Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Remembering Dr. King's Assassination

At the downtown Atlanta Holiday Inn, 21-year old Louis Coleman was waiting tables.

louis-coleman-11 ( 14) The manager came and got all the blacks together and told us what happened - Dr. King had just been assassinated and that we could leave if we wanted to. And I felt like my brother or my father had just been killed.

Loistene McWorter was working as a postal clerk. She grew up near the King family on Irby street.

loistene11-01 (15.5)I remember just shouting out that MLK had got shot been assassinated. And everything just stopped, and well, I started crying, and it seems like when you talk about it, like it just happened.

In Chattanooga, Jamal Jones, was a senior in high school. He played in the school?s band.

jamal_jones-12 (13.5) I was in the band room and we played the star spangled banner after we heard it, everybody went outside, the teachers just calmed us down, they got all the kids outside of school, sung the school song and the National Anthem and we went home.

Fred Ross was already home. He lived and worked at the Atlanta Housing Authority high rise on Hilliard Street.

fred_ross-18 (13) I went down immediately and told my wife, had you heard the news. She said no. I said well, Dr. King just got assassinated. And we both stood there and both of us had tears in our eyes, my kids was real small.

Five days later, Ross wanted to go to King?s funeral, but he couldn't. He watched the King funeral procession from the roof of his building and hoped for a better world.

fred_ross-09bk (11.5) For the first time, black and white, we came together for a particular moment. I think all of felt grief, hurt, sorrow, and a loss of a great man.

But not everyone felt King?s loss.

George Franklin was a 22-year old, working at Rich?s Department Store in downtown Atlanta. He almost came to blows with a white co-worker.

franklink-01 (10) I as working in Rich?s Department Store, downtown Atlanta, I was on the third on the service elevator, when of the guys in the shipping receiving come through and made a little smart remark about it and we almost had an altercation.

And there was tension between other black and white Atlantans. Atlanta Transit Authority bus driver Melvin McWhorter heard the news and was upset.

mmcwhorter-k (23.5) I remember another thing about that time that was sad for me, which was some of my coworkers seemed glad that it happened. That was sad. You have to remember what he was fighting for, equality. And there were people, they believed in equality, but not for certain people, namely the African American people.

Even today, 40 years later, Martin Luther King?s assassination is a sharp and personal memory, one, that will never, ever, go away. But sometimes, for people like Beverly Booker, it seems like a far away dream.

booker (22) Sometimes when I think about it, it seems like a another far away time, another place, another planet even. And then sometimes, it just seems like yesterday. I guess the reason it seems that way because in some instances, nothing has really changed.

I'm Philip Graitcer in Atlanta