MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) Fifty years after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, the civil rights leaders family and admirers will mark the anniversary of his death with marches, speeches and quiet reflection today.
The commemorations stretch from his hometown of Atlanta to Memphis, where he died, and points beyond. Among the first events is a march led by the same sanitation workers union whose low pay King had come to protest when he was shot. Another event will kick off about the same time in Atlanta, where Kings daughter the Rev. Bernice A. King is moderating an awards ceremony in his honor.
The Memphis events are scheduled to feature Kings contemporaries, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton and U.S. Rep. John Lewis, along with celebrities such as the rapper Common. In the evening, the Atlanta events culminate with a bell-ringing and wreath-laying at his crypt to mark the moment when he was gunned down on the balcony of the old Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968. He was 39.
Todays events followed a rousing celebration the night before of Kings Ive Been To the Mountaintop speech at Memphis Mason Temple Church of God in Christ. He delivered this speech the night before he was assassinated.
Inside the church, Bernice King called her older brother, Martin Luther King III, to join her in the pulpit, and she discussed the difficulty of publicly mourning their father a man hated during his lifetime, now beloved around the world.
Its important to see two of the children who lost their daddy 50 years ago to an assassins bullet, said Bernice King, now 55. But we kept going. Keep all of us in prayer as we continue the grieving process for a parent that weve had yet to bury.
The anniversary coincides with a resurgence of white supremacy, the continued shootings of unarmed black men and a parade of discouraging statistics on the lack of progress among black Americans on issues from housing to education to wealth.
