Thirty eight years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot while he was standing on the balcony of his room at the Motel Lorraine in Memphis.
MLK came to Memphis to support a sanitation workers' strike and was going to dinner when a bullet entered his jaw and severed his spinal cord. He was dead on arrival at the hospital. He was 39 years old.
Shortly before his murder, Martin Luther King came to focus on economic inequality in America. He began planning an interracial "Poor People's March" on Washington and in March 1968 had traveled to Memphis in support of the exploited sanitation workers. A workers' rotest march led by King in late March ended in the death of a black teenager. King promised to come back in early April to lead another demonstration.
The day before he died, he gave his last sermon, the amazing and moving mountaintop speech:
"We've got some difficult days ahead, but it really doesn't matter with me now. 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. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain, and 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."
One day later, Dr. King was assassinated, allegedly by James Earl Ray.
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