Martin Luther King’s perception 50 years on. Know his beliefs, last days and assassination
- I would dare say, “You are living under a rock” if you haven’t at least heard the name Martin Luther King, he is one of the most active civil rights leaders who was assassinated 50 years ago.
And April 4th marks the day he was martyred in 1968.
King’s Beliefs
In his active years- King was prophetic about America’s 3 evils- racism, militarism, and economic exploitation. He tried and to some extent abolished these evils in ways no other thought was possible. He believed in change, change for good, and for all humans to be equal, irrelevant of economic class, race, and power.
The “I have a dream” finale of his speech at the March on Washington in 1963 catapulted him to legendary heights.
“Do you know that a lot of the race problem grows out of the drum major instinct? A need that some people have to feel superior. A need that some people have to feel that they are first, and to feel that their white skin ordained them to be first.”
Martin’s Last days
His last speech was at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. Hundreds of people were filling in to hear King speak. There was a strike carried out by Memphis sanitation workers demanding a pay rise as black Americans were very much less paid in comparison to White Americans,
“Again we have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that Capitalism grew and prospered out of the Protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, both here and abroad.”
He had arrived an hour and a half late. Martin greeted his audience and praised them for braving the storm. He had imagined and spoken if the lord had transferred him to older times, he would visit Egypt, classical Greece, the Roman Empire, the Renaissance, the Christian Reformation under his namesake Martin Luther, and Lincoln’s signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Then he moved on to the then-current situation in Memphis. He shared about the time in 1958 when he was stabbed by a crazed African American woman, nearly missing a fraction of an inch from his aorta. Luckily the knife was removed by surgery.
He often talked about his fear of dying a violent death. And during his last speech he had feared that he might be the target of an assassin’s bullet at any moment.
The assassination
After the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, King told his wife Coretta that same would happen to him.
“This is what is going to happen to me also. I keep telling you, this is a sick society.”
On Thursday, April 4, 1968, King was sitting in room no. 306 at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. In the evening, he had gone out onto the balcony. He was shot at 6:01 pm by a single bullet.
King still had a pulse. The bullet had entered through his right cheek, breaking his jaw, and several vertebrae severed his jugular vein, and major arteries, and lodged in his shoulders.
A friend had heard the shot and ran to the balcony to find King unconscious. King was rushed to the hospital where doctors operated on him but were unsuccessful.
King was died at 7:05 pm.
Manhunt
The nationwide manhunt started. On the night of King’s assassination, witnesses saw a man fleeing from the rented room across the street from the Lorraine Motel. The suspect was James Earl Ray. Police also found the package dumped close to the site, which included a rifle and binoculars, both with Ray’s fingerprints. Two months later cops arrested James at London’s Heathrow Airport.
Punishment
The assassin pled guilty to the judge and received 99 years in jail. James died in prison on April 23, 1998, at the age of 70.
Although Martin Luther King is no more with us, we still remember him and his teachings. He has been an image of freedom, equality, and equity not only for African Americans but for humans and humanity as well.
Short Bio on Martin Luther King
Martin Luther King (born: Martin Luther King Jr.) was a human rights activist. Moreover, he fought his whole life to eradicate the racial discrimination that existed in the U.S. Mostly; he stood for African American civil rights equity. More Bio…
