The Day I Became a Revolutionary: A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

by Robert “Fleetwood” Bowden, LSPC In-Custody Coordinator

I was just a little Black boy in Greensboro, North Carolina when the world around me began to shift and shake with the weight of the Civil Rights Movement. I didn’t understand it—not really. But I felt it, like thunder rolling on the horizon long before the storm reaches your doorstep.

What I did understand was the sound of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s voice drifting through our small apartment in the Morningside Projects. I remember sitting between my momma and my grandma, their bodies still and listening, their eyes fixed on a black-and-white TV with a kind of reverence I didn’t yet have a name for. Dr. King’s words moved through that tiny living room like a sermon and a promise braided together. Even as a boy, I could feel the power in them.

But outside that apartment, the world wasn’t peaceful. The Klu Klux Klan rolled through Morningside one day, angry, armed, and unafraid to show it. Folks had gathered to protest and to stand up for their dignity, their rights, their humanity. The Klan answered that courage with bullets. They shot people who dared to raise their voices. I remember the thick and heavy fear that settled over the projects after that, like smoke after a fire.

Just a few days later, I watched my momma cry for a man she had never met but loved like family. We was sitting in front of that same black-and-white TV when the announcer said someone had shot and killed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

I didn’t understand politics or movements or history then. But I understood what it meant to see your momma heart break. And in that moment, something hot and heavy rose up in me—rage towards whoever had taken him away, whoever had taken that hope out of her eyes.

That was the first spark.

That summer, my world stretched all the way from Greensboro to Oakland, California. I found myself sitting on Big Momma’s porch on 73rd and MacArthur, watching a different kind of movement take shape right in front of me. I saw the Black Panthers. My brothers and sisters were standing strong, proud, and unafraid. My uncle leaned down and told me who they were, what they stood for, why they moved the way they did.
In that moment, the second spark caught fire.

I understood then—maybe for the first time—the courage Martin Luther King Jr. carried inside him. A courage so deep it held its arms open instead of raising its fists. A courage that refused to mirror the violence thrown at him, at us. Sitting on that porch, feet dangling from the steps, the California sun warming my face, I decided that I wasn’t going to let my momma cry like that again. I would stand up for my people. I would fight for my rights.

I would stand. I would speak. I would fight if I had to.
And I would never apologize for it.

That day on 73rd and MacArthur, I felt something deep settle inside me—my purpose. I was proud of Martin Luther King Jr., proud of his dream and his courage. But that was also the day I became something else.

A revolutionary.