How Did Martin Luther King Die? Everything About His Assassination

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while standing on the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, at 6:05 P.M.

The assassination led to widespread racial violence, causing over 40 deaths and extensive damage in more than 100 cities across the United States.

James Earl Ray, a fugitive, confessed to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison.

At King’s funeral, a tape recording of his speech was played, in which he expressed his wish to be remembered for having tried to serve others:

“I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others” (King, “Drum Major Instinct,” 85).

On April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. arrived in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers and prepare for a march scheduled for the following Monday.

On the evening of April 4, as King prepared to leave the Lorraine Motel for dinner at the home of Samuel “Billy” Kyles, he stepped onto the balcony of room 306 to speak with colleagues from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) standing below.

At that moment, an assassin fired a single shot, striking King in the lower right side of his face. SCLC aides, including Ralph Abernathy, rushed to his aid.

Witnesses pointed to a boarding house across the street, where the shot appeared to have been fired. King was transported to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:05 P.M.

President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national day of mourning on April 7, 1968, following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

In the days that followed, public libraries, museums, schools, and businesses closed, and both the Academy Awards ceremony and various sporting events were postponed.

On April 8, Coretta Scott King and other family members participated in a march in Memphis to honor King and support the sanitation workers he had championed.

King’s funeral service was held on April 9 at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

The service was attended by numerous political and civil rights leaders, including Jacqueline Kennedy, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and Ralph Bunche.

Morehouse College President Benjamin Mays delivered the eulogy, stating that King would likely have considered the fight for fair wages for sanitation workers a worthy cause for his death (Mays, 9 April 1968).

Over 100,000 mourners followed King’s coffin, which was drawn by two mules through the streets of Atlanta.

After a ceremony on the Morehouse campus, King’s body was initially buried at South-View Cemetery.

It was later reinterred in a crypt next to Ebenezer Church at the King Center, established by Coretta Scott King.

Following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, a policeman found a bundle containing a .30-06 Remington rifle next to the boarding house where the shot was fired.

The FBI launched its largest investigation in history, leading agents to an apartment in Atlanta. Fingerprints found in the apartment matched those of James Earl Ray, a fugitive who had escaped from a Missouri prison in April 1967.

Further investigation revealed that Ray had registered on April 4 at the South Main Street rooming house and occupied a second-floor room with a view of the Lorraine Motel, which was near a common bathroom.

James Earl Ray’s identification as a suspect triggered an international manhunt. On July 19, 1968, he was extradited from Britain to the United States to stand trial. In March 1969, Ray entered a plea bargain, agreeing to plead guilty to murder charges in exchange for prosecutors not seeking the death penalty.

However, Ray’s circumstances became controversial when he recanted his confession shortly after being sentenced to a 99-year prison term.

Following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, doubts about the adequacy of the case against James Earl Ray grew, partly due to revelations about extensive FBI surveillance of King and other government agencies’ involvement. In 1976, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, chaired by Representative Louis Stokes, re-examined the evidence related to both King’s and President John F. Kennedy’s assassinations.

The committee’s final report suggested that Ray might have had co-conspirators but found no convincing evidence of government complicity.

After recanting his guilty plea, Ray maintained his innocence, alleging that he was framed by a gun-smuggler known as “Raoul.”

In 1993, Ray’s lawyer, William F. Pepper, staged a televised mock trial, where the “jury” found Ray not guilty to garner public support for reopening his case.

In 1997, some of King’s family members, including his son Dexter Scott King, publicly supported Ray’s appeal for a new trial and his claims of innocence.

Despite this, Tennessee authorities refused to reopen the case, and Ray died in prison on April 23, 1998.

Even after James Earl Ray’s death, conspiracy allegations persisted. In 1999, William F. Pepper, representing King’s widow and children, secured a token civil verdict of wrongful death against Lloyd Jowers, the owner of Jim’s Grill, a restaurant near the Lorraine Motel.

The trial included testimony that contradicted the original case against Ray.

However, in 2000, the Justice Department announced that its internal investigation, initiated in 1998 at the request of the King family, found no sufficient evidence to justify further investigation.