Martin Luther King Jr., a man who embodied the U.S. civil rights movement, was assassinated more than 50 years ago on April 4, 1968.
King rose to prominence in the mid-1950s when as a young preacher he organized protests against segregation in the struggle for Black equality and voting rights.
King understood a key to success for the civil rights movement was a strategy of nonviolent protests, which he championed as an alternative to armed uprising. King has said he was inspired by the teachings of Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi.
King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech launched what had been a mostly Black Southern movement into a nationwide civil rights campaign. By August 1963, the push for equality had grown significantly across the country, and 250,000 people, Black and white, traveled to the nation’s capital to participate in the March on Washington.
The civil rights movement came to a crescendo in 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act outlawing racial segregation in public places and King won the Nobel Peace Prize.
On April 4, 1968, a single gunshot killed King on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray, a segregationist, pleaded guilty to shooting King and spent the rest of his life in prison.
King, who was 39 when he died, gave a speech the night before his death that foreshadowed his assassination. “And I have seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get there,” he said.
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