MLK Assassinated: A Nation Mourns a Leader Lost

James Earl Ray fired a single .30-06 bullet from the bathroom window of Bessie Brewer's rooming house at 422.5 South Main Street in Memphis at 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968. The bullet struck Martin Luther King Jr. in the right cheek as he stood on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel, breaking his jaw and several vertebrae, severing his jugular vein, and lodging in his shoulder. The force ripped off his necktie and threw him backward. He never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead at St. Joseph's Hospital at 7:05 p.m. He was 39 years old. King had come to Memphis to support striking sanitation workers and had delivered his prophetic "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech just the night before, telling the audience at Mason Temple that he had "seen the Promised Land" but might not get there with them. His last words, spoken to musician Ben Branch on the balcony, were about that evening's planned event: "Ben, make sure you play 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord' in the meeting tonight. Play it real pretty." The assassination triggered riots in over 100 American cities. Washington, D.C., burned for three days. Army troops and National Guard units deployed to Chicago, Baltimore, Kansas City, and dozens of other cities. Forty-three people were killed and over 20,000 arrested in the week following the murder. President Lyndon Johnson, who had announced five days earlier that he would not seek reelection, signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, including the Fair Housing Act, on April 11. Ray fled Memphis in a white Mustang, traveled to Canada on a forged passport, then to London, Lisbon, and back to London, where he was arrested at Heathrow Airport on June 8, 1968. He pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty and received a 99-year sentence. He recanted his guilty plea three days later and spent the rest of his life claiming he was a patsy manipulated by a mysterious figure he called "Raul." He died in prison in 1998. King's autopsy revealed that his heart was in the condition of a 60-year-old man, which his biographer Taylor Branch attributed to the cumulative stress of thirteen years leading the civil rights movement.