By KAYLEY FRANK

and STEPHEN DICK

ANDERSON — Though she was in Europe at the time, Rosetta Minnefield remembers when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, 40 years ago today.

“It was a devastating day,” she said. “It was automatic tears. It took me back to the day John Kennedy was shot.”

Why are the good men leaving, she wondered.

King was shot while standing on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., where he was supporting striking sanitation workers the majority of whom were black. When his life ended, his legacy began and has been a part of the fabric of black America ever since.

Minnefield said she understood why King would be part of the strikers. She said she marched for causes in the past, including Eavey’s Supermarket’s hiring practices in Anderson.

“They wouldn’t hire any blacks, and if blacks came in, they watched them,” said Minnefield. She said Eavey’s did eventually hire a black person, Minnefield’s sister Lillian.

Though she could understand why King marched, she said he suffered insults and physical attacks.

“To march, you have to be dedicated.”

Other Anderson residents, such as Mildred Powell, remember the day King was assassinated.

“I remember being shocked but not being surprised,” she said. “He knew that he was a target.”

Powell lived in Anderson at the time, and said she remembered a mood of fear, as if things could blow up at any time.

“It was a sad situation.”