Bill Cosby remembers exactly where he was the night Martin Luther King Jr. was shot.

He was standing on a stage at Kansas University’s Hoch Auditorium, trying to be funny at a time the nation was mourning.

He didn’t want a repeat of the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, when he said nonstop TV coverage of the event made the mood “dark, thick and depressing.”

“When Martin was shot, I felt this was of the same magnitude on this country,” Cosby said in a recent interview. “I felt that if I wanted to use my emotions, that I should go on, because I could perhaps take some people’s minds away from this second assault.”

Cosby had two KU shows scheduled the night of April 4, 1968. He went on with the first show as planned. A Journal-World account of the evening said some of those in attendance knew that King had been shot but “clung to the hope that death would not result.”

The comedian made jokes about his Fat Albert character and teased the crowd about the KU basketball team beating Temple, his alma mater, during the two-hour show.

“It was very, very, very strenuous,” Cosby recalled. “I felt that I had done something that I could have used during the Kennedy assassination. I had done something that gave an escape to people for a while.”

After the first show, Cosby said he received confirmation King was dead. Then he decided to start the second performance.

“All kinds of things kept coming at me,” he said. “There was this tremendous fight from within — the assassination of a great civil rights leader, a man who was truly sobering up the drunken philosophy of racism and bigotry.

Comedian Bill Cosby, left, joins the duo Pair

“And then being in Lawrence, Kansas, and of course the areas of Kansas itself, with Brown v. Board of Education, John Brown, the Underground Railroad, the abolitionists. To be there in that state, it just began to come in waves, my thoughts. I started to just find it very, very difficult to grasp my timing and put it with words.”

After about 10 minutes, according to the Journal-World, he told the crowd: “I came here to entertain. I entertained, but I can’t forget. Now, it’s getting to me. I’ve got to go be with myself alone.

“I humbly apologize for depressing you the last few minutes. Let’s join hands together and keep cool.”

Then he walked quickly off the stage.

“And the people applauded,” Cosby recalled. “I don’t remember anything else. I don’t remember, and I don’t think there was anything to remember, because the people were stunned. It was sort of like moving in slow motion.”

Audio: Bill Cosby on his 1968 appearance at KU on the night of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination Audio: Cosby on why his comments in May at Howard University generated so much attention Audio: Cosby on the problems facing young black America. Audio: Cosby on the way the media treats inner-city black neighborhoods. Cosby gets serious Cosby was in Lawrence when King was slain Cosby renews advice to improve families (9-9-04) Pitts: Nobody’s perfect, but blacks can do better (7-11-04) Shaw: Cosby speech only part of story (5-31-04) Thomas: Cosby shows leadership (5-24-04) Pitts: Cosby remarks confront racism (5-24-04)