As is so often the case, I remember exactly where I was and what happened the day that Dr. Martin Luther King was killed. I do not remember the day he was born, because I myself had not yet been born, but the day he died was the day he became immortal in the American mind, for better or worse, when his mission was interrupted but he was born as an immortal icon, as a martyr to the cause, as an indestructible presence.

And so I celebrate one of the worst days of my life, because that was the day Dr. King became far more powerful than he could have ever been in life.

I was at a drive-in restaurant in the Four Corners section of Silver Spring, Maryland, where I had migrated as my former home base of the legendary Wheaton Hot Shoppes drive-in had begun to dry up, as my solid, long-time friends had begun to disappear into the maelstrom of the Vietnam War, either enlisting or being drafted. I had been in college at that time and in 1966 had tried to enlist, not because I believed in or even remotely understood the war, but because I wanted to help lower the curve, to go where my friends had gone, some who wouldn't come back, and others who would leave a vital part of themselves forever behind somewhere in the jungle. But no, I was the frail one, the freak, the sickly one, the one who flunked his physical while in college pursuing a degree in art. And when I realized my student deferment was only delaying the inevitable, I'd tried to enlist, hoping for the Air Force. But I didn't want to go, not really, and by means of a deus ex machina I did not go.

So it was that I was standing in the parking lot of the Tops Drive-in on that April afternoon, looking for trouble, having already been dismissed from Col. Hasan's Black Man's Army for a courtroom outburst that had convinced Col. Hasan I was a liability, "too militant," and had genially asked me to return to my freelance activist status, as a lone community organizer, who then had run up against the nascent Marion Barry machine, Barry, Catfish Mayflield, H. Rap Brown, all those who were on their own little power trip and didn't care that they were undermining the very cause of Dr. King and even that of Malcom.

"Are you gonna take that??" I had shouted at Col. Hasan as he attended the mockery of a trial of two fellow members of his "Army of Liberaton"on trumped up charges, a trial held on the day that George Lincoln Rockwell had been assassinated (by his own people) and the judge had leaned across the bench to inform the defendants of this news, ending with "How unfortunate."

I was standing next to my car, my hot 1968 Dodge Dart, feeling alienated from the suburban redneck fools who had become my comrades as I had evolved away from Wheaton and toward more promising sexual fiascos with the girls of Northwood High School, and believe me, other than winning the occasional street race, that was all I really cared about: Getting laid and finding new, effective way to work with The Movement, which had been knocked loose by the Marion Barry coterie in DC, something these young, white-t-shirted fools knew nothing about.

The news came via the radio in my Dodge, the radio that was always on even though it was on for the music, the insufferably sucky popular music that passed for our culture's "sound" up until about 11:00 PM, when the underground programs used to come on.

I heard it like a brick hitting me in the chest. I heard it and the starch went out of me, my head fell, my heart sank, and as I stood there absorbing news my "other" friends and I had talked about endlessly, about the possibility that Dr. King would be taken out by the FBI, the CIA, the KKK, by some identifiable group, and as I stood there in shock and dismay and agony, I heard the shouts of celebration, not dissimilar to those alleged "Arabs" who decades later cheered the destruction of the World Trade Center. I'm sure there were some of those, and I'm sure not all of white American cheered the death of the pre-eminent Civil Rights Movement leader of the moment.

"YEE-haw!"

"Martin Luther Koon. Har har har!"

"The King is dead! Yaaay!"

Etc.

My newly-acquired friends, who somehow hadn't managed to be drafted or bothered to enlist. They had no idea about my association with Co. Hasan, the Civil Rights Movement or my courtroom outburst, for which I was nearly jailed. The only reason I wasn't was because I was nominally white.

I raised my head and looked to the south, to my city, toward DC, and pointed.

"What?" someone shouted from across the parking lot.

"Watch," I said. "It's about to start. You have no idea."

By that evening the light was visible above the trees and the suburban morons were staying in their "safe" haven some two miles from the border, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was born as a legend, a martyr, an icon, and my city was set ablaze, as the Barry group provoked thousands of people with little to lose to set fire to what little they did have.

I snuck into the city repeatedly during the following nights, down the 14th St. corridor and H St. NE, talking to residents, looters, local business owners with "Soul Brother" scrawled in white shoe polish on their shop windows as they sat out front cradling shotguns and watching the chaos.

"That mother fucker won," said one older gentleman who was out in front of his TV repair shop, watching the chaos. "That mother fucker" was Marion Barry. Later he would try and claim responsibility for having brought a stop to the riots and violence. Disc jockey and local agent provocateur Petie Greene was far more instrumental than Barry and Co., who had helped foment the unrest, in stopping it. James Brown (yes, the singer) helped. And people - white people - like future DC councilman David Clarke. While Marion Barry was establishing his credibility among frustrated black DC-ites, others were actively trying to forge some sort of coalition out of the chaos.

The reason I ruminate over the death of Dr. King on the anniversary of his birth is, if I must repeat myself, because it was on the day he died that he became officially immortal, that his prophetic words about having "been to the moutaintop," and of being unafraid of the fate that might await him came true and he became far more powerful in death than in life, no matter his accomplishments up to that point, because at that point he had given the ultimate gift: His literal, worldly, human life, for the cause.

This is the reason we celebrate his birth.

Because he died for us.