Fifty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. He was 38. 

The image below doesn't relate to that. It's earlier—the first time King was profiled in The New York Times, on March 21, 1956, a few months into the year-long Montgomery bus boycott that turned him into a national and international figure. It's worth reading for the historical perspective alone. The Times describes him as “a rather softspoken man with a learning and maturity far beyond his twenty- seven years.” The cutline under his photo is a quote from him: “All men are basically good.” Cf., Anne Frank's “I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” Cf., their endings.

Another line from the article, “He sees the current bus boycott as just one aspect of a world-wide revolt of oppressed peoples,” dovetails nicely with one of the lead newspaper stories that day: “U.S. Backs France in Liberal Plans for North Africa.” We were choosing the wrong side even then. So was the Times. Its first sentence is all about France's search for solutions to her North African problems. That's an interesting problem to have: How to hold onto something that isn't yours. 

Other headlines that day. A strike at Westinghouse was settled after 156 days. There was a spring thaw. Sen. Estes Kefauver upset Sen. Adlai Stevenson to win the Democratic primary in Minnesota. King was on page. 28. 

Imagine telling a Times reader back then that someone in the paper that day would have a national holiday in their honor in less than 30 years. Would be interesting to see how many guesses it took.