Danny Crawford can remember the tears, the despair and finally, the anger.
The retired NBA referee was a 14-year-old aspiring basketball player, a native of Chicago’s West Side when the word filtered through the country 50 years ago today.
Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., shot at the Lorraine Hotel on Apr. 4, 1968. Crawford refused the say the word “died” because that would indicate natural causes. When he said “assassinated,” each syllable illustrated the grief he felt in the moment and the events he witnessed thereafter, as rioting and looting destroyed what was then a thriving commerce on the West Side.