On this day in 1968, the US preacher, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot. His life and legacy is remembered here in pictures.
4 April 1968: Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated
It would be impossible to summarise the influence and power of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s life in this short daily column. The civil rights leader was born in 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia in a racially segregated USA.
Taking inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolent protests, King led civil rights protests across America, rising to prominence for his role in the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott when Rosa Parks refused to give her bus seat to a white woman.
King was the first president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), an African-American civil rights organisation. Through the SCLC, King led more protests and became a national figurehead for the civil rights movement. His role in organising protests in Alabama, a Washington march and the Selma marches, were all crucial moments in the process of the US legislating the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
A controversial figure among white America, he was jailed multiple times and was the subject of national surveillance by the FBI, NSA and CIA on orders of multiple US presidents. On this day in 1968, King was fatally shot, aged 39.
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a life in pictures.