King Assassinated: Civil Rights Movement Galvanized by Tragedy

James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King Jr. with a Remington 760 rifle from a rooming house bathroom across the street from the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968. King had come to Memphis to support striking sanitation workers. Ray fled the United States using a forged Canadian passport in the name of Ramon George Sneyd and traveled through London and Lisbon before being arrested at London's Heathrow Airport on June 8, 1968, when a customs officer noticed the name on a Scotland Yard watchlist. Ray was extradited to Tennessee, pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty, and received a 99-year sentence. He recanted his guilty plea three days later and spent the rest of his life claiming he was a patsy in a larger conspiracy. The King family publicly supported Ray's efforts to obtain a new trial, believing government agencies were involved. A 1999 civil trial in Memphis found that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy, though the US Department of Justice rejected the finding after its own investigation.