Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
April 4, 1968 · 20th Century
On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had come to support striking sanitation workers. He was 39 years old. His assassination triggered urban uprisings in over 100 American cities and a profound national grief. Within a week, Congress passed the Fair Housing Act. King's murder marked the end of the nonviolent mass movement phase of the civil rights era and left a generation of activists to reckon with the limits of moral suasion against structural power.
Key Figures
Martin Luther King Jr.Coretta Scott KingRalph AbernathyJames Earl Ray
Locations
Memphis, Tennessee
Topics
assassinationcivil rightsUSAafrican american historyracismactivismnonviolent resistance
Connected Events — 6 Connections
King's 1968 assassination ended the era of nonviolent mass protest he defined at the 1963 March on Washington, fragmenting the civil rights movement into competing approaches March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
Closed the legislative era opened by Civil Rights Act of 1964
Culminated movement whose greatest march was Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights Marches
Assassination whose aftermath directly produced Fair Housing Act Signed into Law
Occurred eight months before and intensified crisis context of 1967 Detroit Uprising
Released six weeks before — recommendations ignored in wake of Kerner Commission Report Released
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