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(Thursday, April 4, 1968, 6:01 p.m. CST; during the Memphis sanitation strike, part of the African-American civil rights movement (1954–1968)) — Civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr., 39, was fatally shot tonight as he stood on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

King was preparing to go to dinner with his associates and was walking back into his room (Room 306) to get his overcoat when he was struck by a single .30-06 bullet fired from a Remington Model 760 rifle from a boarding house that had a view of the motel.

King fell violently backward onto the balcony, unconscious. The had bullet entered through his right cheek, breaking his jaw and several vertebrae as it traveled down his spinal cord, severing his jugular vein and major arteries in the process, before lodging in his shoulder.

King, who had traveled to Memphis in support of striking African-American city sanitation workers. was rushed to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where doctors opened his chest and performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

King never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m.

Shortly after the shot was fired, witnesses saw a man, later believed to be James Earl Ray, a white man who was a fugitive from the Missouri State Penitentiary, fleeing from the boarding house. Police found a package dumped close to the site, which included a rifle and binoculars, both with Ray’s fingerprints. A worldwide manhunt was soon underway.

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