Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr., an African-American clergyman and civil rights movement leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died at 7:05 p.m. He was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was known for his use of nonviolence and civil disobedience.
The Safe House Black History Museum where King sheltered in 1968 two weeks before the assassination.
The former "New Rebel Motel" where James Earl Ray stayed before shooting King
Wide view of the Lorraine Motel and the boarding house from which James Earl Ray fired the fatal shot from a second-floor bathroom window (to the left of the light pole)
Close-up of where King was shot
Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Christian minister, activist, and political philosopher who was one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. A black church leader and a son of early civil rights activist and minister Martin Luther King Sr., King advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through the use of nonviolent resistance and nonviolent civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws and other forms of legalized discrimination.
King in 1964
King's childhood home in Atlanta
The high school that King attended was named after African-American educator Booker T. Washington.
King received a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Crozer Theological Seminary in 1951 (pictured in 2009).