The Murder of Martin Luther King Jr.
Good morning. It’s April 4. On this day in 1968, Ralph Abernathy, Jesse Jackson, Hosea Williams, Andrew Young, and several others were heading to dinner with Martin Luther King Jr. The civil rights leaders were gathered in Memphis, preparing to lead a march the next day in sympathy with a strike by the city’s sanitation workers.
They were staying at the Lorraine Motel on Mulberry Street, a dowdy, two-story motor court, but one with nostalgic meaning for them: it was one of the first integrated hotels in the city. They had stayed there before, as had an array of African American musicians from Cab Calloway to Aretha Franklin.
As King emerged onto the second floor balcony at 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, a rifle shot rang out. King, 39 years old, slumped to the concrete, mortally wounded. Ralph Abernathy, who had been in his room, rushed outside to find his friend lying in a pool of his own blood.
“Martin, it's all right,” he said, cradling his friend. “Don't worry. This is Ralph. This is Ralph.”
But Ralph Abernathy, whom King had described in a speech the day before as “the best friend I have in the world,” knew it was unlikely to be all right. Martin was fading fast.
By 1968, there was no longer a consensus in the African American community that non-violent resistance was the best option. “Black Power” was the new slogan, and the Black Panther Party was heralding a more vulgar, secular - and lethal - approach to the fight for equality.
King and his group were in Memphis to reassert the moral authority of their movement. In March, a protest associated with the sanitation workers strike had turned violent and a young man was killed by police. The pastors wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again.
To set the stage, King spoke on April 3 at Mason Temple, the headquarters for the Church of God in Christ, a predominately black Pentecostal denomination. There he had tactfully, but unmistakably, critiqued the approach of militants.
“We don't have to curse and go around acting bad with our words,” King said. “We don't need any bricks and bottles. We don't need any Molotov cocktails.”
But as the struggle for civil rights entered a new phase, one centered on economic fairness, King was no longer talking about just lying down in the street and singing “We Shall Overcome,” either.
“We just need to go around to these stores,” he said that night, “and to these massive industries in our country, and say, ‘God sent us by here, to say to you that you're not treating his children right. And we've come by here to ask you to make the first item on your agenda fair treatment, where God's children are concerned. Now, if you are not prepared to do that, we do have an agenda that we must follow. And our agenda calls for withdrawing economic support from you.’”
That agenda was interrupted by a racist career criminal armed with binoculars, and .30-06-caliber rifle and dreams of living in white-dominated Rhodesia. In the coming days, the Molotov cocktail did indeed become the symbol of resistance, as many American cities were set ablaze by rampaging young blacks protesting Martin’s murder.
In the end, however, it is his words we remember more than the fires or the riots or any assassin. A bomb scare on the airplane up from Atlanta had put King in a pensive frame of mind, and at the end of his 43-minute talk at Mason Temple, he ruminated aloud about his own mortality.
“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life,” the good reverend said that night. “Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. I've looked over and I've 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!"
Building to a now-familiar crescendo, Martin Luther King Jr. concluded with these words: “So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”
