Dr. Gary S. Smith
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Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.
Fifty years ago, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed when he stepped from his second-floor hotel room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, to speak to Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) colleagues standing in the parking lot below. An assassin’s bullet ended the life of the 39-year-old activist who had helped advance the cause of African-American rights more in 14 years than it had progressed in the previous 350 years.