Dr Martin Luther King Jr travelled to Memphis on 3 April 1968 to support a strike of approximately 1,300 city sanitation workers protesting unsafe equipment and racial pay disparities. He delivered his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech at the Mason Temple that evening. He stayed at the Lorraine Motel, a Black-owned establishment at 450 Mulberry Street that he had used on previous Memphis visits.

At approximately 18:01 CST on 4 April 1968 King stepped onto the balcony outside Room 306 to speak with colleagues in the parking lot below. A single rifle shot from a Remington Model 760.30-06 struck him in the right cheek and severed his spinal cord. Aides Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, and Ralph Abernathy rushed to the balcony. King was transported to St Joseph’s Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 19:05 CST.

The shot

The shot was fired from the second-floor bathroom of Bessie Brewer’s rooming house at 422½ South Main Street, across the parking lot from the Lorraine. Witnesses saw a white man flee the rooming house carrying a bundle. A discarded blue Valencia bedspread holding the rifle, binoculars, and a transistor radio was found in the doorway of Canipe’s Amusement Company adjacent to the rooming house within minutes. Fingerprints on the rifle matched fugitive James Earl Ray.

James Earl Ray

Ray, 40, was a career criminal who had escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary on 23 April 1967 by hiding in a bread truck. He had been tracking King’s movements through 1968 under various aliases. He left Memphis after the shooting and crossed into Canada under the alias “Ramon Sneyd,” then flew to Lisbon and London.

FBI fingerprint identification of Ray as the suspect was announced on 19 April 1968. He was arrested at London Heathrow Airport on 8 June 1968 while attempting to board a flight to Brussels. He was extradited to the United States on 19 July 1968.

Ray pleaded guilty in Memphis on 10 March 1969 and was sentenced to 99 years. He recanted three days later and spent the rest of his life attempting to withdraw the plea, claiming he had been the patsy of a conspirator named “Raoul.” He died in prison on 23 April 1998.

What followed

King’s assassination triggered riots in more than 100 American cities across 4-8 April 1968. Federal troops were deployed in Washington DC, Chicago, and Baltimore. The Lorraine Motel reopened as the National Civil Rights Museum in 1991. Room 306 is preserved as it appeared on 4 April 1968.