Funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The first memorial service following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968, took place the following day at the R.S. Lewis Funeral Home in Memphis, Tennessee. This was followed by two funeral services on April 9, 1968, in Atlanta, Georgia, the first held for family and close friends at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King and his father had both served as senior pastors, followed by a three-mile procession to Morehouse College, King's alma mater, for a public service.

President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national day of mourning for the lost civil rights leader on April 7.

Martin Luther King Jr., a civil rights activist, Baptist preacher, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was assassinated on April 4, 1968, by a gunshot wound to the right side of his jaw, neck and shoulder in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had been leading a strike of waste management workers. The news of the murder sent shockwaves of emotion in many African American communities in a number of cities, resulting in deadly riots between the day of the murder and the day of the funeral.

A state funeral or lying in state was refused to King by then-governor of Georgia Lester Maddox, who had considered King an "enemy of the country" and had stationed 64 riot-helmeted state troopers at the steps of the state capitol in Atlanta to protect state property. He also initially refused to allow the state flag to be lowered at half-mast, but was compelled to do so when told that the lowering was a federal mandate.

There were concerns that U.S. president Lyndon Johnson might be the subject of protests, over the conduct of the war in Vietnam, which would disrupt the funeral. Vice President Hubert Humphrey attended on his behalf.

After the shooting, King was taken by ambulance to the emergency room at St. Joseph's Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 7:05 p.m. King's closest aides contacted Robert Lewis Jr.—a local funeral director who had coincidentally met King two days prior—to retrieve his body and prepare it for viewing.

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