Martin Luther King's funeral: Laying an American saint to rest

Coretta Scott King, wife of Martin Luther King, Jr., and family sit in a pew during the first of two funeral services held on April 9, 1968, in Atlanta, Georgia. The first was for family, close friends and other invitees at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King and his father served as senior pastors. There followed a 3-mile procession to Morehouse College, King's alma mater, for a public service.

King's brother, Alfred D. King, breaks down during the funeral at Ebenezer Baptist Church. The church was filled with hundreds of people, including labor leaders, foreign dignitaries, entertainment and sports figures and leaders from numerous religious faiths. The service began with Rev. Ralph Abernathy delivering a sermon which called King's death "one of the darkest hours of mankind."

Coretta Scott and her children view King's casket. Following the assassination, news of the murder sent shockwaves through African-American communities in a number of cities, resulting in deadly riots between the day of the murder and the day of the funeral. President Lyndon B. Johnson declared a national day of mourning for the lost civil rights leader on April 7.

King lies in repose in his casket. He died from a gunshot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was supporting a strike by local sanitation workers. "The bullet knocked him out of his shoes," says Andrew Young, one of King's closest aides. "I saw the bullet had entered the tip of his chin and went straight to his spinal cord. He probably never heard or felt the shot."

Mourners file past King's casket. At his widow's request, a recording of his "Drum Major" sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, given on February 4, 1968, was played. In the sermon he asks that at his funeral no mention of his awards and honors be made, but that it be said that he tried to "feed the hungry," "clothe the naked," "be right on the [Vietnam] war question," and "love and serve humanity."

The procession from Ebenezer Baptist Church to Morehouse College was observed by over 100,000 people. The silence was occasionally broken by the singing of freedom songs that were sung during marches in which King participated. At the open-air service at the college, as per King's request, his good friend Mahalia Jackson sang his favorite hymn, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord."

"I'm realistic enough to know that I can meet a violent end," King said before his death. "I live every day with the threat of death. But I don't think the important thing is how long you live but how well you live, and I'm not concerned about my longevity or the quantity of my life but the quality of my life."

Beside Coretta Scott King weeps Harry Belafonte, the American singer, actor and social activist. Following the public service, King's casket was taken by hearse to his final burial place at South View Cemetery. "I still believe we can build a society of brotherhood and a society of peace," King said before receiving his Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. "Deep in my heart I do believe we shall overcome."

A bewildered Reverend Jesse Jackson, the American civil rights activist and politician, beside King's graveside. "Along with Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King has assumed something approaching Founding Father status in American history," says Ben Wright at the Briscoe Center for American History, which houses Flip Schulke's photographic archive.