Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel

On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 99 years in prison; he later recanted his confession and there have been longstanding disputes and conspiracy theories about the assassination. The Lorraine Motel property was preserved and became the National Civil Rights Museum, which opened at that location in 1991. The shooting remains one of the most documented murders in American civil rights history.