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In Dallas, MLK Jr. Community Center Marks Martin Luther King's Assassination

Doualy Xaykaothao
/
KERA News
Jerry Chambers remembers Dr. King's last speech months before his assassination in 1968.

Friday was the 46th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Dr. King gave his life, for not just one people, for all people," says Jerry Chambers, a long-time civil rights activist in Dallas. "He preached unity, five or six months before he was assassinated.”

Chambers, a 50-year veteran of the Dallas public school system, spoke Friday at theMLK Jr Community Center to mark the hour of King’s assassination in 1968. 

“If the Negro is to be free," he said, "he must move down into the inner resources of his soul and sign with his own pen, his self-supported man-hood, his own self-emancipation proclamation. This is what we have to talk to our next generation about. ”

Chambers says the MLK Jr. Center houses the only bronze statue of Dr. King in Dallas.