Here was a man who put his own — and others’ — humanity above that of racial hatred. Here was someone who not only preached but practiced the technique and the end of nonviolence. Here was a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, a man who shined in a moment when all Americans could be proud of him.

When will you learn, America and Americans? Oh WHEN WILL you learn? Why do you kill off your greatest men? Not more than five years ago you murdered John F. Kennedy. Now Martin Luther King. Is it that you fail to recognize the greatness of these leaders? Or is it that you realize all too well their capacities as leaders and their nobility of purpose, action and word? Why do you persist in killing off your own best men?

No one can measure the greatness and influence of this man. King raised the hopes of thousands of black brothers. He ennobled the civil rights movement with an ideal — nonviolent resistance – that healed those who practiced it at the same time as it hurt those who fought it. He provided some with a dream rather than a nightmare. He called America — and Americans — to their conscience. He refused to divorce the violence of racists at home and of warmongers abroad, and he was right in doing so. He put his own life in danger several times because he had already conquered the fear of death; he knew that one had to be prepared to die before one could begin to live. He stood up for the right, for the true, for the just. Justice, not order, came first in his credo, and he fully knew the consequences of both creed and conduct.

I write as one saddened by the loss of this man. First, he was a man, and his wife and family have to bear their unbearable sorrow. Can you imagine his wife, traveling out to the airport after she learned of the event, and getting no farther than the waiting room when she heard that he was dead? Little good the mayor of Atlanta could do then.

Then he was a man of his own people. Black men weep tonight and we whites must share their grief. Four thousand National Guardsmen and Mace and sticks and clubs will not do it for us. We must share the emotions of grief. We mourn.

But can white Americans mourn Dr. Martin Luther King? Will they? I think not. It was impossible this evening to read MIDDLETOWN. The radio provided no help. It continued on its merry way, business as usual.

Wake up to reality.

See “The Party,” now showing at the downtown Pittsburgh Theatre.

Dollar Savings Bank pays 4 and 1/2 percent interest … if you like your savings on a bigger note.

Tune in tomorrow for the Friday fights.

Now the weather … expect a cool night in Pittsburgh … it’s 50 degrees at the airport.

Try that on for size.

I’ve got a gal named Phoney Maroney … skinny as macaroni … I love her, she loves me. Oh how happy we will be.

Robinson, sharp-scoring backcourt man, one of the two best players in the state, is going to West Virginia.

Twenty-nine seconds to go in this basketball game, the Muskies are down by eight.

That means flavors like chocolate.

Americans do not even know how to respond to death. Is it because they do not know how to value life? Mourn tonight, America and Americans!

The cadences will come no longer, the strong tone, the words or pauses held at length, the familiar images or metaphors, as I listened to them on the St. Paul campus in May of 1967, as I listen to them now — for Martin Luther King is dead.

Ron Dorr

James Madison College professor