‘He was extremely radical’: MLK’s children on their father’s life and George Floyd’s death
Martin and Bernice King have continued their father’s legacy, protesting for civil rights. They discuss Black Lives Matter, their ongoing grief and the upcoming March on Washington
When footage of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, under the knee of a white police officer, was beamed around the world, Bernice King wept. She was five years old in 1968 when her father, Martin Luther King Jr, was killed by an assassin’s bullet on a hotel balcony in Memphis. She was a year younger than Floyd’s daughter Gianna.
“You feel the pain of the loss,” she says over a video call, a framed photograph of her father on the mantelpiece behind her. “Because you know what it did to you, too. And you can only imagine what it’s doing to that little girl.”