By April 3, 1968 Nobel Laureate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a marked man and he knew it.  On March 18th he had come to Memphis to address the striking workers.  Now he was returning to prove he could lead a peaceful march in support of striking sanitation workers.  The first attempt, on March 28th had failed as some in the crowd, either young extremists or people planted in the crowd purposely, began to break windows and loot stores.  This was the trigger for Memphis Police to dive into the crowd once again waving batons and spraying mace.  One young marcher was shot and killed.  The next march was planned for April 8th.

King, who was the youngest ever winner of the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 35 now hoped to lead a "poor people's" march on Washington, D.C.. He felt strongly that he had to prove here in Memphis that the march could be controlled as many other marches had been.  On the night of April 3rd a weary King addressed a small crowd at Mason Temple.  The crowd was relatively small due to the stormy weather.  At one point the wind blew open a shutter and Dr. King was noticably shocked and startled.  In the first Memphis march he had shown signs that he expected sniper fire.

On this particular night there was no sniper.  As Dr. King began to speak to the assembly he began with a forthright statement of how his life had become.  He told of his plane to Memphis being searched for bombs.  In this speech, known widely as the the "Mountain Top Speech", Dr. King foretold of his own death.  At the time it seemed prophetic.  In retrospect it was sadly inevitable.  It is possible that no other man since Socrates has ever waxed so poetic on the eve of his own death.  King let it be known that he was not going out of life backwards and that he was grateful to God for allowing him a vision of the future of his people.

Since his arrival in Memphis Dr. King and company had lodged at the Lorraine Motel, with Dr. King occupying room 306.  Astonishingly several Memphis radio stations announced his room number on the air.  The plan for the evening was for the entire group to have dinner with Memphis pastor Billy Kyles.  The entire entourage, which included Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Rev. Kyles, James Bevel, attorney Chauncey Eskridge, Jesse Jackson, Hosea Williams, Andrew Young, and  Solomon Jones, Jr. who was aiding in transportation of the group.

 

At about 6:00 P.M. the group was leaving the Motel on the way to dinner.  According to Rev. Kyles he advised Dr. King to bring along an overcoat.  Dr. King said "Okay" and was never heard to say another word.  Having ascended the steps a bullet from a high-powered (30.06) rifle entered through his jaw and severed his spinal cord.  It is unlikely that he felt pain.  The rest of the group took a moment to actually understand what had happened.

Officially the shot was fired at 6:01 PM.  Dr. King's friends and associates had him at St. Joseph's Hospital within 15 minutes.  One female police officer tried to stop the bleeding with a towel while Rev. Abernathy tried to console an unconscious Martin.  Emergency surgery was performed, but the damage of such a bullet was profound.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was pronounced dead at 7:05 PM Central Standard Time.

The outpouring of grief was enormous and impossible to describe.  Violent outrage was given its head in a number of cities including Memphis.  Detroit and Chicago saw tremendous damage and personal suffering.  Dr. King's widow came to Memphis days later to lead a peaceful march in support of the sanitation workers.  Sadly it took another week and intervention by President Johnson for the Memphis City Government to come to an agreement with sanitation workers.

Kyles was just a couple steps down the stairs and Abernathy was still inside the motel room when the shot rang out. Some of the men initially thought it a car backfire, but others realized it was a rifle shot. King had fallen to the concrete floor of the balcony with a large, gaping wound covering his right jaw.

The doctors tried emergency surgery but the wound was too serious. Martin Luther King, Jr. was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. He was 39 years old.

Then again the $50K hit theory does not do much to explain why Ray tried to rob a bank within weeks of arriving in London.  One of the most intriguing theories is that the CIA set Ray up and paid him to carry out the hit.  The reason would not have been Civil Rights or the Poor Peoples campaign, it would have been Viet Nam.  Dr. King had come out against the war pointing out that not only did a disproportionate amount of young black men died in the war, but the poor in general.  There are two things that make this "conspiracy theory" float to the top:

1. The only other prominent American to be assassinated in 1968 was Robert Kennedy.  Kennedy was running for president primarily on an anti-war platform.  He was only murdered after his victory in the California primary.  That said out loud that there was not just "some nut" out there gunning for Kennedy, there was someone who did not want him to be president.  In fairness, certain segments of organized crime also did not want to see him repeat the crusade he had begun while Attorney General.

2. Dr. King had a number of people who wanted him dead.  The FBI probably wanted it least.  King, at this point, was no longer a domestic threat.  He preached non-violence and was turning his attention away from Civil Rights and more toward the "Poor People's Campaign".  The Federal Government could have paid lip service to this campaign for many years without doing a thing.  What the government, especially the CIA (Viet Nam was always called, "the CIA's War) was for King to draw the attention of poor blacks to the death machines of Viet Nam.

Against the advice of his friends and colleagues Dr. King made a speech against the Viet Nam war.  He made that speech on April 4, 1967, a year to the day before his murder.