On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed by an assassin's bullet while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where he had been staying while supporting the city's striking sanitation workers. Frustrated by unfair treatment and low wages, the workers had gone on strike in early 1968, and local clergy asked King for support as he and his staff were also planning the Poor People's Campaign to draw attention to poverty and economic justice. Because the strike's goals mirrored those of that campaign, King came to Memphis several times, and the Lorraine Motel became a center of activity for civil and human rights work during his final hours. Founded in 1991, the National Civil Rights Museum preserves the Lorraine, a motel established by African American proprietors Walter and Lorree Bailey in the segregated South to welcome black travelers and long known for its closeness to Beale Street, its home cooking, and its appeal to musicians including Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Steve Cropper, and Otis Redding. Investigators concluded that the shot was fired from the boarding house next to the Young and Morrow Building, and today those buildings examine the manhunt, the assassin's arrest, investigations into the killing, and the wider impact of the civil rights movement on Memphis, the nation, and the world. The motel grounds and surrounding landscape remain much as they were in 1968, when Memphis police watched King's activities from Firehouse No. 2.
