"We got some difficult days ahead," Martin Luther King, Jr. told an overflowing crowd in Memphis, Tennessee, where the city's sanitation workers were striking. "But it really doesn't matter to me now, because I've been to the mountaintop." King continued, "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."
The next day, 4 April 1968 , a rifle shot struck King as he stood on a balcony outside his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel. Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) member Ralph Abernathy ran to the balcony and cradled his friend's head until the paramedics arrived and rushed him to St. Joseph's Hospital. Doctors pronounced King dead at 7:05 p.m.
News of the assassination swept the nation and the world. Racial violence erupted in more than 125 cities, across 28 states, and in Washington, D.C. President Lyndon Johnson sent 20,000 regular troops and 24,000 National Guardsmen to the cities, and many cities enforced curfews. By 23 April, forty-six people had died, 2,600 were injured, and more than 21,000 people were arrested, mostly for looting. Insurance companies faced $67 million in losses from the extensive property damage.
Militant black leaders encouraged retaliation. "Black Power" advocate Stokely Carmichael called for a violent struggle, as NAACP Executive Director Roy Wilkins countered that King would have been "outraged" by the disorders and that "millions of Negroes in this country" were opposed to the violence. Wilkins then announced a nationwide campaign against racial violence, emphasizing jobs for the unemployed and better community relations.
President Johnson urged unity. "We can achieve nothing by lawlessness and divisiveness among the American people." He called for a day of mourning. Memorials and rallies were held throughout the country. All public libraries, museums, and numerous seaports, public schools, businesses, and stock exchanges closed. Many sporting events, Hollywood's Oscar Awards Ceremony, and the presidential nomination campaigns were all postponed. President Johnson requested a joint session of Congress to convene and discuss a positive response to the events, but he never followed through with the meeting.
On 8 April, Reverend Ralph Abernathy, chosen to succeed King as SCLC President, led 42,000 silent marchers, including King's widow Coretta Scott King and other family members, to honor King and to support the Memphis sanitation workers . Eight days later, the city and the workers reached a settlement of the sixty-five day strike.
On 9 April, King's funeral took place in Atlanta at Ebenezer Baptist Church, the church where King served as co-pastor along with his father and brother. Many of the nation's political and civil rights leaders, including Jacqueline Kennedy, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, numerous senators, all of the presidential hopefuls, and U.N. Undersecretary Ralph Bunche, attended. Thousands blocked the streets outside, while others watched the nationally televised broadcast.
Later, two Georgia mules pulled King's coffin on a three-and-a-half-mile course through the Atlanta streets. More than 100,000 mourners followed. King's body was interred at Southview Cemetery following a funeral at Morehouse College, where King had studied twenty years earlier.
Former Morehouse president Benjamin Mays gave King's eulogy. In his closing remarks, Mays shared how King viewed death. "If physical death was the price he had to pay to rid America of prejudice and injustice, nothing could be more redemptive."
Following an international manhunt, white segregationist James Earl Ray was arrested for King's murder on 8 June in London and later extradited to the United States. In a plea bargain, Tennessee prosecutors agreed in March 1969 to forgo seeking the death penalty if Ray pled guilty to murder charges. The circumstances surrounding this decision were later questioned, as Ray recanted his confession soon after being sentenced to a ninety-nine-year prison term and claimed that his attorney had provided inadequate representation. Ray was unsuccessful in his subsequent attempts to reverse his conviction and gain a new trial.
After recanting his guilty plea, Ray consistently maintained his innocence, claiming in his 1992 memoir that he was framed. In 1997, members of King's family publicly supported Ray's appeal for a new trial, and King's son Dexter Scott King proclaimed Ray's innocence. Tennessee authorities nonetheless refused to reopen the case, and Ray died in prison on 23 April 1998. Even after Ray's death, conspiracy allegations continued to surface.