April 4, 1968

Governor Winthrop Rockefeller was the only Southern governor to condemn the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. “I’m shocked that another act of violence has been injected into an already explosive situation,” he said in a public statement. “Murder under any circumstance is deplorable. I can only interpret this as the irresponsible act of a deranged mind.” Many historians have credited Rockefeller’s public pronouncement with the level of comparable calm that existed in Arkansas following King’s murder.