Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King, Jr. is Assassinated

April 4, 1968

King speaking to an anti-Vietnam war rally at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul on April 27, 1

Overview

Early on the evening of April 4, a white supremacist sniper shoots and kills Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, in Memphis, Tennessee. The assassination spurs civil disturbances throughout the nation and among American troops in Vietnam.

Since 1966, King has publically advocated for an end to the Vietnam War. He condemns the use of African American troops to “guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia or Harlem.” King’s murder helps bring already present racial tensions to the surface in the military in 1968.¹

¹Martin Luther King, Jr., “Beyond Vietnam,” Address delivered to the Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam at Riverside Church, New York, NY, April 4, 1967, Stanford University, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Global Freedom Struggle (accessed July 15, 2016), http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_beyond_vietnam/ (link is external); James E. Westheider, Fighting on Two Fronts: African Americans and the Vietnam War (New York: New York University Press, 1997); Bernard C. Nalty, Strength for the Fight: A History of Black Americans in the Military (New York: The Free Press, 1986), 294–295, 302–305; Ronald H. Spector, After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 249–251.