John Pazdan

When Martin Luther King was assassinated 40 years ago, only one US city was spared the riots that followed. Ed Vulliamy tells the extraordinary story of a James Brown gig that changed history

That ugly thing of vile violence - the assassin’s bullet which struck down Martin Luther King - did more than kill a visionary man of peace on the night of 4 April 1968, on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. King was in town to support a strike by garbage workers; his trip had already been haunted by death threats, and although they were hardly the first, the 39-year-old Baptist minister and activist eerily predicted his own end, proclaiming to his audience: ‘And then I got to Memphis. And some began to … talk about the threats that were out … What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers … But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land! I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.’

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