Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
April 1968 murder in Memphis, Tennessee, U.S
On April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST, Martin Luther King Jr., an American civil rights activist, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead with mortal injuries at 7:05 p.m. at age 39.
The assassin, James Earl Ray, an escaped convict from the Missouri State Penitentiary, was arrested on June 8, 1968, at London's Heathrow Airport, extradited to the United States and charged with the crime. On March 10, 1969, Ray pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in the Tennessee State Penitentiary. He later made many attempts to withdraw his guilty plea and to be tried by a jury, but was unsuccessful, before he died in 1998.
The King family and others believe that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy involving the U.S. government, the Mafia, and Memphis police, as alleged by Loyd Jowers in 1993. They believe that Ray was a scapegoat.
“Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.” enters the record as april 1968 murder in Memphis, Tennessee, U.S. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Assassination, Martin and Luther can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q757963. Authority coordinates are 35.135, -90.058. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1968, 1969, 1998 and 1993.
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