 Howard Thurman always spoke of his relationship with the younger visionary Martin Luther King Jr. in personal and endearing terms. In the following selection, delivered over radio station KSFO in San Francisco on the evening of King's assassination, Thurman speaks to the ideal of community and the hope for a transformed American society symbolized in the life and witness of the fallen prophet. He writes, Martin Luther King Jr. is dead. This is the simple and utter fact. A brief few hours ago his voice could be heard in the land, from the ends of the earth, from the heart of our cities, from the far sides of the humble and the mighty, from the sails of a thousand prisons, from the deep central place in the soul of America, the cry of anguish can be heard. There are no words with which to eulogize this man. Martin Luther King was the living epitome of a way of life that rejected physical violence as the lifestyle of a morally responsible people. His assassination reveals the cleft deep in the psyche of the American people, the profound ambivalence and ambiguity of our way of life. Something deep within us rejects nonviolent direct action as a dependable procedure for effecting social change. Yet, against this rejection, something always struggles, pushing, pushing, always pushing with another imperative, another demand. It was King's fact that gave to this rejection flesh and blood, courage and vision, hope and enthusiasm, for indeed in him the informed conscience of the country became articulate. And tonight what many of us are feeling is that we, all of us, must be the conscience wherever we are living, functioning and behaving. Racial prejudices, segregation, discrimination were not regarded by him as merely un-American, undemocratic, but as mortal sins against God. For those who are religious, it awakens guilt. For those who are merely superstitious, it inspires fear. And it was this fear that pulled the trigger of the assassin's gun that took his life.