4 апр 1968 г. - MLK Jr assasinated

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On April 4, just five days after the unexpected news that a sitting president would not stand for reelection, a career criminal named James Earl Ray shot and killed Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis. King had gone to Memphis to support striking sanitation workers, an act which alongside his 1967 speech against the war in Vietnam signaled the civil rights leader’s recent shift to a broad campaign for social and economic justice — even as he remained rooted in the cause of racial justice. Cities were on edge after four successive summers of violent clashes between black communities and the police, between 1964 and 1967, and the killing of the charismatic King led to the eruption of riots in more than a hundred cities. The worst of them, in Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., saw dozens dead and hundreds of millions of dollars of damage. The violence on the streets eerily paralleled the images of Saigon from the Tet offensive.


e late president, was in Indianapolis on the day of King’s slaying, campaigning for the Indiana Democratic primary election. RFK, as he was known, gave a somber speech to the city’s black community on the evening of April 4, only hours after learning of the murder (Kennedy actually informed many in the unknowing crowd of the assassination, eliciting immediate gasps and tears). Americans could continue to move toward “greater polarization,” Kennedy said, “black people amongst blacks, white amongst whites,” or “we can replace that violence … with an effort to understand, compassion and love.” Kennedy sympathized with African Americans’ outrage at whites, but he begged them not to strike back in retribution. Impromptu and heartfelt, Kennedy’s address reminded America of King’s nonviolent example, even as the national mood grew darker.

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