Civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King Jr’s life ended with single shot
FIFTY years ago a single shot ended the life of Martin Luther King but his legacy lives on.
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HE was the most visible spokesman and leader of the civil rights movement, but when Martin Luther King Jr gave a speech on April 3, 1968, he said the threats against his life did not matter “because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.”
He was almost foretelling his own death because within a day he was dead.
Fifty years ago today on April 4, while he was standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, a shot rang out. It struck King on the right side of the face, breaking his jaw, entering his neck and causing fatal internal injuries. He was thrown backwards and lay unconscious on the balcony. His friend Ralph Abernathy and an undercover police officer tried to stem the flow of blood before King was taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead at 7.05pm .
For someone who had dedicated his life to nonviolent protest it was a terrible way to die.
The assassination sparked riots in decaying inner-city areas with large African-American populations. The passing of one of the most inspiring leaders of the civil rights movement seemed to mark the end of any hope that things could change. However, his death resulted in the passing of the Fair Housing Act.
King was born on January 15, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia. He grew up in a secure, middle-class family, always aware of the segregation and discrimination against African-Americans.
He graduated from high school at 15 and was awarded a bachelor degree in sociology in 1948. Although he excelled in studies of medicine and law, he made the decision to enter the ministry, earning a bachelor of divinity in 1951 and a doctorate in 1955.
King married Coretta Scott in 1953 and, a year later, became pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. But in 1955 he became involved in the bus boycott, which stemmed from African-American woman Rosa Parks refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger.
Thanks to his leadership and skill as an orator, buses Alabama were desegregated. It was only a small step toward the greater goal of gaining rights for African-Americans across the US. King emerged as a leader of that struggle. Even at this early stage, his life was threatened and his family’s home bombed.
To better organise resistance to injustices, King organised the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957. But his increasing fame brought a price. At a book signing in Harlem in 1958, King was stabbed with a letter opener by a mentally ill women. He survived; the letter opener narrowly missing his aorta.
In 1963 he led a campaign to end desegregation in restaurants in Birmingham, Alabama, which culminated in his “I have a dream” speech. It gained him the support of President John F. Kennedy. But when Kennedy was killed in November 1963, King told Coretta, “This is what is going to happen to me also. I keep telling you, this is a sick society.”
Kennedy’s successor Lyndon Johnson helped push through the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That same year King was awarded a Nobel Peace prize.
King continued to work tirelessly for social change campaigning successfully for voting rights for blacks in 1965. But he was criticised for his focus on racism to the exclusion of other social problems.
Hoping to broaden his support base, in 1967 he changed his approach by speaking out against the Vietnam War, especially the conscription of poor young men to fill the ranks.
It brought the enmity of war supporters, in particular petty criminal James Earl Ray. A campaign volunteer for pro-segregationist Alabama politician George Wallace, Ray may have believed that killing King would somehow help Wallace’s chances in the 1968 presidential election.
Ray took his opportunity when King was in Memphis in 1968 in support of a strike by sanitation workers, most of whom were African-Americans.
Discovering King was booked into the Lorraine Motel, Ray took a room in a boarding house across the road. He found a window in a common bathroom facing the hotel, and waited there with his Remington 760 rifle.
When King emerged from his room at about 6pm, Ray took his shot. An army-trained marksman it only took one bullet to kill King.
Ray was later seen running from the hotel. He eluded police until he was caught at Heathrow Airport in England two months later. Ray pleaded guilty, avoiding the death penalty, but escaped from prison in 1977, only to be recaptured three days later.
He later recanted his confession and protested his innocence. He died in prison in 1998.
Originally published as Civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King Jr’s life ended with single shot
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