The Worst Week

King was still preaching nonviolence, but in the feverish atmosphere of 1968, his brave benevolence was hard to sustain. King had been down, slightly adrift, as the black-power movement became angrier and more militant. On Sunday, March 31—the day LBJ announced he would not run—King had given a moving sermon at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Having won the battle against Jim Crow and legal segregation, he was now urging his people to struggle against the even-harder targets of poverty and violence. He had told a packed cathedral that mankind must face a moral reckoning. "One day we will have to stand before the God of history, and we will talk of things we've done," King said. "Yes, we will be able to say we have built gargantuan bridges to span the seas. We built gigantic buildings to kiss the skies … It seems to me I can hear the God of history saying, 'That was not enough! But I was hungry and ye fed me not. I was naked and ye clothed me not …' "

The week before, a march for the striking sanitation workers in Memphis had turned violent, leaving a 16-year-old boy dead. Waiting for King that afternoon in Memphis when he finally arrived at room 306 of the Lorraine Motel was a delegation from the Invaders, a local youth gang that postured with black-power slogans and paramilitary swagger. The Invaders wanted King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference to give them $200,000 to start a "Liberation School" that would teach guerrilla warfare and martial arts. King's aides coolly regarded the Invaders as shakedown artists. According to King's biographer Taylor Branch, one of King's aides, Andrew Young (later mayor of Atlanta and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations), fended off the young hotheads. "How many people did you kill last year?" he asked the Invaders, in a gently mocking tone. Last week? What are you waiting for? Why not try something real in the meantime? He offered to help them write a funding proposal that King might actually endorse. The meeting ended uneasily.

King was scheduled to speak that night at the Mason Temple at the headquarters of the Church of God in Christ, but he begged off, asking his No. 2, Ralph Abernathy, to stand in his place. The night was thunderstormy, with tornado warnings, and the crowd at the enormous Temple auditorium was disappointingly small. From a pay phone in the vestibule, Abernathy implored King to come, to keep faith with the sanitation workers who had turned out on the cold, wet night. King's entrance caused an "eerie bedlam," wrote Branch. "Cheers from the floor echoed around the thousands of empty seats above, and the whole structure rattled from the pounding elements of wind, thunder, and rain." King came to the microphone at about 9:30, just as the storm was cresting, and launched into a rambling, rather unremarkable speech, until he came to the ending. King mentioned the bomb threat on the flight, and added, "but it doesn't matter now." Branch describes what happened next:

"King paused. 'Because I've been to the mountaintop,' he declared in a trembling voice. Cheers and applause erupted. Some people jerked involuntarily to their feet, and others rose slowly like a choir. 'And I don't mind,' he said, trailing off beneath the second and third waves of response. 'Like anybody I would like to live—a long life—longevity has its place.' The whole building suddenly hushed, which let sounds of thunder and rain fall from the roof. 'But I'm not concerned about that now,' said King. 'I just want God's will.' There was a subdued call of 'Yes!' in the crowd. 'And he's allowed me to go to the mountain,' King cried, building intensity. 'And I've looked over. And I have s-e-e-e-e-e-n the promised land'."

King's eyes were brimming now and a trace of a smile crossed his face. "And I may not get there with you," he shouted, "but I want you to know tonight, ['Yes!'] that as a people we will get to the promised land!" By now the crowd was clapping and crying and preachers were closing in behind him. "So I am happy tonight!" King exclaimed, rushing into his close. "I'm not worried about anything! I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!" He broke off and "stumbled sideways into a hug from Abernathy," writes Branch. "The preachers helped him to a chair, some crying, and tumult washed through" the Temple.

The next day, April 4, an escaped convict named James Earl Ray moved into a rooming house at 424? South Main Street. A guest staying next door to Ray noticed that he was taking frequent trips to the toilet. A small window in the bathroom overlooked the Lorraine Motel. A little before 6 p.m., Ray closeted himself in the bathroom and propped a 30.06 rifle on the window ledge.