KANSAS CITY, Mo. – It’s typical to see video clips and pictures of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But what might be a little less common, is knowing him.
While you might not know the entire “I Have a Dream” speech by King, you probably know bits and pieces as 86-year-old Dorothy Evans does.
“I think about it all the time, you know, when this came up today on the television that really brought back a lot of memories,” Evans said.
It’s not because Evans remembers exactly what she was doing that day in 1963, but because she said, “We all went to school together, every day.”
Evans remembers King as a middle school and high school boy from her younger sister’s class in the heart of Atlanta, Georgia. She said she lived on the south east side of town and had to walk to the west side for school.
“We had to walk from there, over to where he lived and pass right by the door, everything,” Evans said.
Evans said she didn’t talk much to the man who would become the leader of the country’s civil rights movement. She said she moved to Kansas City by 1950. Evans said she followed the movement on television, but said she didn’t care much about politics. Still though, she said 1968 hurt.
“When he got assassinated that’s when it kind of shook me up a little bit,” Evans said.
She said she knows his words, including parts of this speech 50 years ago, have changed America.
“A lot of things that Martin said, it has happened,” Evans said.
She said she also went to Ebenezer Baptist Church during her time in Atlanta. She said the King’s were also a part of the congregation and she remembers his mother used to play the piano.
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