On the evening of April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. stood before roughly 2,000 people at the Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. He delivered what would later be called the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech — a powerful address that seemed, to many who heard it, almost prophetic. King spoke about threats on his life and said he was not afraid of death. Less than 24 hours later, he was dead.
King had come to Memphis in support of the city’s striking sanitation workers, a labor dispute that had drawn national attention. He was staying at the Lorraine Motel, a two-story establishment that was a common stop for Black travelers in the segregated South. On April 4, 1968, King stepped out onto the second-floor balcony of the motel just after 6 p.m. He was accompanied by close friends and fellow civil rights leaders, including Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson.
At 6:01 p.m., a single rifle shot rang out. The bullet struck King in the right jaw, passed through his neck, and severed his spinal cord. He collapsed immediately onto the balcony floor. His aides rushed to him. In the frantic seconds that followed, several of them turned toward the direction the shot had come from — a rooming house across the street called Bessie Brewer’s — and pointed. That moment was captured on film.
The photographer who captured these images was Joseph Louw, a South African documentary filmmaker who had been working on a film about King. Louw was staying just three doors down from King’s room when he heard the shot. He grabbed his camera and ran. “It was just a matter of realizing the horror of the thing,” he later told Life magazine. “Then I knew I must record it for the world to see.” He shot four rolls of film that night. One photograph — the image of King’s comrades pointing toward the source of the gunshot — became one of the most recognized images in American history.
Ralph Abernathy, King’s closest friend, was among the first to kneel beside him. A small white motel towel was pressed against the wound in King’s jaw. Those around him were visibly shaken. Police arrived on the balcony within minutes, but there was little they could do. King was alive but unconscious and bleeding severely.
King’s aides did everything they could in those desperate minutes on the balcony. Andrew Young, a preacher and close colleague, crouched beside King along with Abernathy and others. Paramedics arrived and worked quickly to get King onto a stretcher. The photographs from this period show the raw, unfiltered panic of the scene — blood on an officer’s hand, men straining to lift a stretcher, faces tight with shock and grief.
King was rushed to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Memphis, where doctors worked to save him. He was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. — one hour and four minutes after the bullet struck him. Back at the Lorraine Motel, the balcony where he had stood moments before was now a crime scene.
As emergency workers cleared the scene, bystanders scattered across the streets surrounding the motel in search of the shooter. The gunshot had come from a bathroom window in Bessie Brewer’s rooming house, directly across from the Lorraine Motel. The shooter had fled, leaving behind a rifle and a bundle of belongings. Witnesses ran through the area in confusion, not yet knowing who had fired or where they had gone.
Later that same night, Life photographer Henry Groskinsky and writer Mike Silva arrived at the Lorraine Motel to document the aftermath. Groskinsky photographed the motel grounds, the balcony, and the interior of King’s room. He also entered an abandoned building across from the motel — likely near the same vantage point the shooter had used — to photograph the scene from that angle. “It was a little scary crawling into the building,” Groskinsky later recalled, “because who knew who was going to be there? The atmosphere was very dark, very creepy.”
Outside room 306 — King’s room — Theatrice Bailey, the brother of the Lorraine Motel’s owner, cleaned blood from the balcony floor. Groskinsky documented this too. “There was no friction with the people there at the Lorraine,” he recalled, “even though here was this white man with a camera on the scene.” The balcony, still stained with King’s blood, was photographed in detail.
Inside King’s room, Groskinsky photographed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference members who had gathered there in silence. Andrew Young sat under a lamp on the far left. Ralph Abernathy sat on a bed in the center of the room. Groskinsky later said he was deliberate about being quiet and unobtrusive: “I shot just enough to document what was going on.” In one photo, his own reflection appears faintly in a mirror on the wall. King’s neatly packed briefcase sat nearby, monogrammed and undisturbed — his brush, pajamas, a can of shaving cream, and a copy of his book, Strength to Love, still tucked in the pocket.
The next day, a U.S. government aircraft arrived at Memphis airport to transport King’s body back to Atlanta, Georgia. As preparations were made to return King home, the streets of Memphis — and cities across the country — erupted. Riots broke out in more than 100 American cities in the days following the assassination. In Chicago alone, 11 people died, thousands were left homeless, and property damage exceeded $10 million. In Washington, D.C., 1,000 people were injured and 6,000 were arrested. Around 3,000 National Guard troops were deployed in Chicago to contain the violence.
Jesse Jackson, who had been with King on the balcony the evening before and had watched him deliver what Jackson later called “the most brilliant speech of his life,” flew back to Chicago after the assassination. He was photographed at O’Hare Airport the following morning, April 5, reading the Chicago Daily Defender, searching for details about what had happened to his friend and leader.
On April 8 — four days after the shooting — women at the Abe Schrader clothing shop in New York City paused their work to listen to King’s funeral service on a portable radio. The same day, the March on Memphis that King had planned to lead for the city’s striking sanitation workers went forward. His widow, Coretta Scott King, led it in his place.
James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old escaped convict from Missouri, was identified as the shooter. He had checked into Bessie Brewer’s rooming house under a false name on April 4, selected a bathroom with a direct line of sight to the Lorraine Motel’s balcony, and fled immediately after firing. He was arrested two months later at London’s Heathrow Airport on June 8, 1968, while attempting to travel to a white-ruled African country using a fake Canadian passport. Ray confessed to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison — later adjusted to life imprisonment. He died in prison in 1998 at the age of 70. Ray later recanted his confession and claimed others were involved in the plot, a claim that members of the King family came to believe.
Wow, I never really considered the details of this until now.
The photos were shocking. I’d never seen most of them until now. Excellent post.
A museum was built nearby where he was killed, and I’ve been there. The hotel room is exactly as he left it; it’s absurd
I learned so much. Thank you for posting.