For some time, he had been saying that racial tension between blacks and whites was growing and that blacks would soon rise up in rebellion in America's cities. He had emphasized Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, which had taken place on April 4, 1968. On a bitterly cold New Year's Eve at Myers Ranch, the Family members, gathered outside around a large fire, listened as Manson explained that the social turmoil he had been predicting had also been predicted by the Beatles. The "White Album" songs, he declared, told it all, though in code. In fact, he said the album was directed at the Family itself, an elect group that was being instructed to preserve the worthy from the impending disaster.