Picture used in special edition of The Heights, April 9, 1968

This date, 50 years ago, was for many the darkest day of our last semester of college.

During the evening of April 4, 1968, most of us would have heard the news — from radio or TV or friends — that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot and killed.

(It’s certainly difficult and perhaps inappropriate to try to gauge the impact of horrible events. Different people would have had different reactions, or levels of reaction, to different events. The assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy occurred a couple of days after our graduation.)

This was the CBS News report on the assassination.

The timing of the news — late in the day — and its stunning impact pushed much reaction to the following day. Remember, there weren’t the 24-hour cable news channels and there were no “social media,” except landline phones and personal conversation.

President Johnson, as the CBS newscast showed, addressed the nation that night. And Bobby Kennedy also spoke that night to a crowd of people in inner-city Indianapolis, Ind., who had not heard the news.

I don’t remember when I heard the news exactly and don’t recall exactly where I was when I did. It was a school night, a Thursday, so I assume I was at our apartment in Brookline. I may well have seen the very CBS broadcast shown above. Do you remember the moment you heard about Dr. King’s death?

There was certainly a lot of public apprehension nationwide about what kinds of reaction there might be to Dr. King’s killing and Boston was no exception to that feeling. Boston, however, because of something unusual, did not suffer the same reaction many American cities did. We’ll have a post about that tomorrow.