I Wish — May 29, 2020
The murder of Martin Luther King Jr., on April 4, 1968, produced civic unrest all over America. In Washington, D.C., from April 4 through April 8, 13 deaths and 1,098 injuries were attributed to the uprising.
For four days in 1968, after Martin Luther King was murdered on April 4, a Washington DC neighborhood burned.
We lived in Rockville, Maryland, about 30 minutes from the flaming 14th Street corridor, but were embroiled in the event as our three news channels broadcast frightening images 24 hours a day. Images of the smoking remains of shops and apartments. Images of people lugging televisions, groceries, even washing machines, from the 
rubble. Looters. The story became more about looters than the murder of an American hero. More about the National Guard aiming their firearms at frenzied, fed-up citizens, than about the murder of an American hero who would become an icon; whose name would be emblazoned on street signs, schools, monuments all over the world; whose birthday would become a national holiday.
When the flames finally had been extinguished, the salvaged delis and appliance stores boarded up, we assessed the damage and hoped those four raging days and the hopeful message of the martyred King had changed America.
We hoped America had seen the light. We wished it so.
I left Washington in 2002, thirty-four years after that apocalypse, just as its burnt-out remnants finally had been cleared away to make room for gentrification, for Whole Foods and over-priced condos. The 14th Street corridor was becoming Washington’s theater district! Reminders of those four days in 1968 were eradicated.
But today they are resurrected in my memory, as flames engulf neighborhoods across America after another incomprehensible murder of an innocent black man, George Floyd.
Our world has not changed.
And wishing won’t make it so.