DR. KING PRONOUNCED DEAD ONE HOUR AFTER BEING SHOT IN MEMPHIS
Memphis, Tennessee (JFK+50) At 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot as he stood on the second-floor balcony outside Room #306 of the Lorraine Motel here in Memphis.
A bullet, fired from a 30-06 Remington Model 760 Gamemaster* rifle, struck Dr. King in the jaw and ranged downward severing his spinal cord. He was pronounced dead at a local hospital about an hour later. MLK was 39 years old.
Dr. King's associates on the scene believed the shot came from the rear of a nearby rooming house. The rifle and other evidence were found nearby.
The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. triggered a series of nationwide riots in more than a hundred cities with deaths and property damage.
Later, James Earl Ray** was charged with the murder, found guilty & sentenced to 99 years in prison.
Robert F. Kennedy, campaigning in Indianapolis, learned of the death of Dr. King and announced it to a crowd of people including many African-Americans. RFK said...
"For those of you who are black and (are) filled with hatred...of the injustice of such an act against all white people, I can feel the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man."
*Remington Model 760 is a pump-action centerfire rifle which uses a detachable box magazine. More than 1 million units were produced from 1952 to 1981
**James Earl Ray (1928-1998) was born in Alton, Illinois the oldest of 9 children. JER joined the US Army at the end of WWII & served in Germany. He served time in prison for armed robbery, mail fraud & theft before being charged with the murder of MLK.
SOURCES
"Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.," Stanford University, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research & Education Institute, www.kinginstitute.stanford.edu/
"Martin Luther King, Jr.: 55 years after his assassination," by Alonso Martinez, April 3, 2023, EL PAIS, www.english.elpais.com/
