Floral pieces line the rail outside the room that Dr. It was outside this room while leaning on the rail that Dr. King was struck and killed by a sniper's bullet on Thursday. An unidentified staff member looks out over the flowers and the direction of the shot.
AP Photo AP. King, 39, was killed by a single shot to the face fired by James Earl Ray from a rooming house across the street. Outrage over his killing resulted in rioting, looting and arson in more than cities in the United States — Detroit, Washington, D. According to the newspaper report, 4, National Guard troops were ordered into Memphis by Gov. Buford Ellington immediately after the shooting and a curfew was imposed on the city.
The bullet exploded in his face. A second service followed at Morehouse College. After the shooting, Ray hid for a month in Toronto, Ontario, and acquired a Canadian passport under the false name of Ramon George Sneyd. He was captured on June 8, , at London's Heathrow Airport.
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. The next day, April 4, King and his inner circle had been invited to have dinner at the home of the Rev. Samuel Billy Kyles, a Memphis minister. About 6 p.
Andrew Young, his close friend and partner in the civil rights movement, yelled up to him to grab his coat because the weather had turned chilly. Before he could answer Young, a shot rang out. A bullet hit King in the right cheek, shattering his jaw, several vertebrae and severing his spinal cord. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at p. Word of King's assassination triggered riots in more than cities across the country, including Chicago and Washington, D.
After shooting King, Ray immediately fled, setting off a manhunt that would last more than two months and cover five countries. At the time, it was said to be the FBI's most expensive and biggest investigation in its history. Ray pleaded guilty to the murder, something he'd spend the rest of his life trying to reverse, and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Exactly what led Ray to kill King continues to be a source of debate, as does his role in the murder. Evidence does suggest that Ray had little stomach for the integration policies that were sweeping the country.
In addition to his segregationist beliefs, he also saw a big payday, some historians have said, in killing Black leaders like H.
Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael and, of course, King. In the years following Ray's arrest, questions arose about his exact involvement in King's murder. Ray himself countered that he was not the only one involved in the crime. He insisted that a man he'd met in Canada, who went by the name of Raoul, had orchestrated the murder and ultimately shot King. Later, in the early s, he suggested a conspiracy involving the government had been behind the assassination.
Even a special congressional committee said there was the "likelihood" that Ray did not act alone. Toward the end of his life, Ray, whose sentence had been extended to years after he escaped from prison in , had the support of an unexpected ally: the King family. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.
One day after speaking those words, Dr. King was shot and killed by a sniper. As word of the assassination spread, riots broke out in cities all across the United States and National Guard troops were deployed in Memphis and Washington, D.
On April 9, King was laid to rest in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. During the next several weeks, the rifle, eyewitness reports, and fingerprints on the weapon all implicated a single suspect: escaped convict James Earl Ray. A two-bit criminal, Ray escaped a Missouri prison in April while serving a sentence for a holdup.
In May , a massive manhunt for Ray began. The FBI eventually determined that he had obtained a Canadian passport under a false identity, which at the time was relatively easy. He was trying to fly to Belgium, with the eventual goal, he later admitted, of reaching Rhodesia. Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, was at the time ruled by an oppressive and internationally condemned white minority government.
He was sentenced to 99 years in prison. On April 4, , he said, he realized that he was to be the fall guy for the King assassination and fled to Canada. During the s, the widow and children of Martin Luther King, Jr.
FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover obsessed over King, who he thought was under communist influence.
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