Prof. Boerner's Explorations

by Gerald Boerner

I captured this image at the Mission Inn in Riverside, CA, on a cloudy, rainy day in the spring. We need to keep our eyes on the empty cross — Christ is not still on it, but he is risen. Let us keep our eyes on our living, loving Savior. He walks with us daily and speaks to us through the Bible and his creation, Nature. Let us open our mind’s eyes to see the wonderful world that have been given; let us open our awareness to the guidance of Christ in our daily lives.  GLB

Photo by Gerald L. Boerner

“He is Risen!”

On this special day, we might keep in mind the following scriptures…

Guards are Posted at the Tomb FROM MATTHEW 27:62-66 (NLT)

The next day-on the first day after the Passover ceremonies-the leading priests and Pharisees went to see Pilate. They told him, "Sir, we remember what that deceiver once said while he was still alive: ‘After three days I will be raised from the dead.’ So we request that you seal the tomb until the third day. This will prevent his disciples from coming and stealing the body and then telling everyone that he came back to life! If that happens, we’ll be worse off then we were at first." Pilate replied, "Take guards and secure it the best you can." So they sealed the tomb and posted the guards to protect it.

Jesus Rises from the Dead FROM MATTHEW 28:1-7 (NLT)

Early on Sunday morning, as the new day was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went out to see the tomb. Suddenly there was a great earthquake, because an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and rolled aside the stone and sat on it. His face shone like lightning, and his clothing was as white as snow. The guards shook with fear when they saw him, and they fell into a dead faint. Then the angel spoke to the women. "Don’t be afraid!" he said. "I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He isn’t here! He has been raised from the dead, just as he said would happen. Come, see where his body was lying. And now go quickly and tell his disciples he has been raised from the dead, and he is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there. Remember, I have told you."

Jesus Appears to the Women FROM MATTHEW 28:8-10 (NLT)

The women ran quickly from the tomb. They were very frightened but also filled with great joy, and they rushed to find the disciples to give them the angel’s message. And as they went, Jesus met them. "Greetings!" he said. And they ran to him, held his feet, and worshiped him. The Jesus said to them, "Don’t be afraid! Go tell my brothers to leave for Galilee, and they will see me there."

Background and biographical information:

Priesthill Zion Methodist Church: Easter Scripture… 
http://www.priesthill-zion-methodist.com/easter/scriptures.html

by Gerald Boerner

We continue our series on photography-quality printers today by considering the way ink in put on the paper by the printer mechanism. The technique used will determine the results that you end up with. Basically, the finer the droplets, the more realistic the print will be. We also consider some of the key questions that you should consider when choosing a photo printer. Tomorrow, we will continue this examination with a focus on the real cost of the printer, which, by the way, is not in the cost of the printer!  GLB

“It’s called a pen. It’s like a printer, hooked straight to my brain.”
— Dale Dauten

“The darkroom is just the means to an end.”
— Kim Weston

“For me the printing process is part of the magic of photography. It’s that magic that can be exciting, disappointing, rewarding and frustrating all in the same few moments in the darkroom.”
— John Sexton

“I never stopped photographing. There were a couple of years when I didn’t have a darkroom, but that didn’t stop me from photographing.”
— Imogen Cunningham

“When I’m about ready to press the cable release on the View camera, I’ve tried to anticipate some of the challenges I’m going to encounter in the darkroom.”
— John Sexton

“Eventually, if you had a printer that is IPP compliant, that printer will have a Web address and anyone around the world who can get on the Internet can print to that URL.”
— Robert Palmer

“It was amazing to watch him in the darkroom at an advanced age, still get excited when the results were pleasing. He still struggled like we all do in the darkroom and he struggled behind the camera, and when he had a success he was beaming.”
— John Sexton

“I’m pretty selective. I generally edit the contact sheets and then do work prints. Because I have my own lab and printers, I can afford the luxury of going through the contact sheets for black-and-white, making up work prints, seeing them big, and honing them down.”
— Herb Ritts

Note:
This posting is intended for the educational use of photographers and photography students and complies with the “educational fair use” provisions of copyright law. For readers who might wish to reuse some of these images should check out their compliance with copyright limitations that might apply to that use.

GLB

Choosing a Photo Printer: How Ink Works

An inkjet printer is a type of computer printer that reproduces a digital image by propelling variably-sized droplets of liquid material (ink) onto a page. Inkjet printers are the most common type of printer and range from small inexpensive consumer models to very large and expensive professional machines.

The concept of inkjet printing dates back to the 19th century and the technology was first developed in the early 1950s. Starting in the late 1970s inkjet printers that could reproduce digital images generated by computers were developed, mainly by Epson, Hewlett-Packard and Canon. In the worldwide consumer market, four manufacturers account for the majority of inkjet printer sales: Canon, Hewlett-Packard, Epson, and Lexmark.

Inkjet Inks

The basic problem with inkjet inks are the conflicting requirements for a coloring agent that will stay on the surface and rapid dispersement of the carrier fluid.

Desktop inkjet printers, as used in offices or at home, tend to use aqueous inks based on a mixture of water, glycol and dyes or pigments. These inks are inexpensive to manufacture, but are difficult to control on the surface of media, often requiring specially coated media. HP inks contain sulfonated polyazo black dye (commonly used for dying leather), nitrates and other compunds. Aqueous inks are mainly used in printers with thermal inkjet heads, as these heads require water in order to perform.

While aqueous inks often provide the broadest color gamut and most vivid color, most are not waterproof without specialized coating or lamination after printing. Most Dye-based inks, while usually the least expensive, are subject to rapid fading when exposed to light. Pigment-based aqueous inks are typically more costly but provide much better long-term durability and ultraviolet resistance. Inks marketed as “Archival Quality” are usually pigment-based.

Some professional wide format printers use aqueous inks, but the majority in professional use today employ a much wider range of inks, most of which require piezo inkjet heads and extensive maintenance:

• Solvent inks: the main ingredient of these inks are volatile organic compounds (VOCs), organic chemical compounds that have high vapor pressures. Color is achieved using pigments rather than dyes for excellent fade-resistance. The chief advantage of solvent inks is that they are comparatively inexpensive and enable printing on flexible, uncoated vinyl substrates, which are used to produce vehicle graphics, billboards, banners and adhesive decals. Disadvantages include the vapour produced by the solvent and the need to dispose of used solvent. Unlike most aqueous inks, prints made using solvent-based inks are generally waterproof and ultraviolet-resistant (for outdoor use) without special over-coatings. The high print speed of many solvent printers demands special drying equipment, usually a combination of heaters and blowers. The substrate is usually heated immediately before and after the print heads apply ink. Solvent inks are divided into two sub-categories:
  • Hard solvent ink offers the greatest durability without specialized over-coatings but requires specialized ventilation of the printing area to avoid exposure to hazardous fumes.
  • Mild or "Eco" solvent inks, while still not as safe as aqueous inks, are intended for use in enclosed spaces without specialized ventilation of the printing area. Mild solvent inks have rapidly gained popularity in recent years as their color quality and durability have increased while ink cost has dropped significantly.
• UV-curable inks: these inks consist mainly of acrylic monomers with an initiator package. After printing, the ink is cured by exposure to strong UV-light. The advantage of UV-curable inks is that they "dry" as soon as they are cured, they can be applied to a wide range of uncoated substrates, and they produce a very robust image. Disadvantages are that they are expensive, require expensive curing modules in the printer, and the cured ink has a significant volume and so gives a slight relief on the surface. Though improvements are being made in the technology, UV-curable inks, because of their volume, are somewhat susceptible to cracking if applied to a flexible substrate. As such, they are often used in large "flatbed" printers, which print directly to rigid substrates such as plastic, wood or aluminum where flexibility is not a concern.

Cleaning Mechanisms

The primary cause of inkjet printing problems is due to ink drying on the printhead’s nozzles, causing the pigments and dyes to dry out and form a solid block of hardened mass that plugs the microscopic ink passageways. Most printers attempt to prevent this drying from occurring by covering the printhead nozzles with a rubber cap when the printer is not in use. Abrupt power losses, or unplugging the printer before it has capped the printhead, can cause the printhead to be left in an uncapped state. Further even when capped this seal is not perfect, and over a period of several weeks the moisture can still seep out, causing the ink to dry and harden. Once ink begins to collect and harden drop volume can be affected, drop trajectory can change, or the nozzle can fail to jet ink completely.

To combat this drying, nearly all inkjet printers include a mechanism to reapply moisture to the printhead. Typically there is no separate supply of pure ink-free solvent available to do this job, and so instead the ink itself is used to remoisten the printhead. The printer attempts to fire all nozzles at once, and as the ink sprays out, some of it wicks across the printhead to the dry channels and partially softens the hardened ink. After spraying, a rubber wiper blade is swept across the printhead to spread the moisture evenly across the printhead, and the jets are again all fired to dislodge any ink clumps blocking the channels.

Some use a supplemental air-suction pump, utilizing the rubber capping station to suck ink through a severely clogged cartridge. The suction pump mechanism is frequently driven by the page feed stepper motor – it is connected to the end of the shaft. The pump only engages when the shaft turns backwards, hence the rollers reversing while head cleaning. Due to the built-in head design, the suction pump is also needed to prime the ink channels inside a new printer, and to reprime the channels between ink tank changes.

Professional solvent- and UV-curable ink wide-format inkjet printers generally include a "manual clean" mode that allows the operator to manually clean the print heads and capping mechanism and to replace the wiper blades and other parts used in the automated cleaning processes. The volume of ink used in these printers often leads to "overspray" and therefore buildup of dried ink in many places that automated processes are not capable of cleaning.

The ink consumed in the cleaning process needs to be collected somewhere to prevent ink from leaking all over the surface under the printer. The collection area is known as the spittoon, and in Hewlett Packard printers this is an open plastic tray underneath the cartridge storage and cleaning/wiping station. In Epson printers, there is typically a large fibrous absorption pad in a pan underneath the paper feed platen. For printers several years old, it is common for the dried ink in the spittoon to form a pile that can stack up and touch the printheads, jamming the printer with sticky slime. Some larger professional printers using solvent inks may employ a replaceable plastic receptacle to contain waste ink and solvent which needs to be emptied and/or replaced when full.

The type of ink used in the printer can also affect how quickly the printhead nozzles become clogged. While the official brand of ink is highly engineered to match the printer mechanism, generic inks cannot exactly match the composition of the official brand since the actual ink composition is a trade secret. Generic ink brands may alternately be too volatile to keep the printhead moist during storage, or may be too thick and jellied leading to frequent printhead channel clogging.

Labyrinth air vent tubes on the top of an Epson Stylus Photo 5-color ink tank. The long air channels are molded into the top of the tank and the blue label seals the channels into long tubes. The yellow label is removed prior to installation, and opens the tube ends to the atmosphere so that ink can be sprayed onto the paper. Removing the blue label would destroy the tubes and cause the moisture to quickly evaporate.

There is a second type of ink drying that most printers are unable to prevent. In order for ink to spray out of the cartridge, air needs to enter somewhere to displace the removed ink. The air enters via an extremely long, thin labyrinth tube, up to 10 cm long, wrapping back and forth across the ink tank. The channel is long and narrow to slow down moisture from evaporating out through the vent tube, but some evaporation still occurs and eventually the ink cartridge dries up from the inside out. To combat this problem, which is especially acute with professional fast-drying solvent inks, many wide-format printer cartridge designs contain the ink in a special airtight, collapsible bag that does not require a vent as the ink level drops. The bag merely shrinks until the cartridge is empty.

The frequent cleaning conducted by printers can consume quite a bit of ink and has a great impact on cost per page determinations.

Clogged nozzles can be detected by printing a pattern on the page. Methods are known for re-routing printing information from a clogged nozzle to a working nozzle.

Inkjet Advantages

Compared to earlier consumer-oriented color printers, inkjets have a number of advantages. They are quieter in operation than impact dot matrix or daisywheel printers. They can print finer, smoother details through higher printhead resolution, and many consumer inkjets with photographic-quality printing are widely available.

In comparison to more expensive technologies like thermal wax, dye sublimations, and laser printers, inkjets have the advantage of practically no warm up time and lower cost per page (except when compared to laser printers).

For some inkjet printers, monochrome ink sets are available either from the printer manufacturer or third-party suppliers. These allow the inkjet printer to compete with the silver-based photographic papers traditionally used in black-and-white photography, and provide the same range of tones – neutral, "warm" or "cold". When switching between full-color and monochrome ink sets, it is necessary to flush out the old ink from the print head with a cleaning cartridge.

Inkjet Disadvantages

Inkjet printers may have a number of disadvantages:

1. The ink is often very expensive. (For a typical OEM cartridge priced at $15, containing 5 mL of ink, the ink effectively costs $3000 per liter—or $8000 per gallon.) According to the BBC (2003), "The cost of ink has been the subject of an Office of Fair Trading investigation. Which? magazine has accused manufacturers of a lack of transparency about the price of ink and called for an industry standard for measuring ink cartridge performance".
2. Many "intelligent" ink cartridges contain a microchip that communicates the estimated ink level to the printer; this may cause the printer to display an error message, or incorrectly inform the user that the ink cartridge is empty. In some cases, these messages can be ignored, but some inkjet printers will refuse to print with a cartridge that declares itself empty, in order to prevent consumers from refilling cartridges. Thus, Epson embeds a chip which prevents from printing when the chip claims the cartridge is empty, although a researcher who over-rode the system found that in one case he could print up to 38% more good quality pages, even though the chip stated that the cartridge was empty.
3. The lifetime of inkjet prints produced by inkjets using aqueous inks is limited; they will eventually fade and the color balance may change. On the other hand, prints produced from solvent-based inkjets may last several years before fading, even in direct sunlight, and so-called "archival inks" have been produced for use in aqueous-based machines which offer extended life.
4. Because the ink used in most consumer inkjets is water-soluble, care must be taken with inkjet-printed documents to avoid even the smallest drop of water, which can cause severe "blurring" or "running." Similarly, water-based highlighter markers can blur inkjet-printed documents.
5. The very narrow inkjet nozzles are prone to clogging with dried ink. The ink consumed cleaning them – either during cleaning invoked by the user, or in many cases, performed automatically by the printer on a routine schedule – can account for a significant proportion of the total ink installed in the machine.

These disadvantages have been addressed in a variety of ways:

1. Third-party ink suppliers sell ink cartridges at significantly reduced costs (at least 10%−30% of OEM cartridge prices, sometimes up to 80%) and also bulk ink and cartridge self-refill kits at even lower prices.
2. Many vendors’ "intelligent" ink cartridges have been reverse-engineered. It is now possible to buy inexpensive devices to reliably reset such cartridges to report themselves as full, so that they may be refilled many times.
3. Print lifetime is highly dependent on the quality and formulation of the ink as well as the paper chosen. The earliest inkjet printers, intended for home and small office applications, used dye-based inks. Even the best dye-based inks are not as durable as pigment-based inks, which are now available for many inkjet printers.
4. Some inkjet printers now utilize pigment based ink, which is water insoluble.
5. Inkjet nozzles may be cleaned and unclogged by soaking in shallow water for 1 minute.

Third-Party Ink and Cartridges

The high cost of OEM ink cartridges and the intentional obstacles to refilling them have been addressed by the growth of third-party ink suppliers. Many printer manufacturers discourage customers from using third-party inks, stating that they can damage the print heads due to not being the same formulation as the manufacturers’ inks, cause leaks, and produce inferior-quality output (e.g. of incorrect color gamut). Consumer Reports has noted that third-party cartridges may contain less ink than OEM cartridges, and thus yield no cost savings, while Wilhelm Imaging Research claims that with third-party inks the lifetime of prints may be considerably reduced. However, an April 2007 review showed that, in a double-blind test, reviewers generally preferred the output produced using third-party ink over OEM ink. In general, OEM inks have undergone significant system reliability testing with the cartridge and print-head materials, whereas R&D efforts on 3rd party inks’ material compatibility is likely to be significantly less.

Some inkjet manufacturers have tried to prevent cartridges being refilled using various schemes including fitting smart chips to the cartridges that can detect when the cartridge has run out of ink and prevent the operation of a refilled cartridge.

The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (Public Law 93-637) is a U.S. Federal law that states that warrantors can not require that only brand name parts be used with any product, as some printer manufacturers imply.

Overall expense

Even with many available options for cost-reduction, inkjet printing using desktop printers is costly over time due to expensive replacement ink cartridges with much lower capacity than laser-printer cartridges. Unless photo-realistic reproduction is necessary, value-minded consumers often prefer laser printers for medium- to high-volume printing applications.

Developing Ink Technology

Before we continue to an analysis of the paper and other costs related to the use of inkjet printers, let’s just consider how they became so popular. The following excerpt of an article is a good starting point.

PRINTING ENTERS THE JET AGE

BY THOMAS KRAEMER

How today’s computer printers came to eject microscopic dots with amazing precision.

IN THE FIRST FEW DECADES OF DIGITAL COMPUTING, THE OUTput of printed information to the user was essentially an afterthought. Typewriter-style impact technology, in which a piece of metal in the shape of a letter was struck against a ribbon, remained virtually universal. The method was simple, well understood, and fast enough for most purposes: When multiple type elements, such as daisy wheels or spinning balls, were spaced along the width of the page, printing speed could be increased to a thousand lines per minute in so-called line printers or page printers. Yet besides being noisy and inflexible (font and size changes were difficult), the impact method suffered from all the limitations and potential for breakdowns associated with mechanical parts. As the type was jerked up, down, and sideways at ever-increasing speeds, great ingenuity was required just to keep it stationary relative to the page at the moment of striking.

Researchers experimented with a number of methods to eliminate the need for moving type. IBM engineers developed a system that magnetized a metal drum in the pattern that was to be printed. A specially formulated magnetic toner was attracted to the pattern and reproduced it on a sheet of paper, as in a photocopier. Unfortunately, even after the application of pressure and heat, the toner tended to fall off the paper. This and other problems eventually dissuaded IBM from pursuing such a novel technology.

The company also developed a printer that displayed the type on a cathode-ray screen and photographed it. The resulting image could be examined directly on film or reproduced on paper using a standard microfilm printer. This method held some promise, but it had been developed with vacuum tubes, and after IBM switched to transistor-based electronics in 1957, the project was abandoned.

More successfully, a grid of wires or pins could be programmed to strike the page in different combinations for different letters. Since a single set of pins could print any character, this method eliminated the problems associated with sorting through bits of metal type and then moving and stopping them. It also allowed greater flexibility with such things as underlining and italics. Dot-matrix printers, as they came to be called, dominated computer printing from the 1960s into the 1980s and can still be found in many places.

Unfortunately, since dot-matrix was still an impact method, the noise problems and speed limitations of impact remained. Moreover, while characters made of dots were fine for informal use, they looked tacky beside a typed letter or document. When word processing became as important as number crunching, a fast, quiet, high-quality printer loomed as one of the industry’s greatest needs.

That need was first met in the early 1980s by the laser printer. This technology, originally developed in Xerox’s research laboratories, worked like a photocopier or IBM’s magnetic printer, only instead of using regular light or magnetism to create a pattern on a printing drum, it used a laser. By eliminating the need for physical impact against a ribbon, laser printers achieved much higher speeds and were able to work in almost eerie silence.

Most important, they offered unmatchable resolution: 300 dots per inch in early models, or roughly three times what the best dot-matrix printers could achieve. As personal computers grew commonplace during the 1980s, laser printers became the only acceptable choice for “letter-quality” printing, even though a typical model cost several thousand dollars. By 1990 the price had come down to a manageable, though still hefty, $1,000, and today’s laser printers go for as little as $200.

Yet the laser printer’s dominance was short-lived. The technology that would eventually overtake it was developed at the pioneering electronics firm Hewlett-Packard (HP). Although HP’s invention would come to dominate the personal computer market, it was not originally intended for PCs, since in the late 1970s, when the project began, there were no such things. Instead, HP was looking for a new printing mechanism for portable, battery-powered calculators, which were its most lucrative consumer product. Little did HP’s management, or anyone else, suspect that its novel printing technology would rise from accessory status to become a stand-alone item that would make a hundred times as much money as calculators ever did. … [MORE]

[Please check out the full article as cited in the Reference section]

References

Background and biographical information is from Wikipedia articles on:

Wikipedia: Printers (Computing)… 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_Printer

Wikipedia: Inkjet Printers… 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkjet_printers

Web Sites and Blogs:

AmericanHeritage.com: Printing Enters the Jet Age…
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/2001/4/2001_4_18.shtml

Brainy Quote: Darkroom Quotes…  
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/darkroom.html

by Gerald Boerner

The Lord is Risen… Happy Easter to all.

We now look at the culmination of Holy Week: Easter Sunday. While not part of Holy Week as such, it is the culmination of the celebration of the past several days. On Good Friday, Christ is betrayed, tried and crucified. His dead body was placed in a new tomb (“Whited Sepulchre”) for three days. On the third day Mary Magdalene went to watch over the tomb and found the stone rolled away from the entrance and the tomb empty. Christ was no longer dead, but had been resurrected. He had paid for mankind’s sins with his life and rose again to overcome death.

Today, we continue to celebrate this event in many ways, in many countries. Each country has made this special time personal to that country. Above all, man continues to worship a risen Christ and walk with Him as his children.  GLB

“To a Christian, Easter Sunday means everything, when we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
— Bernhard Langer

“Christ appeared alive on several occasions after the cataclysmic events of that first Easter.”
— Josh McDowell

“My mom used to say that Greek Easter was later because then you get stuff cheaper.”
— Amy Sedaris

“We were taking collections for people with AIDS in New York around Easter.”
— Chita Rivera

“Passover and Easter are the only Jewish and Christian holidays that move in sync, like the ice skating pairs we saw during the winter Olympics.”
— Marvin Olasky

“The great gift of Easter is hope – Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake.”
— Basil C. Hume

“And it is always Easter Sunday at the New York City Ballet. It is always coming back to life. Not even coming back to life – it lives in the constant present.”
— John Guare

“A strangely reflective, even melancholy day. Is that because, unlike our cousins in the northern hemisphere, Easter is not associated with the energy and vitality of spring but with the more subdued spirit of autumn?”
— Hugh Mackay

Easter Sunday

Easter is the central religious feast in the Christian liturgical year. According to Christian scripture, Jesus was resurrected from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. Some Christians celebrate this resurrection on Easter Day or Easter Sunday (also Resurrection Day or Resurrection Sunday), two days after Good Friday and three days after Maundy Thursday. The chronology of his death and resurrection is variously interpreted to be between AD 26 and AD 36. Easter also refers to the season of the church year called Eastertide or the Easter Season. Traditionally the Easter Season lasted for the forty days from Easter Day until Ascension Day but now officially lasts for the fifty days until Pentecost. The first week of the Easter Season is known as Easter Week or the Octave of Easter. Easter also marks the end of Lent, a season of fasting, prayer, and penance.

Easter is a moveable feast, meaning it is not fixed in relation to the civil calendar. The First Council of Nicaea (325) established the date of Easter as the first Sunday after the full moon (the Paschal Full Moon) following the vernal equinox. Ecclesiastically, the equinox is reckoned to be on March 21 (regardless of the astronomically correct date), and the "Full Moon" is not necessarily the astronomically correct date. The date of Easter therefore varies between March 22 and April 25. Eastern Christianity bases its calculations on the Julian Calendar whose March 21 corresponds, during the twenty-first century, to April 3 in the Gregorian Calendar, in which calendar their celebration of Easter therefore varies between April 4 and May 8.

Easter is linked to the Jewish Passover by much of its symbolism, as well as by its position in the calendar. In most European languages the feast called Easter in English is termed by the words for passover in those languages and in the older English versions of the Bible the term Easter was the term used to translate passover.

Relatively newer elements such as the Easter Bunny and Easter egg hunts have become part of the holiday’s modern celebrations, and those aspects are often celebrated by many Christians and non-Christians alike. There are also some Christian denominations who do not celebrate Easter.

Theological Significance

The New Testament teaches that the resurrection of Jesus, which Easter celebrates, is a foundation of the Christian faith. The resurrection established Jesus as the powerful Son of God and is cited as proof that God will judge the world in righteousness. God has given Christians "a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead". Christians, through faith in the working of God are spiritually resurrected with Jesus so that they may walk in a new way of life.

Easter is linked to the Passover and Exodus from Egypt recorded in the Old Testament through the Last Supper and crucifixion that preceded the resurrection. According to the New Testament, Jesus gave the Passover meal a new meaning, as he prepared himself and his disciples for his death in the upper room during the Last Supper. He identified the loaf of bread and cup of wine as symbolizing his body soon to be sacrificed and his blood soon to be shed. 1 Corinthians 5:7 states, "Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed"; this refers to the Passover requirement to have no yeast in the house and to the allegory of Jesus as the Paschal lamb.

One interpretation of the Gospel of John is that Jesus, as the Passover lamb, was crucified at roughly the same time as the Passover lambs were being slain in the temple, on the afternoon of Nisan 14. This interpretation, however, is inconsistent with the chronology in the Synoptic Gospels. It assumes that text literally translated "the preparation of the passover" in John 19:14 refers to Nisan 14 (Preparation Day for the Passover) and not necessarily to Yom Shishi (Friday, Preparation Day for Sabbath) and that the priests’ desire to be ritually pure in order to "eat the passover" in John 18:28 refers to eating the Passover lamb, not to the public offerings made during the days of Unleavened Bread (Leviticus 23:8).

Anglo-Saxon and German

Ostara (1884) by
Johannes Gehrts.

The modern English term Easter is speculated to have developed from Old English word Ēastre or Ēostre or Eoaster, which itself developed prior to 899. The name refers to Eostur-monath, a month of the Germanic calendar attested by Bede as named after the goddess Ēostre of Anglo-Saxon paganism. Bede notes that Eostur-monath was the equivalent to the month of April, and that feasts held in her honor during Ēostur-monath had died out by the time of his writing, replaced with the Christian custom of Easter.^[16] Using comparative linguistic evidence from continental Germanic sources, the 19th century scholar Jacob Grimm proposed the existence of an equivalent form of Eostre among the pre-Christian beliefs of the continental Germanic peoples, whose name he reconstructed as Ostara.

The implications of the goddess have resulted in theories about whether or not Eostre is an invention of Bede, theories connecting Eostre with records of Germanic folk custom (including hares and eggs), and as cultural descendant of the Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn through the etymology of her name. Grimm’s reconstructed Ostara has had some influence in modern popular culture. Modern German has Ostern, but otherwise, Germanic languages have generally borrowed the form pascha, see below.

Semitic, Romance, Celtic and other Germanic Languages

Isenheim Altarpiece: The Resurrection
by Matthias Grünewald,
completed 1515

The Greek word Πάσχα and hence the Latin form Pascha is derived from Hebrew Pesach (פֶּסַח) meaning the festival of Passover. In Greek the word Ἀνάστασις (upstanding, up-rising, resurrection) is used also as an alternative.

Christians speaking Arabic or other Semitic languages generally use names cognate to Pesach. For instance, the second word of the Arabic name of the festival عيد الفصح ʿĪd al-Fiṣḥ has the root F-Ṣ-Ḥ, which given the sound laws applicable to Arabic is cognate to Hebrew P-S-Ḥ, with "Ḥ" realized as /x/ in Modern Hebrew and /ħ/ in Arabic. Arabic also uses the term عيد القيامة ʿĪd al-Qiyāmah, meaning "festival of the resurrection," but this term is less common. In Maltese the word is L-Għid. In Ge’ez and the modern Ethiosemitic languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea, two forms exist: ፋሲካ ("Fasika," fāsīkā) from Greek Pascha, and ትንሣኤ ("Tensae," tinśā’ē), the latter from the Semitic root N-Ś-’, meaning "to rise" (cf. Arabic nasha’a – ś merged with "sh" in Arabic and most non-South Semitic languages).

In all Romance languages the name of the Easter festival is derived from the Latin Pascha. In Spanish, Easter is Pascua, in Italian Pasqua, in Portuguese Páscoa and in Romanian Paşti. In French, the name of Easter Pâques also derives from the Latin word but the s following the a has been lost and the two letters have been transformed into a â with a circumflex accent by elision.

Easter in the Early Church

Reenacting the Stations of the Cross
in Jerusalem on the Via Dolorosa
from the Lions’ Gate to the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

The first Christians, Jewish and Gentile, were certainly aware of the Hebrew calendar (Acts 2:1; 12:3; 20:6; 27:9; 1 Cor 16:8), but there is no direct evidence that they celebrated any specifically Christian annual festivals. The observance by Christians of non-Jewish annual festivals is believed by some to be an innovation postdating the Apostolic Age. The ecclesiastical historian Socrates Scholasticus (b. 380) attributes the observance of Easter by the church to the perpetuation of its custom, "just as many other customs have been established," stating that neither Jesus nor his Apostles enjoined the keeping of this or any other festival. However, when read in context, this is not a rejection or denigration of the celebration—which, given its currency in Scholasticus’ time would be surprising—but is merely part of a defense of the diverse methods for computing its date. Indeed, although he describes the details of the Easter celebration as deriving from local custom, he insists the feast itself is universally observed.

Perhaps the earliest extant primary source referencing Easter is a mid-2nd century Paschal homily attributed to Melito of Sardis, which characterizes the celebration as a well-established one. Evidence for another kind of annual Christian festival, the commemoration of martyrs, begins to appear at about the same time as evidence for the celebration of Easter. But while martyrs’ "birthdays" were celebrated on fixed dates in the local solar calendar, the date of Easter was fixed by means of the local Jewish lunisolar calendar. This is consistent with the celebration of Easter having entered Christianity during its earliest, Jewish period, but does not leave the question free of doubt.

Third/Fourth-Century Controversy and Council

It is not known how long the Nisan 14 practice continued. But both those who followed the Nisan 14 custom, and those who set Easter to the following Sunday (the Sunday of Unleavened Bread) had in common the custom of consulting their Jewish neighbors to learn when the month of Nisan would fall, and setting their festival accordingly. By the later 3rd century, however, some Christians began to express dissatisfaction with the custom of relying on the Jewish community to determine the date of Easter. The chief complaint was that the Jewish communities sometimes erred in setting Passover to fall before the northern hemisphere spring equinox. Anatolius of Laodicea in the later third century wrote:

Those who place [the first lunar month of the year] in [the twelfth zodiacal sign before the spring equinox] and fix the Paschal fourteenth day accordingly, make a great and indeed an extraordinary mistake.

Peter, bishop of Alexandria (died 312), had a similar complaint

On the fourteenth day of [the month], being accurately observed after the equinox, the ancients celebrated the Passover, according to the divine command. Whereas the men of the present day now celebrate it before the equinox, and that altogether through negligence and error.

The Sardica paschal table confirms these complaints, for it indicates that the Jews of some eastern Mediterranean city (possibly Antioch) fixed Nisan 14 on March 11 (Julian) in A.D. 328, on March 5 in A.D. 334, on March 2 in A.D. 337, and on March 10 in A.D. 339, all well before the spring equinox.

Because of this dissatisfaction with reliance on the Jewish calendar, some Christians began to experiment with independent computations. Others, however, felt that the customary practice of consulting Jews should continue, even if the Jewish computations were in error. A version of the Apostolic Constitutions used by the sect of the Audiani advised:

Do not do your own computations, but instead observe Passover when your brethren from the circumcision do. If they err [in the computation], it is no matter to you…

Two other objections that some Christians may have had to maintaining the custom of consulting the Jewish community in order to determine Easter are implied in Constantine’s letter from the Council of Nicea to the absent bishops:

It appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy feast we should follow the practice of the Jews…For we have it in our power, if we abandon their custom, to prolong the due observance of this ordinance to future ages by a truer order…For their boast is absurd indeed, that it is not in our power without instruction from them to observe these things….Being altogether ignorant of the true adjustment of this question, they sometimes celebrate Passover twice in the same year.

The reference to Passover twice in the same year might refer to the geographical diversity that existed at that time in the Jewish calendar, due in large measure to the breakdown of communications in the Empire. Jews in one city might determine Passover differently from Jews in another city. The reference to the Jewish "boast", and, indeed, the strident anti-Jewish tone of the whole passage, suggests another issue: some Christians thought that it was undignified for Christians to depend on Jews to set the date of a Christian festival.

Date of Easter

Easter and the holidays that are related to it are moveable feasts, in that they do not fall on a fixed date in the Gregorian or Julian calendars (both of which follow the cycle of the sun and the seasons). Instead, the date for Easter is determined on a lunisolar calendar similar to the Hebrew calendar.

In Western Christianity, using the Gregorian calendar, Easter always falls on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25, inclusively. The following day, Easter Monday, is a legal holiday in many countries with predominantly Christian traditions. In Eastern Orthodox Churches — which continue to use the Julian calendar for religious dating — Easter also falls on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25, inclusive, of the Julian calendar. (The Julian calendar is no longer used as the civil calendar of the countries where Eastern Christian traditions predominate.) In terms of the Gregorian calendar, due to the 13 day difference between the calendars between 1900 and 2099, these dates are between April 4 and May 8, inclusive. Among the Oriental Orthodox some churches have changed from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar and the date for Easter as for other fixed and moveable feasts is the same as in the Western Church.

The precise date of Easter has at times been a matter for contention. At the First Council of Nicaea in 325 it was decided that all Christian churches would celebrate Easter on the same day, which would be computed independently of any Jewish calculations to determine the date of Passover. It is however probable (though no contemporary account of the Council’s decisions has survived) that no method of determining the date was specified by the Council. Epiphanius of Salamis wrote in the mid-4th century: …the emperor…convened a council of 318 bishops…in the city of Nicea…They passed certain ecclesiastical canons at the council besides, and at the same time decreed in regard to the Passover that there must be one unanimous concord on the celebration of God’s holy and supremely excellent day. For it was variously observed by people…

Western Christianity

Procession in Santiago de Compostela.

The Easter festival is kept in many different ways among Western Christians. The traditional, liturgical observation of Easter, as practised among Roman Catholics and some Lutherans and Anglicans begins on the night of Holy Saturday with the Easter Vigil. This, the most important liturgy of the year, begins in total darkness with the blessing of the Easter fire, the lighting of the large Paschal candle (symbolic of the Risen Christ) and the chanting of the Exultet or Easter Proclamation attributed to Saint Ambrose of Milan. After this service of light, a number of readings from the Old Testament are read; these tell the stories of creation, the sacrifice of Isaac, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the foretold coming of the Messiah. This part of the service climaxes with the singing of the Gloria and the Alleluia and the proclamation of the Gospel of the resurrection. At this time, the lights are brought up and the church bells are rung, according to local custom. A sermon may be preached after the gospel. Then the focus moves from the lectern to the font. Anciently, Easter was considered the ideal time for converts to receive baptism, and this practice continues within Roman Catholicism and the Anglican Communion. Whether there are baptisms at this point or not, it is traditional for the congregation to renew the vows of their baptismal faith. This act is often sealed by the sprinkling of the congregation with holy water from the font. The Catholic sacrament of Confirmation is also celebrated at the Vigil.

The Easter Vigil concludes with the celebration of the Eucharist (known in some traditions as Holy Communion). Certain variations in the Easter Vigil exist: Some churches read the Old Testament lessons before the procession of the Paschal candle, and then read the gospel immediately after the Exsultet. Some churches prefer to keep this vigil very early on the Sunday morning instead of the Saturday night, particularly Protestant churches, to reflect the gospel account of the women coming to the tomb at dawn on the first day of the week. These services are known as the Sunrise service and often occur in outdoor setting such as the church cemetery, yard, or a nearby park.

The first recorded "Sunrise Service" took place in 1732 among the Single Brethren in the Moravian Congregation at Herrnhut, Saxony, in what is now Germany. Following an all-night vigil they went before dawn to the town graveyard, God’s Acre, on the hill above the town, to celebrate the Resurrection among the graves of the departed. This service was repeated the following year by the whole congregation and subsequently spread with the Moravian Missionaries around the world. The most famous "Moravian Sunrise Service" is in the Moravian Settlement Old Salem in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The beautiful setting of the Graveyard, God’s Acre, the music of the Brass Choir numbering 500 pieces, and the simplicity of the service attract thousands of visitors each year and has earned for Winston-Salem the soubriquet "the Easter City."

Additional celebrations are usually offered on Easter Sunday itself. Typically these services follow the usual order of Sunday services in a congregation, but also typically incorporate more highly festive elements. The music of the service, in particular, often displays a highly festive tone; the incorporation of brass instruments (trumpets, etc.) to supplement a congregation’s usual instrumentation is common. Often a congregation’s worship space is decorated with special banners and flowers (such as Easter lilies).

[Please refer to the complete article for more details
about the Easter Celebration around the world.]

References

Background and biographical information is from Wikipedia articles on:

Wikipedia: Easter… 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Sunday

Brainy Quote: Easter Quotes…
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/easter.html

by Gerald Boerner

Happy Easter Sunday… May the Lord Be Praised!

Today we examine one of the dark events of the decades of the 1960s. In that decade of flower power, bra burnings, and the “Summer of Love”, we find the ugly face of racism lifting its head again. Among the stand-out leaders of the civil rights movement that sought to overturn Jim Crow laws and the systematic assignment of African Americans to second-class status was the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. MLK led marches against these unjust laws throughout the South.

While he helped changed the lives of the oppressed, he also gained enemies among those who felt that their privileged way of life being threatened. One of these bigoted fanatics, James Earl Ray, took it upon himself to shot and kill MLK at a motel in Memphis, TN, on this date in 1968.

MLK was eulogized by another leader in the struggle for equal rights, Robert Kennedy. Unfortunately, Robert would be struck down by an assassin’s gun following his victory in the California Presidential Primary later that year. Ironically, when asked when how long it would take a Black man to become president, Robert Kennedy answered forty years. That is precisely the time that elapsed before our current president, Baruch Obama, was elected as our first black president.  GLB

“The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

“To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr., a prominent American Civil Rights leader and, according to a Gallup poll conducted in 2000, the second most admired person of the 20th century, was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968, at the age of 39. On June 10, 1968, James Earl Ray, a fugitive from a Missouri prison, was arrested in London at Heathrow Airport, extradited to the United States, and charged with the crime. On March 10, 1969, Ray entered a plea of guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in the Tennessee state penitentiary. Ray’s many later attempts to withdraw his guilty plea and be tried by a jury were unsuccessful; he died in prison on April 23, 1998, at the age of 70.

In March 1968, Reverend King went to Memphis, Tennessee in support of striking African American sanitation workers. The workers had staged a walkout on February 11, 1968, to protest unequal wages and working conditions. At the time, the city of Memphis paid black workers significantly lower wages than whites. In addition, unlike their white counterparts, blacks received no pay if they stayed home during bad weather; consequently, most blacks were compelled to work even in driving rain and snow storms.

On April 3, King returned to Memphis to address a gathering at the Mason Temple (World Headquarters of the Church of God in Christ). His airline flight to Memphis was delayed by a bomb threat against his plane. With a thunderstorm raging outside, King delivered the last speech of his life, now known as the "I’ve Been to the Mountaintop" address. As he neared the close, he made reference to the bomb threat:

And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats… or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. [applause] And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! [applause] And so I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!

Assassination

The Lorraine Motel, where King was assassinated,
now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum.

King was booked in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, owned by black businessman Walter Bailey (and named after his wife). King’s close friend and colleague, Reverend Ralph David Abernathy, who was present at the assassination, told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that King and his entourage stayed in room 306 at the Lorraine Motel so often that it was known as the "King-Abernathy Suite."

According to biographer Taylor Branch, King’s last words were to musician Ben Branch, who was scheduled to perform that night at an event King was going to attend: "Ben, make sure you play ‘Take My Hand, Precious Lord’ in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty."

At 6:01 p.m. on Thursday, April 4, 1968, while he was standing on the motel’s second floor balcony, King was struck by a single .30 bullet fired from a Remington 760 Gamemaster. The bullet travelled through the right side of his neck, smashing his throat and down his spinal cord before lodging in his shoulder.

King was rushed to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where doctors opened his chest and performed manual heart massage. He was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. According to Taylor Branch, King’s autopsy revealed that though he was only 39 years old, he had the heart of a 60 year old man.

Immediate Effects

Robert F. Kennedy Speech

The speech on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. was given by New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy (who was assassinated two months later) on April 4, 1968. Kennedy was campaigning for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination and had spoken at the University of Notre Dame and Ball State University earlier that day. Before boarding a plane to fly to Indianapolis for one last campaign speech in a predominantly black neighborhood of the city he learned that Martin Luther King had been shot, leading Kennedy press secretary Frank Mankiewicz to suggest that he ask the audience to pray for the King family and ask them to follow King’s policy of non-violence. They did not learn that King was dead until they landed in Indianapolis.

Both Mankiewicz and speechwriter Adam Walinsky drafted notes immediately before the rally for Kennedy’s use, but Kennedy refused Walinsky’s notes, instead using some that he had likely written on the ride over; Mankiewicz arrived after Kennedy had already begun to speak. Right before arriving at the rally the Chief of Police in Indianapolis told Kennedy that he could not provide protection and that giving the remarks would be too dangerous, but Kennedy decided to go ahead regardless. Standing on a podium mounted on flatbed truck, Kennedy spoke for just four minutes and fifty-seven seconds.

RFK’s Speech

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I’m only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening, because I have some — some very sad news for all of you — Could you lower those signs, please? — I have some very sad news for all of you, and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world; and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.

Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black — considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible — you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.

We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization — black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love.

For those of you who are black and are tempted to fill with — be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.

But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult times.

My favorite poem, my — my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King — yeah, it’s true — but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love — a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past, but we — and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it’s not the end of disorder.

But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

And let’s dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

Thank you very much.

Robert F. Kennedy was the first to inform the audience of the death of Martin Luther King, causing some in the audience to scream and wail. Several of Kennedy’s aides were even worried that the delivery of this information would result in a riot. Once the audience quieted down Kennedy acknowledged that many in the audience would be filled with anger, especially since the assassin was believed to be a white man, and that he had felt the same when his brother John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. These remarks surprised Kennedy aides, who had never heard him speak of John Kennedy’s death. Kennedy continued, saying that the country had to make an effort to "go beyond these rather difficult times," and then quoted a poem by the Greek playwright Aeschylus. To conclude, Kennedy said that the country needed and wanted unity between blacks and whites, asked the audience members to pray for the King family and the country, and once more quoted the ancient Greeks.

Riots

The assassination led to a nationwide wave of riots in more than 60 cities. Five days later, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national day of mourning for the lost civil rights leader. A crowd of 300,000 attended his funeral that same day. Vice President Hubert Humphrey attended on behalf of Lyndon B. Johnson, who was at a meeting on the Vietnam War at Camp David. (There were fears that Johnson might be hit with protests and abuses over the war if he attended). At his widow’s request, King eulogized himself: His last sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, a recording of his famous ‘Drum Major’ sermon, given on February 4, 1968, was played at the funeral. In that sermon he makes a request that at his funeral no mention of his awards and honors be made, but that it be said that he tried to "feed the hungry," "clothe the naked," "be right on the [Vietnam] war question," and "love and serve humanity." Per King’s request, his good friend Mahalia Jackson sang his favorite hymn, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" at his funeral.

After the assassination, the city of Memphis quickly settled the strike, on favorable terms to the sanitation workers.

Capture and Trial of Ray

Two months after King’s death, escaped convict James Earl Ray was captured at London Heathrow Airport while trying to leave the United Kingdom for Angola, Rhodesia, or South Africa on a false Canadian passport in the name of Ramon George Sneyd. Ray was quickly extradited to Tennessee and charged with King’s murder, confessing to the assassination on March 10, 1969 (although he recanted this confession three days later).

Of the three countries to which Ray was attempting to flee, it is perhaps worth noting that both Rhodesia and South Africa were white supremacist regimes where the white minority suppressed the black majority (Rhodesia was at this time led by Ian Smith), while Angola was a Portugese colony, and Portugal was still led by its long-serving dictator Antonio Salazar, who was if not a fascist, at least a right-wing authoritarian.

On the advice of his attorney Percy Foreman, Ray took a guilty plea to avoid a trial conviction and thus the possibility of receiving the death penalty. Ray was sentenced to a 99-year prison term.

Ray fired Foreman as his attorney (from then on derisively calling him "Percy Fourflusher") claiming that a man he met in Montreal, Canada with the alias "Raoul" was involved, as was his brother Johnny, but not himself, further asserting that although he did not "personally shoot King," he may have been "partially responsible without knowing it," hinting at a conspiracy. He spent the remainder of his life attempting (unsuccessfully) to withdraw his guilty plea and secure the trial he never had.

[Be sure to check out the full article on this topic
in the References section below.]

Other Events on this Day

• In 1841…
  President William Henry Harrison dies of pneumonia one month after his inauguration.

• In 1850…
  The city of Los Angeles is incorporated.

• In 1887…
  Susanna M. Salter of Argonia, Kansas, become the first woman elected mayor of an American town.

• In 1949…
  The United States and eleven other Western nations sign a treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

• In 1968…
  The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., age 39, is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

Dates and events based on:

William J. Bennett and John Cribb, (2008) The American Patriot’s Almanac Daily Readings on America. (Kindle Edition)

Background information is from Wikipedia articles on:

Wikipedia: Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr… 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.

Brainy Quote: Martin Luther King Quotes…
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/martin_luther_king_jr_5.html