APRIL 4, 1968
It was a day that shocked America. Fifty-three years ago, Martin Luther King was shot dead while standing on the balcony of a motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
The civil rights leader was in the city to support a sanitation workers’ strike and about to head out to dinner when a bullet struck him in the jaw.
King was pronounced dead after his arrival at hospital. He was just 39.
In the months before his assassination, the baptist minister and activist had become increasingly concerned with the problem of economic inequality in the US. He organised the Poor People’s Campaign to focus on the issue, including a march on Washington, and that March travelled to Memphis in support of poorly treated black sanitation workers. On March 28, a protest march led by King ended in violence and the death of a black teenager.
On April 3, back in Memphis, King gave his last sermon, at the Mason Temple, central headquarters of the Church of God in Christ.
The following day, he was killed by a sniper. As word of the assassination spread, riots broke out in cities across the US and National Guard troops were deployed in Memphis and Washington DC.
On April 9, King was laid to rest in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to pay tribute to King’s casket as it passed by in a wooden farm cart drawn by two mules.