40 years after the riots, King's vision 'unfinished' - USATODAY.com: Four decades later, the rioting sparked by the assassination of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. is a fading memory to many Americans, preserved on grainy photographs and film.
In many of the 125 cities that were hit by violence, however, the images remain vivid — especially the fires and destruction that symbolized the outrage in mostly African-American neighborhoods, and that continue to reshape them today. At a time when whites were leaving cities for the suburbs, the rioting that left 46 people dead, 2,600 injured and 21,000 arrested hastened the departure of middle-class black families — and made King's dream of equality and opportunity seem more distant in the very neighborhoods where his message had resonated.
