April 3, 1968: King's Last Night

A tornado warning was in effect for Memphis on the evening of April third, nineteen sixty-eight. A storm was breaking over the city when Ralph Abernathy called Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel and told him that despite the weather, the crowd at Mason Temple had filled the hall. They had come to hear King. King had not planned to speak that night. He sent Abernathy instead, then changed his mind and drove to the temple.

What he delivered was later called the "Mountaintop" speech. He spoke for forty-three minutes. He talked about the sanitation workers on strike and the movement's long history, from ancient Egypt to Greece to the American South. Near the end, he said he had been to the mountaintop and had seen the promised land. He said he might not get there with the audience, but he was not afraid. He said longevity had its place, and he did not mind. The audience, which had spent the evening in a downpour to be there, heard something they could not entirely name.

The next day, April fourth, King remained at the Lorraine Motel. Room three hundred six on the second floor was where he stayed. At six oh one in the evening, he stepped out onto the balcony to speak to the musicians and colleagues gathered in the courtyard below. He was shot once, at six oh one, by a sniper positioned in a rooming house across Mulberry Street. He was pronounced dead at Saint Joseph's Hospital at seven oh five.

James Earl Ray, a fugitive escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary, was captured two months later at London's Heathrow Airport. He pleaded guilty in nineteen sixty-nine and received a ninety-nine-year sentence. He died in prison in nineteen ninety-eight. The rifle used to kill King was traced to a Birmingham sporting goods store. Ray had purchased it under a false name.

The Lorraine Motel operated as a Black-owned hotel through the Jim Crow era, one of the few Memphis establishments that accepted Black guests. It was a community institution before it became a memorial. The National Civil Rights Museum opened there in nineteen ninety-one. Room three hundred six is preserved as it was on April fourth, nineteen sixty-eight: two twin beds, the curtains drawn, the balcony railing where he stood still visible from Mulberry Street.