On March 28, 1968, I celebrated my fifth birthday. Unbeknownst to me, it would be the last time I would celebrate my birthday with my father. Seven days later, on April 4, Daddy was assassinated. For years I tried to figure out: What did my father do? Why did they assassinate him?

As a five-year-old, I reasoned that Daddy was a good person who loved everybody and whom everybody loved; why would anyone want to kill him? People who stood up for “the least of these,” I reasoned, were not supposed to be killed. I know now that waging a nonviolent fight for justice is dangerous work.

“Each April 4, laying a wreath on Daddy’s crypt reminded us of what can happen when the forces of hate and injustice have no bounds.”

As my siblings and I grew up without a father, we were often reminded that he

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