Dr. Martin Luther King, the Negro apostle of non-violence and racial amity, was felled by an assassin’s bullet early last night [April 4] in Memphis city in the Southern State of Tennessee. Shot while he was standing on a balcony outside the door of his hotel room, Dr. King was rushed to hospital unconscious, and bleeding from a huge neck wound. Emergency surgery proved of no avail, and the 39-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner, who is acknowledged to be the greatest leader the civil rights movement has known, joined the ranks of martyrs like Mahatma Gandhi, whose teachings he had imbibed and practised. Like Mr. John Kennedy, who also was killed in a southern city, Dr. King was the victim of a distant sniper armed with a rifle fitted with a telescopic sight. Dr. King’s assassin has not so far been caught, though Memphis was teeming with policemen at the time Dr. King was killed. The police and the F.B.I. who have been thrown into the man-hunt, were still reported to be looking for a well-dressed young white man, who was seen racing away from the scene in a sports car. In a nation already tensing for another summer of racial turmoil Dr. King’s murder had the impact of a sledge-hammer. Sensing the extent of the tragedy and its consequences, President Johnson went on Television soon after the death was announced, and led the nation in mourning for a great American. The President, who was to have left last night for Honolulu in his attempts to bring about an end to the Viet Nam war, postponed his trip as riots followed Dr. King’s murder. Across the country, the assassination of Dr. King was received with dismay, shame, anger and foreboding. National leaders, both black and white, appealed for restraint pleading that the greatest tribute the bereaved could pay to Dr. King’s memory was to follow the non-violence path which Dr. King had lived by. But some Negroes were not inclined to listen to this, and disorders and disturbances were reported from several cities, including Memphis, where the National Guard was called out.
