On March 28, a workers’ protest march led by King ended in violence and the death of an African American teenager. He organized a Poor People’s Campaign to focus on the issue, including a march on Washington, and in March 1968 traveled to Memphis in support of poorly treated African-American sanitation workers. In the months before his assassination, Martin Luther King became increasingly concerned with the problem of economic inequality in America.
WATCH: Rise Up: The Movement That Changed America on HISTORY Vault King was pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital.
The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers’ strike and was on his way to dinner when a bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. is fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr.
