Just a couple of notes here to try to convince you that not every Arizonan thinks poorly of Martin Luther King Jr.
Back in the late 1960's I attended a convention in Chicago of the Radio-Television News Directors' Association (as it was known then.)
At one event after a luncheon, the speakers were the former President of the United States, Dwight David Eisenhower, and Reverend King, following each other.
Ike was not very good, as he read from his prepared notes through spectacles, and stumbled frequently.
King was next and he first apologized to the crowd because he "had forgotten his speech in his hotel room".
Like, who believed that, right?
He then spoke extemporaneously for some time, without referring to notes and without any of the "ers" and "uhs" we had heard from the previous speaker.
I know he was a preacher but his "performance" that day stunned me with his eloquence.
My other note concerns a day perhaps 25 years later when I was preparing to move from Mexico to Austin, Texas.
I had friends I had made in Mexico who had preceded me in making that move and when I entered town I called their number for directions in finding them.
Jordy, my friend, told me to "just come up the freeway and get off at the MLK."
"The what?", I asked.
The voice on the other end of the phone chuckled and said "The Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard but everyone up here just calls it the MLK."
So those are my remembrances of Reverend King.
I probably would have heard him speak again in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention in 1968, which I attended as a young-ish newsman.
But he was assassinated about 4 months before.
