The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed while standing on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He had come to Memphis to support a sanitation workers' strike. The single bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. He was pronounced dead at St. Joseph's Hospital an hour later. His assassination triggered riots in over 100 American cities in the days that followed, resulting in 39 deaths and thousands of arrests. James Earl Ray, a petty criminal and escaped prison convict, was arrested two months later at London's Heathrow Airport using a false passport. He was extradited to the United States, pleaded guilty to the murder, and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. However, just three days after his sentencing, Ray recanted his confession and spent the remaining decades of his life claiming innocence and alleging a conspiracy. His request for a trial was repeatedly denied. The case attracted persistent conspiracy theories, most notably around a civil lawsuit brought in 1999 by King's family against Memphis restaurant owner Loyd Jowers, who claimed he had been hired to arrange the assassination. The jury in that civil trial found that a conspiracy involving government agencies had contributed to the killing — a verdict that received little mainstream acceptance and which the Department of Justice investigated and rejected in a subsequent report. James Earl Ray died in prison in 1998. The King family, having accepted his death claim, continues to call for a full public investigation. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. remains one of the most consequential political murders in American history, cutting short the most prominent voice of the civil rights movement at a moment of pivotal national transformation.