Window from which Shot was Fired at King

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, shocked the nation and was a defining event for the civil rights movement. This press photograph was taken three days after the shooting, from the room in a boarding house where James Earl Ray aimed his gun at King as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. Unlike most newspaper images related to the event—including undoctored pictures of the immediate aftermath of the assassination, the mourning, and the riots that followed—this photograph has been heavily overpainted to produce an eerily dramatic image from the killer’s point of view.