America met Bernice King on April 9, 1968.
The youngest of Coretta and Martin Luther King Jr.’s four children, Bernice had just turned five-years-old two weeks earlier.
But there she was, in a packed Ebenezer Baptist Church, dressed in a white dress and draped across her mother's knees.
Credit: MONETA J. SLEET, JR.
Credit: MONETA J. SLEET, JR.
»RELATED: Who is Bernice King?
Her mother wore a black dress and mourning veil. Her father was in a casket fewer than five feet away.
Bernice King's eyes seemed distant, not noticing or caring that photographer Moneta Sleet Jr. was capturing her most vulnerable moment.
Maybe she was thinking about the times she would jump off the refrigerator into her father’s arms, terrifying her mother.
»LISTEN: New AJC podcast “Voices of King”
»EXCLUSIVE: Never before seen photos of King's funeral procession
Or maybe she was thinking about how her father would pick up green onions at the dinner table and chew them like celery.
Maybe she was thinking about the kissing game, where she and each of her siblings were assigned a spot to kiss their father when he came home.
Bernice’s spot was her father’s forehead.
»MAP: The funeral route. Then and now
"That was my bonding and identification with him," Bernice King would say later. "I thought it was so important because without that, I literally would have no memories of my father. But I remember that like it was yesterday."
Sleet’s photograph of Bernice and Coretta Scott King won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography, making him the first African-American man to win the Pulitzer and the first African American to win award for journalism.
Read more about Bernice King’s relationship and memories of her father in Honoring King, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s package looking at the last year of King’s life.
The March 21 documentary 'The Last Days of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.' on Channel 2 kicked off a countdown of remembrance across the combined platforms of Channel 2 and its partners, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and WSB Radio. The three Atlanta news sources will release comprehensive multi-platform content until April 9, the anniversary of King's funeral. On April 4, the 50th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination, the three properties will devote extensive live coverage to the memorials in Atlanta, Memphis and around the country. The project will present a living timeline in real time as it occurred on that day in 1968, right down to the time the fatal shot was fired that ended his life an hour later. The project will culminate on April 9 with coverage of the special processional in Atlanta marking the path of Dr. King's funeral, which was watched by the world.
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