One minute he was pillow-fighting with friends in his motel room. The next he was sprawled on a balcony, the life flowing out of him. The assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. 40 years ago this week touched off shock waves of anger and violence across the nation. But in Atlanta, King's hometown, there was a profound sadness. Tens of thousands of people walked with his casket, borne on a mule-drawn wagon, through the streets where he had grown up, gone to school and ministered. The great pageant of grief was the largest funeral the city has ever seen. In anticipation of the anniversary, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution interviewed and photographed 12 people who experienced those days most vividly. They are witnesses, colleagues, family members —intimate participants in the end of an epoch. Excerpts of their reflections are on the pages that follow.

Pouya Dianat/AJC (ENLARGE)

Ambassador Andrew Young

Pouya Dianat/AJC (ENLARGE)

Juanita Abernathy

Pouya Dianat/Staff Photographer (ENLARGE)

Xernona Clayton

Pouya Dianat/AJC (ENLARGE)

Martin Luther King III

Pouya Dianat/AJC (ENLARGE)

Rev. Joseph Lowery

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Andrew Young

This King lieutenant —later Atlanta's mayor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations— returned to the Lorraine Motel late on the afternoon of April 4.

When I walked in, he [King] said, "Where have you been?" I said I'd been in court. And he started fussing: "Don't you leave me here. I'm the leader of this movement. You need to keep me informed. I'll bet you haven't been in a courtroom all day. I'll bet you've been slipping off somewhere around here."

He was in the most playful mood I'd seen him in in weeks. And then he picked up a pillow off the bed and threw it at me, and I threw it back. The next thing I knew, everybody was grabbing pillows. Here a group of 30- to 40-year-old men were having a pillow fight, which ended up in this hotel room with me down on the floor between two beds with pillows and everybody else piled on top of me.

We were supposed to be going to dinner. Martin left his room and went upstairs to put on a shirt and tie. I was down in the parking lot. He came out, and I said, "You better go back in and get a coat, you've had a cold."

I thought it was a firecracker. I ran up the stairs because I didn't see him. When I got to the top of the stairs, he was flat on his back in a pool of blood.

Earl Caldwell

A reporter for The New York Times on his first major assignment, he had a room on the first floor of the Lorraine Motel.

I heard what I thought was a bomb blast. I dashed to the door and I see these people off to my right. They are jumping up and down. I see directly at eye [level], almost straight ahead, there was an embankment. In the thicket, I see this figure, this guy was doing something — I couldn't tell what he was doing, he seemed to be twisting and turning — and his attention is trained on something at the motel. I am watching him thinking he is gonna give me a signal or indication of what it is. And while I am watching, this guy in this car roars up to my door and stops and roars back. Roars up again and back. And the third time it comes up to my door, he stops and I recognize him. His name was Solomon Jones, and he told me some undertaker had given him this car and his job was to drive Dr. King around. When the car came to a stop in front of my door, I ran out in my shorts. He began to bang his head against the steering wheel, and he was saying, "Oh no. Oh no." I said, "What happened? What happened?" I turned around, then I could see. Dr. King is laying there on the balcony.

Samuel 'Billy' Kyles

Kyles was a local minister who invited King to Memphis to help out with the sanitation strike. He had arrived at the hotel to take King to his home for dinner.

I happened to have been on the balcony when the shot was fired. I had the privilege of being with him during his last hour on earth. The whole world wants to know what the last hour was like. We didn't know it was the last hour, so we weren't in prayer. Weren't in meditation. We talked preacher talk. We stepped out on the balcony and he was talking to people in the courtyard. He saw Jesse Jackson, and said, "Jesse, you're not dressed for dinner." Jesse and [musician] Ben Branch started walking towards the balcony. Martin was leaning over talking to Jesse and Ben. I turned to walk away going towards the stairs. By the time I got five or six steps, the shot rang out. I rushed to his side. There was a great hole in the side of his face. There was blood everywhere. I took a spread from one of the beds and covered him from his neck down. He never spoke a word. I told them what hospital to take him to. And we waited. And we waited. Finally, we got the word that we lost him. I wondered what was I there for at that moment in time in history. Then God gave me a revelation: Crucifixions have to have witnesses. I was there to be a witness.

Juanita Abernathy

The wife of King's best friend, Ralph David Abernathy. The Abernathys hosted the Kings for dinner on the weekend before April 4. King had just returned from Memphis, where a march had been broken up by violence.

We were going to go out, but Dr. King called [and] said, 'I don't want to go out. I want to come to your house. And I want some fish. If I get the fish, will you cook it? And Corrie (Coretta) will help you.' I said OK. I cooked the fish. The news kept flashing about the violence in Memphis. You know how the media is. They were glad to say something disparaging about his leadership. Here is his Waterloo, and they were happy. He looked like he had lost his best friend. ... We spent the night, everybody — Ralph, [King associate] Bernard Lee, Martin, Coretta and I — we all sat there and fell asleep. Martin teased us because we had two love seats and he said we couldn't afford a whole sofa. He sat on one and Ralph sat on the other. Coretta stretched out on the sofa in the living room and slept. Bernard Lee sat up in a chair and I sat up in a chair. We talked and slept all night. I am almost sure now that Martin had an intuition that something was going to happen. In all the demonstrations, I had seen his reactions, but I had never seen him like that. When you live close to God, you get a feeling. He knew that something was going to happen. That was the last time I saw him alive. That was the last Friday night he lived.

Joseph Lowery

On April 4, Lowery —chairman of the SCLC board— was in Nashville and set to return home to Birmingham, before heading to meet King in Memphis.

We were all aware that it could happen to any of us at any time. People who were opposing us not only didn't believe in nonviolence, they were fanatical about violence. When you make a commitment to take up the cross, you just trust the Lord and go on in faith. That is what Martin did. Even though we were not unaware of the danger, we were not prepared to lose him. It was a sad day. I was on a train coming back from Nashville. When I got to the railroad station, I saw my wife and two of the kids waiting for me. I saw a sad and lonely expression on her face, and I knew something was wrong ... she told me Martin had been shot and was dead. I was stricken with sadness and I wanted to go home and weep. I tried to call Coretta and Daddy King, but I couldn't get through. I went through a whole mess of emotions. Anger. Sadness. Fear. And yet, determination. Real grit that we would not let this turn us around. I miss him now, 40 years later, just as much as I did 40 minutes after I learned of his death.

Kathryn Johnson

The Associated Press reporter knew the Kings well and went straight to their house when she heard about the shooting.

There was a police officer on the porch, and he said no reporters allowed in. About that time the door opened and down the long hall I could see Coretta in a rose-pink gown and robe. She spotted me, and she told the officer, "Let Kathryn in." And that's how I got in the King household. I was there for five days.

She gestured to me to go to her bedroom. She didn't feel like seeing people. She climbed in her bed and rested against the pillows and I sat in a chair nearby. We were watching King on television. It was fascinating because it was the speech he made the night before in Memphis, and this was the night he was shot. It felt eerie. The only time I saw [Coretta] weep was when he said, "I am not afraid. ..."

I think she felt that he might get shot. He said often that he expected death to come at any time. He had given her plastic flowers for something. She told me about that. She said, "What did you give me plastic flowers for?" He said, "To remember me by."

John Lewis

The former chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was in Indianapolis campaigning with Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy.

When I heard that he had been shot, I continued to help organize a rally for Robert Kennedy. I thought maybe, just maybe, Dr. King would be all right. Later, Robert Kennedy came forth to speak and he said, 'I have some bad news tonight: Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.' It was a sad and dark moment for me. Like so many in the audience, I started to cry. I felt like I lost a friend, colleague and big brother. The night before the funeral, it was my responsibility to escort Robert Kennedy through the educational building downstairs to the sanctuary of Ebenezer Baptist Church to view the body. We walked closer and closer to the open casket and we saw Dr. King. It was very sad, but at the same time a moment that I will never forget. I had seen Dr. King so many times before as a very vibrant and exciting human being speaking in a pulpit, leading a march or speaking at a big rally. To see him there, I knew then that it was an end of a chapter in American history.

Martin Luther King III

King's oldest son was 10.

Mother said, "Daddy has gone home to be with God." When he sees you, I think she said, he will appear as if he's sleeping. He will not be able to hug or embrace you, as he always did. Or kiss you. But he is resting with God. That was a beautiful way to tell it to a 10-year-old child.

During this period of time, we had every kind of visitor to our home, from presidential candidates to entertainers. Bill Cosby and Robert Culp, who were in the TV program "I Spy," came by. Bill Cosby came and spent time with us as children. I think we were having trouble sleeping. I know I was. But he shared a story. He gave us a group of words to say, and whatever our pain was, if we said these words, it would revert back to a normal set of circumstances. Those words helped us to finally go to sleep.

I know that some of my siblings had dreams of people who were deceased chasing them. I never had those dreams. There were a number of times when I had dreams that what we had just been exposed to wasn't true. It just didn't happen. Our father was still here and we were still together as a family.

Tyrone Brooks

Now a state representative, in 1968 Brooks was a young organizer working under Hosea Williams at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Hosea had given us instructions that it was our responsibility that Atlanta not engulf in violence and riots, as we'd seen in other cities — if they riot and burn in Dr. King's hometown, we're going to be blamed. We should go out into the community and urge the young people, who are very hurt and very hotheaded, to remain calm.

We went out as ambassadors. I remember over on Boulevard, near Georgia Baptist Hospital, there was a lot of tension, fights. White people driving through got bottles and rocks thrown at their cars.

One evening [civil rights activist the Rev.] James Orange and some other guys went to the D&W Sandwich Shop, a little place on Hunter and Ashby that was open 24/7. We walked in and there were some young guys from SNCC. They were talking black power and burn, baby, burn. They recognized us, and there were some words exchanged. They called us Uncle Toms. They said King was dead, and pretty soon we were going to be dead with that nonviolent teaching. They wanted to provoke us.

Christine King Farris

King's older sister flew to Memphis to claim the body.

We arrived in Memphis, and it was a cloudy day. And people were just all over the tarmac, and the National Guard was standing with very long pistols trained on those people. There was a feeling that I cannot erase. That is why I have not been back to Memphis.

Shortly after we landed, Andy [Andrew Young], Ralph [David Abernathy], my brother A.D. and some others came on the plane, and they were just in tears. Andy was just breaking down. We never got off the plane. After a while, they brought my brother's casket on the back of the plane.

Coretta and I worked on [the funeral plans]. I remember sitting on the floor in her bedroom and us trying to decide what the funeral should be like. And I said, "Coretta, M.L. has already preached his eulogy. He did that 'drum major' speech back in February. It was so moving that I had to go out." Coretta was out having surgery and she wasn't there. When Martin got [home], he said, "I might have preached my eulogy."

The sermon King had preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church was played at his funeral.

Bernice King

The younger daughter of King, she had celebrated her 5th birthday on March 28.

The day they brought his body back to Atlanta, we met our mother at the airport and went up on the plane. I remember asking her, where is my daddy?, and she said he was in his casket in the back of the plane, asleep. I think she was trying to prepare me. She didn't want me to be in shock when I saw him lying down in this casket. [Years later] we had a film copy of [the documentary] "Montgomery to Memphis." In our basement, I would get the projector and watch the film. I saw it any number of times. But there was this one particular time when I was 16, I was elected president of the youth group at Ebenezer [Baptist Church]. I suggested, as a part of the retreat, we watch the film. And for some reason out of nowhere —remember, I had seen it nine or 10 times— during the funeral scene, tears started coming down my face. I got up out of my seat and went up into the woods and started boo-hooing for like two hours. They took me back in the cabin and I just lay across the bed and cried for two hours asking why. It was like I was asking why to God. To Daddy, why did you leave me? To God, why did you take him? For two hours.

Xernona Clayton

A friend of the Kings, the TV personality viewed the body with the family at Spelman College.

I could see that he looked awful. There was a big blob on his right cheek. Red like the red clay of Georgia. It was pretty unsightly. I felt so pained by the way he looked. I eased over to the mortician and asked him very quietly, "Sir, is there anything you can do about his jaw?" And he was so brash. He said, "Miss, his jaw was blown off. This is clay, and it's the best we could do."

My husband had just died several months before this. They changed a flaw in the way he looked. Whatever they did, they did something. But this man just lashed out. I said, we can't have it looking like this.

Sitting on the first bench was Mama King, and she's dark-skinned. And then I looked at [Harry] Belafonte's wife, who was white. And I asked them if they had any color. I took their powders and mixed up a little roux, and Belafonte was standing there watching me. And we put his handkerchief around Martin's neck, and I proceeded to tone this down with the powder I mixed up. It blended more evenly with the rest of his face and made such a difference. Coretta smiled.