Dr. Martin Luther King

Now I am not trying to be righteous or proclaim I am a 'big fan' of Dr. King, The truth is that I know nothing about him, really. That said, I do respect him. Tomorrow in 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. Randomly trawling through some bits on the internet I came across some really interesting photo's, nicely shot, actually quite cool, of the aftermath. Here they are.

On April 4, 1968, LIFE photographer Henry Groskinsky and writer Mike Silva, on assignment in Alabama, learned that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. They raced to the scene and there, incredibly, had unfettered access to the hotel grounds, Dr. King's room, and the surrounding area. For reasons that have been lost in the intervening years, the photographs taken that night and the next day were never published. Until now.



Colleagues gather on the balcony outside room 306, just a few feet from where Dr. King was shot. Groskinsky remembers that "the people at the Lorraine were annoyed that the media was talking about how there were going to be all these demonstrations. Eventually there were, but not there. Not that night. It was very quiet. I was afraid that it was going to change."




Stunned, silent members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Dr. King's room, including Andrew Young (far left, under table lamp) and the civil rights leader and King's colleague, Reverend Ralph Abernathy, seated in the middle on the far bed. "I was very discreet. I shot just enough to document what was going on. I didn't want to make a nuisance of myself. And right there, almost in the center of the picture, in the mirror you can see the reflection of me taking the picture. It's very somber, and there I am with a flash camera. So I took a couple of pictures and just kind of backed off."






The building on the left is the abandoned building from which Groskinsky took several of his photographs on the night of April 4; the building on the right is likely the house from which James Earl Ray shot Dr. King. "The atmosphere of those dark, creepy buildings ... It was a little scary crawling into the building, because who knows who is going to be there? Who doesn't want you to be there?"