Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated this date in 1968, April 4th

Memphis, April 4 — The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., America’s foremost exponent of nonviolence in the struggle for civil rights, was struck down by an assassin’s bullet tonight as he stood on the balcony of his motel here.

King, a 39-year-old Nobel Prize winner, died an hour after he was hit in the neck shortly after 6 p.m. by a single bullet from a Browning automatic rifle fitted with a telescopic sight.

James Earl Ray, King's killer, is apprehended in 1968

Police Director Frank Holloman and Sheriff William Morris said the single bullet that killed King was fired from a second-story window of a flophouse 50 to 100 yards from King’s motel.

They said the window faced the balcony where King was standing when the slayer fired. “He got a straight shot,” Morris said.

“We feel the assassin crouched in a second floor window, sighted through some trees and fired the shot that killed Mr. King,” he added.

Reports tentatively described the slayer as a young white man dressed in dark clothing. Two white youths arrested immediately following the shooting were later released by police.

New York Daily News (Reposted) 

Monday, April 4, 2016, 10:59 a.m.