by Jack Hoeschler, March 2019

In writing about some of my Chicago Vista experiences, I didn’t include a significant event of April 1968: the murder of my second cousin, John Murray, in North Minneapolis. A couple of days after King was shot, rioting all around us, my father called to tell me that John Murray was gunned down a few hours after King’s assassination.

Occupied as we were with our own situation, we didn’t look much further into that event. However, in January 2018 Linda said we should do some research on John’s death, perhaps adding this footnote to the family stories we were writing for our grandsons. With that in mind, Linda googled John Murray’s name to confirm the date and details of his death.

Oddly, Linda’s web search kept showing entries for Zeitgeist, a new music ensemble in St. Paul that we knew well and had supported. This made little sense so she ignored the entries until she noticed they referenced Murray’s 1968 murder – how strange was that?! Linda called the Zeitgeist Music Director, Heather Barringer, and explained that John Murray was my second cousin.

Heather was, in fact, looking for Murray family members to tell them about “Dead King Mother,” an upcoming Zeitgeist premiere that referenced John’s murder (she was thrilled Linda called). The new work was written by percussionist and budding composer, Davu Seru, an instructor at Hamline University.  Davu was inspired by memories of a significant family incident, the murder of John Murray by Davu’s great uncle, Clarence Underwood, in the North Side of Minneapolis. The text was a lament by Clarence’s wife, Arlene, who had tried to stop her impulsive husband.

Apparently, Clarence lived on society’s margins, but had a hard-working wife and three children.  She was the first Black staffer at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank before and long after this event. She was the rock.

The evening Martin Luther King was killed, Clarence, enraged, told his wife that he was going to shoot the first “honky” he saw. She tried to dissuade him, but he bolted from their apartment, gun in hand.  She called the police to alert them to the situation and pleaded with them to come quickly.

John Murray and his new wife lived about a block away.  John and I, born only a few months apart, had been in the same class at Aquinas High School in La Crosse, WI. After high school graduation in 1960, I went to Georgetown. John enrolled in Marquette where, according to his brothers, his liberal sympathies for Black students drew derision from fellow Whites. 

After graduation, John married, and the couple moved to Minneapolis. They consciously decided to live in the predominantly Black North side of Minneapolis, in low-income mixed-race housing. Despite parental concerns, John said he wanted to show that Blacks and Whites could live together peacefully.

That’s how John happened to step off a city bus the evening of April 4 on his way home from his downtown job, only to face an angry, armed Clarence Underwood. Clarence shot John in the knee, causing John to fall to the ground where he begged for his life. Clarence fired 4 or 5 more bullets into John’s head, killing him.

Clarence wandered back toward his own home where police confronted him. Clarence was waving his gun over his head and shouted: “Shoot me; they have killed my King.”

Some North Side residents have commented that police were aware that racial relations in the City were at a crisis point, and that is why the officers did not shoot Clarence but talked him into lowering, then giving up his gun before he was arrested.  I do not ascribe such sophistication and cool headedness to the two beat officers confronting an armed man. I think that the event occurred over 50 years ago before police were trained to shoot first before an armed person could shoot them.  Whatever the case, these two officers deserve a lot of credit, and their actions would most likely not be repeated today.

Another difference between then and now is that Clarence eventually pleaded guilty to second degree murder and received a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison, but was released after having served only 7 years. This was the sort of sentencing liberalism that led to three-strikes rules during the 80’s and 90’s.

Most interesting about this Greek tragedy is how many others were affected by it, even though it has now been forgotten by history.

After learning about the upcoming premiere of “Dead King Mother,” we invited Heather Barringer, Zeitgeist music director, and Davu Seru, the composer, to our home. Over dinner we sketched the Murray side of the story: their refusal to engage in racial blaming, as well as the family’s suffering, illness and deaths that resulted from the killing of John. (Indeed, the Murrays asked me to represent them at any talks and concerts, explaining that their wounds were still raw.)

Davu, as a child, had seen his great uncle as “the guy who shot the white guy.”  Clarence was something of a folk hero in the Black community. We introduced John Murray as a heroic victim. Davu rightly pointed to his great aunt, Arlene Underwood, as the heroic mother. The new works’ words reflect Arlene’s tortured narrative to Clarence whose rashness left her alone to raise 3 children.

Late winter we went to Zeitgeist’s studio in downtown St Paul to hear the piece workshopped. An alto soloist sang Arlene Underwood’s tragic lament, accompanied by a handful of disparate, expertly played instruments. Most interesting was our meeting two of Arlene’s children and several cousins, each thoughtful, well-educated, and unembarrassed by our presence. Arlene, deceased. emerged victorious!

On April 4, 2018, we attended the premiere of Davu’s piece at the historic Capri Theater in Minneapolis’ Northside. It was the 50th Anniversary of the events: King’s and Murray’s assassinations. As part of a post-performance panel discussion, I was asked to speak as a representative of the Murray family. Linda and I were careful not to lay blame, but to laud the Murray handling of their son’s/brother’s murder as an example of gracious bereavement. “A man shot our son” was how John’s father described the murder to the newspapers, refusing any reporter’s rascist bait.

Afterwards, I was approached by a Minneapolis Parks Policeman named Chuck Davis. He explained that he had been a 5-year-old witness to the murder of John Murray because he was standing with his White mother (his father was Black) across the street, waiting for the light to change. He was afraid that had Clarence not found John Murray as “the first honky I see,” Clarence would have shot his mother. As he watched Clarence shoot John in the knee and then in the head, despite pleading for his life, Chuck vowed to become a policeman. (We have since had Chuck and his mother to our home; Chuck’s father is deceased.)

A second post-concert coincidence was my being approached by Heather Barringer’s aunt, Shirley Barringer. She had heard me mention that John was part of the Leinfelder branch of my Hoeschler family. She asked whether or not we were related to Father Philip Leinfelder who had married her in Ellsworth, Wisconsin. I responded that he was a cousin and John Murray’s uncle. She explained that she was the Emergency Room nurse at Hennepin County Medical Center and was responsible for accepting, photographing, and documenting John Murray’s body with its multiple wounds. She said it was such a brutal death and she always said prayers for John Murray, particularly each April 4.

We don’t even need such six degrees of separation to make 1968 and 2018 ring real for any of us.