On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the balcony in front of Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel, discussing that evening's sanitation strike meeting with aides and requesting that his favorite spiritual, “Precious Lord,” be played that night. At 6:01 p.m., a bullet crossed Mulberry Street, and official investigations concluded that the shot that struck King was fired from a window in the boarding house behind the motel. He was rushed to St. Joseph Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. As black Memphians learned of his death, they grieved together and honored him at the Lorraine Motel. After King's death, the motel's business declined and the building went into foreclosure, but in 1982 local black community leaders saved it from destruction and worked to transform the site into the National Civil Rights Museum. The motel now serves as a place to remember King's life and legacy and to examine the civil rights movement that brought him to national prominence and changed America, while Legacy exhibits in the buildings across the street explore how his vision and the vision of thousands of others live on.
