Fifty-three years ago today, the world lost a civil rights icon when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was struck down by an assassin’s bullet outside a Memphis motel room.
A leader of the nonviolent movement in the 1960s, the Atlanta native had come to Tennessee a day earlier to help sanitation workers rally for better wages and safer working conditions. He was 39.
King dedicated his life to ending Southern segregation. He championed equal rights and fought to ensure Black Americans could make their voices heard at the ballot box. But he also knew there was a portion of the population intent on maintaining the status quo.
In his final speech, King acknowledged he might not live long enough to see his life’s work realized.
“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life,” he told the crowd during the prophetic 40-minute address on the evening of April 3, 1968. “But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.
“He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain,” King continued. “And I have looked over and I have seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.”
Today’s Atlanta ceremony
To honor his legacy and commemorate the 53rd anniversary of his death, the King family will lay a wreath at his tomb this afternoon.
The event will be held at 1:30 p.m. at the King Center Reflecting Pool along Auburn Avenue.
The King Center — its full name is the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change Inc. — is a nonprofit organization established in 1968 to continue King’s work and legacy.
Virtual commemorations today
The anniversary of King’s death falls on Easter this year, and events are planned across the country this holiday to commemorate the life and martyrdom of the civil rights great.
At 7 p.m., a group of well-known activists and organizers are hosting a webinar and panel discussion where speakers will recite King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech calling for an end to the war in Southeast Asia. The speech was delivered April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination. During the address King called for an end to racism, poverty and militarization by highlighting that Americans were being killed overseas while trying to guarantee certain rights they didn’t have at home.
“We were taking the Black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem,” King famously said.
The National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Hotel, where King was shot in Memphis, plans a virtual commemoration this afternoon. “Remembering MLK: The Man. The Movement. The Moment” will be broadcast at 6 p.m. and will feature the Rev. James Lawson, a key King ally.
Shocking news in 1968
Robert F. Kennedy was in Indianapolis, campaigning for the Democratic nomination for president when he was told of the assassination. His staff tried to dissuade Kennedy from speaking to the crowd in a predominately Black neighborhood as news of riots elsewhere was beginning to spread.
Many people screamed in disbelief as the U.S. senator broke the news that King had been shot and killed. He then called for calm and reminded those gathered that he, too, had had a family member (his brother, President John F. Kennedy) who was assassinated.
Bobby Kennedy died two months later after being gunned down inside a Los Angeles hotel while campaigning.
Immediately after King’s death and in the days ahead, riots raged in cities across the U.S., including Memphis, Washington, Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City and Pittsburgh. Riots broke out in 110 cities, thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed, and dozens were killed.
Atlanta, King’s hometown and where he was senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, was spared the chaos. Instead, as the assassin was still at large, Atlanta was planning the biggest funeral in the city’s history. It would host 150,000 mourners, and the eyes of a troubled world would be on Auburn Avenue.
A special look back
To mark the 50th anniversary of his death in 2018, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published the multimedia presentation “Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” Revisit the special coverage at https://honoringmlk.com/
About the Author
