Mlk jr assassination photo
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MLK assassination 50 years ago remembered
Fannie Garner holds a picture of Martin Luther King, Jr. as she participates during an event to mark the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination April 4, 2018 in Memphis, Tennessee. American civil rights leader King was killed on April 4, 1968 while supporting a sanitation workers strike in Memphis.Joe Raedle
Thousands gather on the National Mall for a prayer rally to mark the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination April 4, 2018 in Washington, DC. Organized by A.C.T. To End Racism, religious leaders and others gathered to memorialize the day that Nobel Peace Prize and American civil rights leader King was killed while supporting a sanitation workers strike in Memphis, Tennessee. Chip Somodevilla
Members of Definition of Percussion Entertainment (D.O.P.E.) lead marchers from the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial to the National Mall to mark the 50th anniversary of King's assassination A
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Historic photos of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn.
King was shot to death around 6 p.m. while standing on the balcony at the Lorraine Hotel bygd James Earl Ray.
King and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy were staying in Room 306 – the same room they stayed in whenever they were in Memphis.
Ray was shooting at King from nearby rooming house. King was taken to St. Joseph's Hospital where he was pronounced dead a little more than an hour after the shooting.
King, 39, was killed by a single shot to the face. King was in Memphis with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which he founded, to support a sanitation workers’ strike.
Outrage over his killing resulted in rioting, looting and arson in more than 100 cities in the United States – Detroit, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Newark, N.J., Baltimore, Chicago.
King’s funeral was held April 9 in Atlanta,
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Written By: Ben Cosgrove
On April 4, 1968, LIFE photographer Henry Groskinsky and writer Mike Silva, on assignment in Alabama, learned that Martin Luther King, Jr., had been shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. The two men jumped into their car, raced the 200 miles to the scene of the assassination, and there to their astonishment found that they had unfettered access to the motel’s grounds; to nearby abandoned buildings from which the fatal rifle shot likely came; to Dr. King’s motel room; and to the bleak, blood-stained balcony where the civil rights leader had fallen, mortally wounded, hours earlier.
“I was astonished by how desolate it all was,” Groskinsky told LIFE. “Then again, everyone probably thought that the person who shot Dr. King might still be out there somewhere.”
For reasons that have been lost in the intervening decades, Groskinsky’s photographs from that eerily quiet night in Memphis taken at the site, and on the very