Photo: Andrew Lipovsky/NBC via Getty; Bettmann/ Getty
Spike Leecan still recall exactly where he was when he learned Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
While appearing onThe Tonight Showwith Jimmy FallonMonday night,the Academy Award-winning director recalled the chilling moment he found out that King had been killed.
“April 4, 1968, I was 11-years-old,” Lee, 63, told host Jimmy Fallon. “11-years-old, sitting on my stoop — not porch! In Brooklyn, it’s stoops. Stoops!”
“I hear a woman screaming. And as the voice gets closer, I recognize it’s my mother’s voice,” the filmmaker recalled. “And she’s screaming — I swear on her grave — she’s screaming, ‘They killed Dr. King! They killed Dr. King! They killed Dr. King!’ "
Martin Luther King Jr.
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Last year, Lee releasedDa 5 Bloods, aVietnam Warfilm that starred the lateChadwick BosemanandJean Reno. In the film four African American vets, Paul (Delroy Lindo), Otis (Clarke Peters), Eddie (Norm Lewis) and Melvin (Isiah Whitlock Jr.) travel back to Vietnam to locate the remains of their fallen squad leader and the buried treasure they left behind during the war.
One of the most poignant scenes in the film was when North Vietnamese propaganda broadcaster Hanoi Hannah revealed to Black American troops that King had been killed, two or three days after his assassination.
David Lee/Netflix
“Hanoi Hannah told the Black soldiers, ‘Why are you fighting for a country that does not love you? Why are you fighting for a country when your brothers and sisters are burning a hundred cities in America?’ " Lee told the talk show host, 46. “And that’s documented.”
The director then touched on the significance of this moment in the film, as Black soldiers made up “a third of the fighting forces” in the war when African-Americans only made up about “10 percent of the population” in the United States at the time. Since the Vietnam War, the population of African Americans has grown to a little over 13 percent,according to the 2019 U.S. Census.
Da 5 Bloodsis a stiff contender for an Oscar, with film critics calling it “tremendous,“IndieWirepreviously reported. The film broke at No. 1 onNetflix’s top 10when it was first released over the summer.
source: people.com
