WATERLOO - Nearly 40 years after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, memories of this anniversary spark vivid and often anguished memories in those who lived through April 4, 1968.

Sallie Johnson, 76, of Waterloo remembers calming her children down after they became upset at her reaction to the news.

"I just kind of went off. I was just out of it and in tears. It was a community of sadness," she said.

Linda Morgan, director of Iowa Heartland Habitat for Humanity, was attending a small Presbyterian college in Ohio when the shots rang out in Memphis, Tenn. The school had a small black population, and she said students were acutely aware of the civil rights movement, but not actively involved. For them, protests more often centered around the Vietnam war. Even so, she remembers a campus-wide reaction of disbelief to the news.

"We asked, 'What's happening to our country that these acts of violence are taking place, that these people have such prejudice and fear of change?" she said.

Donald Carver, a retired United Methodist pastor, attended Boston University school of theology at the same time as King, though he didn't know him personally. Compared to the visceral reaction in other parts of the country, he remembers a somewhat muted one in the largely white town of DeWitt. So he used the event as a teaching moment for his congregation.

"I was trying to get people to be more in tune with the (civil rights) movement," he said.

Henry Wallican, 65, a retired John Deere worker, remembers the riots that broke out in Chicago - one of more than 100 that erupted across the country after King's death, according to news reports.

"I remember people tore down the north side of Chicago. And I had family there, so it hit me very hard," he said.

Still, Wallican said he doesn't associate King's death entirely with tragedy because of what the civil rights movement accomplished.

"That's one of the reasons we have an African-American (Barack Obama) running for president," he said. " Without his suffering or his death, we wouldn't be witnessing this."

Contact Jens Manuel Krogstad at (319) 291-1580 or jens.krogstad@wcfcourier.com.