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. The identification of Ray as a suspect led to an international manhunt. In a plea bargain, Tennessee prosecutors agreed in March to forgo seeking the death penalty when Ray pled guilty to murder charges.
The circumstances leading to the plea later became a source of controversy, when Ray recanted his confession soon after being sentenced to a year term in prison. Despite this support Tennessee authorities refused to reopen the case, and Ray died in prison on 23 April Carson and Holloran, Mays, Eulogy for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Document Research Requests. The Institute cannot give permission to use or reproduce any of the writings, statements, or images of Martin Luther King, Jr.
The incident only affirmed his belief in non-violence. At p. He was rushed to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead about an hour later, at the age of Amid a wave of national mourning, President Lyndon B. On April 11, Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act , a major piece of civil rights legislation that prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin or sex.
It is considered an important follow-up to the Civil Rights Act of Witnesses had seen him running from a boarding house near the Lorraine Motel carrying a bundle; prosecutors said he fired the fatal bullet from a bathroom in that building. No testimony was heard in his trial.
Shortly afterwards, however, Ray recanted his confession, claiming he was the victim of a conspiracy. Though the U. His murder, like the killing of Malcolm X in , radicalized many moderate African American activists, fueling the growth of the Black Power movement and the Black Panther Party in the late s and early s. King has remained the most widely known African American leader of his era, and the most public face of the civil rights movement , along with its most eloquent voice.
President Lyndon Johnson ordered a national day of mourning on April 7. Ray agreed to a controversial plea bargain, and he was sentenced to 99 years in prison, where he died in At the time of his death, King was trying to organize a protest in Washington against poverty, and he had become outspoken as an opponent of the Vietnam War. A year earlier, King told an audience on April 4, , at a New York City church that he was against the war overseas. Toggle navigation.
Sign up for our email newsletter. Sign Up. King left the city but vowed to return in early April to lead another demonstration. 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. One day after speaking those words, Dr.
King was shot and killed by a sniper. As word of the assassination spread, riots broke out in cities all across the United States and National Guard troops were deployed in Memphis and Washington, D. On April 9, King was laid to rest in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. During the next several weeks, the rifle, eyewitness reports, and fingerprints on the weapon all implicated a single suspect: escaped convict James Earl Ray.
A two-bit criminal, Ray escaped a Missouri prison in April while serving a sentence for a holdup. In May , a massive manhunt for Ray began.
The FBI eventually determined that he had obtained a Canadian passport under a false identity, which at the time was relatively easy. He was trying to fly to Belgium, with the eventual goal, he later admitted, of reaching Rhodesia. Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, was at the time ruled by an oppressive and internationally condemned white minority government.
He was sentenced to 99 years in prison. On April 4, , he said, he realized that he was to be the fall guy for the King assassination and fled to Canada. During the s, the widow and children of Martin Luther King, Jr.
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