violence," She said, "I saw it first hand, and I could understand the anger.

"But my own feeling was that this was not the answer that violence is never the answer which was one of the reasons they called us out. Many of us who worked with youth understood the anger but did not advocate violence."

Mapes said that she had no idea at the time that King's death would cause such national upheaval.

"I was young at the time and had only been out of school a couple years," she said. "I had no idea it would have that big of effect. But it's something that comes to mind often since that night."

"It was horrible," said Hardy. "I recall it often with great sadness, more in terms of the conditions now than then.

Beneath the Lorraine Motel balcony where King was shot that night, a memorial plaque quotes Genesis:

"They said one to another, Behold, here cometh the dreamer ... Let us slay him ... And we shall see what will become of his dreams."

The plaque begs the question: What has become of the dream?

"It seemed there for a while we made wonderful progress," Hardy said. "I was very proud of my country as it moved and had something positive to say: `Look, we can't go along with this.'

"But something has happened in the past 12 years or so that indicates Americans have gone back on that decision to provide a world that is more equitable."

Hardy said that although progress has been made in the civil rights struggle, she's amazed that there remain people "who view African Americans as inferior" and refuse to address racism in various institutions.

She sees a change in attitude away from a national commitment toward racial equality toward a detached "individualism."

"I think there was a universal feeling in this country that we would go forward to see to it that we would have justice in this country," Hardy said. "A majority of Americans had felt that.

"I think we have lost that with many Americans and even some African Americans."

Hardy said economic despair, political unrest, crime and drugs all add to the confusion among Americans today black and white.

"Until Americans get back on course to that idea of equal justice for all Americans, I don't think we can remain the beacon for all the world," she added. "We've lost that. I've marched side by side with whites because we had a common goal, but I don't see that anymore."

Hardy said her optimism has waned regarding achievement of King's dream of racial equality and justice.

"I fear the situation in this country right now is very volatile," she said. "It's going to take just one big incident and we're going to have fires, just like in Los Angeles. There's a lot of dissatisfaction, and the two sides haven't been coming together, particularly in urban areas.

"I'm sorry to say it, but it's going to happen."

Others who observed the anniversary of King's death this weekend said the slain leader would not want for causes if he were alive today.

"We would have advanced the poverty issue sooner in a massive way if Dr. King would had lived," said Jack O'Dell, a former member of King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Now a leader of the Rev. Jesse Jackson's National Rainbow Coalition, O'Dell said civil rights leaders lost focus after King died, and the struggle is more difficult today.

O'Dell was at Memphis this weekend participating in events marking the anniversary of his assassination.

Elsewhere, about 40 students and faculty at Boston University, where King studied theology, gathered Friday for prayers and hymns to mark the anniversary.

"The civil rights revolution which he began has not been finished, just as our first American Revolution has not finished its work for democracy," said Walter Muelder, who was dean of the school of theology when King was a student there in the 1950s and served on the panel that read King's doctoral thesis.

Some information for this article was provided by the Associated Press.