In a note to Dan Rather about his STEADY blog post today about Martin Luther King, Jr., I wrote the following:
Dan, as the editor and publisher (Harper & Row SF) of A Testament of Hope, edited by James Washington back in 1986, I was privileged to work with Coretta Scott King (and JW) on that project, which was meant to commemorate the MLK Jr. national holiday. I was always surprised in my conversations with her about how she and MLK knew that assassination was a distinct possibility in the US at that time (and probably still would be). There were moments when she wondered if she would be next? That always broke my heart that she had to live with that continuous threat. Both Coretta and James have passed, of course, but at that time I felt like I was being given a personal course in civil rights and racism, which has reverberated in my soul throughout my life.