![]() ![]() The committee’s final report suggested that Ray may have had co-conspirators. Beginning in 1976 the House Select Committee on Assassinations, chaired by Representative Louis Stokes, re-examined the evidence concerning King’s assassination, as well as that of President John F. The circumstances leading to the plea later became a source of controversy, when Ray recanted his confession soon after being sentenced to a 99-year term in prison.ĭuring the years following King’s assassination, doubts about the adequacy of the case against Ray were fueled by revelations of the extensive surveillance of King by the FBI and other government agencies. In a plea bargain, Tennessee prosecutors agreed in March 1969 to forgo seeking the death penalty when Ray pled guilty to murder charges. ![]() On 19 July 1968 Ray was extradited to the United States from Britain to stand trial. The identification of Ray as a suspect led to an international manhunt. FBI agents and police in Memphis produced further evidence that Ray had registered on 4 April at the South Main Street roominghouse and that he had taken a second-floor room near a common bathroom with a view of the Lorraine Motel. Fingerprints uncovered in the apartment matched those of James Earl Ray, a fugitive who had escaped from a Missouri prison in April 1967. The largest investigation in Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) history led its agents to an apartment in Atlanta. Shortly after the assassination, a policeman discovered a bundle containing a 30.06 Remington rifle next door to the boarding house. Eventually, it was moved to a crypt next to the Ebenezer Church at the King Center, an institution founded by King’s widow. After another ceremony on the Morehouse campus, King’s body was initially interred at South-View Cemetery. Over 100,000 mourners followed two mules pulling King’s coffin through the streets of Atlanta. Morehouse College President Benjamin Mays delivered the eulogy, predicting that King “ would probably say that, if death had to come, I am sure there was no greater cause to die for than fighting to get a just wage for garbage collectors ” (Mays, 9 April 1968). It was attended by many of the nation’s political and civil rights leaders, including Jacqueline Kennedy, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, and Ralph Bunche. ![]() King’s funeral service was held the following day in Atlanta at Ebenezer Baptist Church. On 8 April King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, and other family members joined thousands of participants in a march in Memphis honoring King and supporting the sanitation workers. In the following days, public libraries, museums, schools, and businesses were closed, and the Academy Awards ceremony and numerous sporting events were postponed. Johnson called for a national day of mourning to be observed on 7 April. Joseph’s Hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead at 7:05 P.M. Others on the balcony pointed across the street toward the rear of a boarding house on South Main Street where the shot seemed to have originated. SCLC aides rushed to him, and Ralph Abernathy cradled King’s head. An assassin fired a single shot that caused severe wounds to the lower right side of his face. As he prepared to leave the Lorraine Motel for a dinner at the home of Memphis minister Samuel “Billy ” Kyles, King stepped out onto the balcony of room 306 to speak with Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) colleagues standing in the parking area below. King had arrived in Tennessee on Wednesday, 3 April, to prepare for a march the following Monday on behalf of striking Memphis sanitation workers. During King’s funeral a tape recording was played in which King spoke of how he wanted to be remembered after his death: “I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others ” (King, “ Drum Major Instinct, ” 85). James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old escaped fugitive, later confessed to the crime and was sentenced to a 99-year prison term. News of King’s assassination prompted major outbreaks of racial violence, resulting in more than 40 deaths nationwide and extensive property damage in over 100 American cities. on Thursday, 4 April 1968, Martin Luther King was shot dead while standing on a balcony outside his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. ![]()
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