And the People Mourned

By Kyle Roerink

Dallas Kinney was the first person to photograph the body of Dr. Martin Luther King after the Civil Rights leader’s death in Memphis on April 4, 1968. When he went back home to Iowa after covering the tragedy, he “cried for three days.” Forty-two years later, the short and stocky 73 year old with a white beard and rosy cheeks was barely able to hold in his tears while speaking about the assassination.

“I wasn’t seeing a situation or racial rights,” he said. “I saw a people who were facing a great loss.”

Before the high-caliber bullet tore through his neck, Dr. King gave his last speech at the Mason Temple on April 3 in Memphis to help achieve equity for black sanitation employees who wanted to improve their working conditions and eliminate discrimination at their place of work.

“Every black person in Memphis heard that speech the night before.” Kinney said. “And the next day the unthinkable happened.”

While speaking to those who gathered at the temple, it seemed as if Dr. King had a revelation. In this famous address, he said, “ … In the human rights revolution, if something isn’t done, and in a hurry, to bring the colored peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed. Now, I’m just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period to see what is unfolding. And I’m happy that He’s allowed me to be in Memphis.”

The next time the nation would see the Civil Rights leader would be in a bronze casket on April 5.

Kinney, who later in his career would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize, received a call on the day of the assassination from his managing editor at the Debuque Telegraph Herald located in Debuque, Iowa.

“King has been killed,” he said to Kinney.

This was managing editor James Gelades’ way of assigning Kinney to the story.

“What do you want to see,” he asked Gelades.

“If it’s going to look like Life, Time and UPI don’t do it,” Gelades said.

After arriving in Memphis on April 4, Kinney spent the remainder of the day and the first part of April 5 in the newsroom of the local paper, The Commercial Appeal, until word spread of a press conference at the Lorraine Motel. The tables were directly below the balcony where Dr. King lay with blood gushing out of a gaping hole in his neck only hours before.

“It was a press conference held by black leaders from residential Memphis,” Kinney said. “But it was more style than substance—there was nothing going on.”

Afterwards, the rest of the media members went back to their hotels and newsrooms to wait for the funeral, which was to be held in Atlanta. Kinney, remembering the words of Gelades, didn’t follow the pack.

After taking a photo of an elderly black man standing near the street outside of the motel, Kinney had a conversation with him.

“What’s going on,” the man asked Kinney.

“I really don’t know,” Kinney replied.

“I am going down to see the body,” the man said.

“Do you care if I walk along with you,” Kinney asked.

“It’s your white ass,” the man said.

At that point in time no news organizations knew where or when Dr. King’s Memphis viewing would be.

“I guarantee that was local knowledge,” Kinney said. “That did not come out of the press conference nor was it broadcast at all.”

Riots in parts of Memphis erupted after the announcement of Dr. King’s death, closing many of the city’s main roads to motor vehicles. Kinney knew he was taking a chance walking through the streets of a city that had been torn apart due to prejudice, but it was the only way he could get to the R.S. Lewis and Sons Funeral Home. He said handling a situation like that is “all attitude.”

When Kinney arrived at the funeral home he immediately approached the funeral director and said, “This is what we need to do. The first person to see Dr. King’s body has got to be recorded.”

He assured the director that if his photography intruded upon the privacy of those who came to see the body all he had to do was “raise one finger” and Kinney would leave.

The layout for the viewing was in a proscenium arch style. The photos may seem like he was positioned right over casket, but because of his lenses he was able to make pictures without hovering over Dr. King’s body.

“I was visible, but I did not stand out,” he said.”

Kinney positioned himself and waited to capture the first onlooker. When the procession began he saw an elderly woman making her way to the bronze casket to look at Dr. King. She was holding a bagged lunch. Kinney said the look on her face and all of the others in attendance at the viewing was a different emotion than he had “ever encountered.”

The enormity of the situation was not conveyed only with sorrow. Kinney said the morale of the community expressed “authentic grief bathed in shock.”

“I saw that first woman and I knew that I knew it was a monumental moment of what I was privileged to be part of,” he said.

After a while, a well-dressed woman approached the casket to see for herself what had become of Dr. King. Kinney clicked his camera’s shutter.

“She looked through then lens of my 85mm and gave me a look like ‘how dare you,’” he said. “I stopped photographing after that because the photo captured something that intruded upon her grief.”

He informed the woman that no one would ever see the picture. After 22 hours in Memphis with no sleep and the first images of the martyred Civil Rights hero laid to rest, Kinney went back home to Iowa.

Having the opportunity to photograph the tragedy gave Kinney the credentials to photograph the riots that proceeded the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, Robert F. Kennedy, and the Pulitzer-Prize winning images of migrant workers in Florida.

He says that photographing Dr. King is monumental because he captured a situation where people lost a part of their souls.

“He had a dream,” Kinney said. “They lost the dream. Not for a moment. Not for a week. Not for a month—For a lifetime.”

See a slideshow of photos from King's funeral here