"Vast Hunt for King's Slayer." That was The New Mexican's front-page headline over a report on the April 4, 1968, assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis.

Downpage, the paper published a story on local reaction featuring comments from clergy and political leaders.

"When I heard about it, I just felt terrible," Fabian Chávez of Santa Fe, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, told a reporter four decades ago. "Dr. King was not like other civil rights leaders. He not only preached nonviolence, but he practiced nonviolence."

David Cargo, the state's Republican governor at the time, said, "Any country that sits by and lets this happen needs to reconsider the consequences. If you can't stand for what you believe in, then things have come to a terrible pass."

This week both men reflected on the events of 40 years ago and the aftermath.

When he entered the state House of Representatives in 1951, Chávez recalled, there was still blatant discrimination in some schools, restaurants, barber shops and theaters in New Mexico. Some businesses, he said, posted signs saying, "No Negroes or Mexicans allowed."

Chávez said he was determined to do something and tried to model his approach after King. "I sort of had an empathy with him," he said. "He preached change without violence and was very successful at it." Rather than "screaming and hollering," Chávez said, he took his case to the Legislature and succeeded in helping pass civil rights legislation here.

Cargo, who had been the attorney for the New Mexico branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said he immediately visited black churches in Albuquerque to speak to the pastors after King's death. "I knew them all," he said, "I told them, 'You've got to help me. We've got to stop any rioting.' And they did."

Cargo had good credentials in the black community in New Mexico. He had hired many African Americans in his administration, and he knew the black pastors from his days with the NAACP. He increased funding for civil rights enforcement and wasn't afraid to penalize those flouting federal law. This week, he recalled helping a black American Legion post in Clovis get a liquor license after alcohol retailers in the area refused to serve blacks.

Cargo said he met King briefly in Chicago at a civil rights conference about six months before the assassination. "I just couldn't imagine anyone would want to kill him. He was nonviolent. Not like a Stokely Carmichael. He was a very religious man, and I greatly admired him."

After King's death, Cargo joined other governors in Washington at a meeting with President Johnson to discuss civil unrest. En route, he stopped in Michigan to visit his family. "Detroit was just being leveled," he recalled. "It was just a mess."

In New Mexico, things were quiet. Two days after King's death, Cargo and the Roman Catholic archbishop organized a memorial at the state Capitol. Some 400 people attended the Sunday afternoon event at which King's "I Have a Dream" speech was shown.

On April 10, the newspaper reported two dozen "hippies" assembled on the Santa Fe Plaza for a "mourning session of bongo music and barefoot dancing." Police with riot sticks showed up, but things were calm and they left.

Joe Powdrell, heir to Mr. Powdrell's BBQ Restaurant in Albuquerque and a longtime member of the NAACP, was a junior at The University of New Mexico in 1968. He had been working at the student union building and didn't learn of King's death until he arrived home and found his mother crying. "They killed Martin," she told him. "Do you know what that means?" She said the assassination was a manifestation of hatred toward blacks in the country, and it would take the U.S. 50 years to recover.

About 15 black students at UNM — many of them, like Powdrell, athletes — gathered the next day for an informal memorial. "Some felt fear," Powdrell recalled. "And some felt hatred, (thinking) if they kill Martin, they'll kill me."

Powdrell left that weekend for a track meet in Texas. But, he said, "from that time on, we were cautious in our public behavior. (The death of King) curbed your outward expression of comfort about the progression of social justice."

In some ways, New Mexicans were too "shy" to react the way blacks did in urban areas elsewhere in the U.S., Powdrell suggested. "New Mexico is like it was. We don't really react as obviously. Racism is not as overt. Also I think that's our problem, because the overtness of injustice doesn't manifest itself in New Mexico like it does in Alabama."

A lot has changed since then, Powdrell said, but much of it is on the surface. "If Dr. King were to walk among us and look at the changes, I think he would be disappointed with African Americans and the American people," he said.

King specifically requested no schools and highways be named after him, stressing that what's important is the "message of the messenger," Powdrell noted. "I think we keep losing sight of the message of the messenger."

While serving in the New Mexico House in the 1950s and in the state Senate in the 1960s, Chávez said he also fought for legal changes to benefit women, such as legislation to allow them to serve on juries and to will their share of community property to anyone they wanted.

He said he's torn today about whom to support in the presidential election. Back in 1968, he said, "I would hope that I live long enough to see a women or a Negro American run for president. And darned if it didn't happen to my Democratic Party at the same time." And that, he added, means, "I actually have sort of a broken heart."

Chávez said he's leaning to Hillary Clinton while other members of his family are supporting Barack Obama. The changes in race relations and women's rights have been "beautiful," he said, adding, "I just hope we don't mess it up with internal fighting in the party."

Contact Anne Constable at 986-3022 or aconstable@sfnewmexican.com.