What It Was Like The Day Martin Luther King Jr. Died

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination shook the world. Despite the fact that the murder was and remains extremely well-known, we still don't know everything about MLK's death, thanks to several unsolved aspects of the case and the various authorities' attitudes and competence issues in the aftermath. However, after King was shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel during his visit to Memphis, Tennessee, the timeline of events is clear. The public raged and rioted in many cities, leading to over 40 deaths, 3,500 injuries, and an estimated 27,000 arrests. The culprit, James Earl Ray, initially pleaded guilty but later recanted. As a result, King's death has long been the subject of conspiracy theories about government involvement in the assassination.

But how did things play out on the very day King was assassinated? How did the many people King had influenced react in the immediate aftermath of his shooting, and in what ways did the day set up the difficult path ahead? Here's a look at what it was like on the day Martin Luther King Jr. died.

Martin Luther King Jr. arrived in Memphis the day before his death to support a local sanitation workers' strike, which was a part of the larger Poor People's Campaign that he led. Another prominent civil rights leader at the time, Reverend Jesse Jackson, was with King when he died. In an interview with History, Jackson noted that they were supposed to attend a dinner together. However, they were running late, and were just sparring verbally about proper attire and whose fault the delay was when the bullet hit. 

"He said, 'Jesse, you're an hour late,'" Jackson described the events that took place moments before King's death at 6:01 p.m. "I said, 'Doc, you an hour late.' I said, 'We've been waiting for you.' He said, 'You don't even have on a shirt and tie, and we going to Reverend Kyles' home for dinner.' I said, 'Dr. King, the prerequisite for eating is an appetite — not a tie.' He said, 'You're crazy.' We laughed."

It's impossible to say whether King would have lived through April 4, 1968, if they'd left the Lorraine Motel at 5 p.m., as Jackson said they originally meant to. However, it's worth noting that James Earl Ray had already started watching the motel sometime before 6 p.m., so the danger was already present before that time. 

Even in the age of social media and constant access to news outlets, the protests that started after the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis didn't truly start in the city until May 26, and took until May 27 to start in other cities. As such, it's noteworthy just how quickly the crowds reacted after Martin Luther King Jr. died.

In the wake of King's death, The U.S. plunged into disarray with a series of violent incidents known as the King assassination riots. However, what people might not realize is just how quickly this happened in Memphis. King was shot at 6:01 p.m., and signs of rioting started showing that very same day. The government dispatched 4,000 National Guard members to Memphis, but the unrest soon turned out to be nationwide and extremely difficult to contain. Mere hours after the assassination, several cities were dealing with riots which went on to rage for days. At the end of the day, however, Memphis was one of the calmer cities during the riots, despite the fact that King had died there. That's not to say the city didn't see any crowds, though — on the contrary, some 42,000 people attended a silent march in King's remembrance on April 8. 

The people of Washington D.C. learned of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death at around 8 p.m., and tempers boiled over almost immediately. Apart from the tensions that were gripping the country, the city's poorer, predominantly Black neighborhoods were already on a state of alert after a recent altercation. After the radio started spreading the news, furious people started taking to the streets. King's friend Stokely Carmichael – an activist who was at the scene and led a large crowd in the early stages of the events — soon saw the situation escalate into an uncontainable riot. 

Looting, violence, and arson ran rampant well before midnight, and first responders were hopelessly outnumbered. The following days were pure chaos, with rioters — some of them armed — causing chaos, with everyone from the Secret Service to firefighters trying to do their jobs in the difficult conditions. By the time the fires went out and the dust settled, entire city blocks were destroyed and 7,600 people had been arrested. The estimated material damage of the D.C. riots was well over $200 million, adjusted for inflation. 

King's death may have been the spark that lit the fires, but as former Washington D.C. councilwoman Charlene Drew Jarvis told The Washington Post, the city's own history of segregating its population fueled the flames. "A lot of it had to do with, 'We've been contained here. We're angry about this. We owe nothing to people who have confined us,'" she said.  

When the news of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death reached New York City on the evening of April 4, 1968, Mayor John Lindsay feared rioting and made a beeline to Harlem to meet the people. Lindsay told journalists the following day that the general mood in the area was that of despair, saying, "I most certainly found the mood in New York City during my tours last night to be one of great grief, emotion, very deep emotion, with people weeping, and frustrated and lonely. And terribly lost and let down."

Lindsay's decision to get personally involved played a role in preventing major riots in New York, which was a very legitimate threat considering the city's history of civil unrest in recent years. He had a policy of communicating with Black community leaders of all sorts, and had a better standing among them than a politician could usually dream of.

By spending much of the night walking in Harlem, he was able to personally talk to people and express regret for what had happened. He made sure that the police presence didn't create too much tension, discussed matters with notable neighborhood figures, and did whatever he could to ease people's minds. In the end, the city did see some trouble — but only a small fraction of what was going on in Washington D.C., with only 12 arrests made. 

The people of Michigan remembered Martin Luther King Jr. fondly for his recent visits to Detroit and Grosse Pointe, so when the news of his death reached the state, a crowd started gathering before the day ended. However, since Detroit's two biggest newspapers were temporarily out of commission due to a strike, the events had difficulty making headlines in the big papers. As such, a smaller paper, The Windsor Star, followed Detroit's events and pieced together what it could. 

Things didn't get truly unruly in Detroit's 12th Street area until after midnight, although one young person died during the events. Still, compared to the riot that took place in the same area a year before King's death, things stayed relatively calm. The 1967 Detroit riots erupted amidst high tensions in the city when the police raided an illegal club late at night. The unrest this caused created a domino effect and became a giant four-day riot that killed 43 people and burned down almost 1,400 buildings. It's still considered one of the worst riots in the country's history, and many of the buildings it destroyed remained in ruins. In fact, this particular incident had caused much strife to King, as it and other recent events contributed to the civil rights leader's decision to travel to Memphis — where he was killed — in 1968.