58 years ago: Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow

Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity

Shackles for Adults & Children from the Henrietta Marie

Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage

What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829

Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

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April 4, 2026

by Walter Einenkel, Daily Kos

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. hugs his wife Coretta during a news conference following the announcement that he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Oct. 14, 1964. (Bettmann Archive)

On April 4, 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was supporting striking sanitation workers. The night before, King delivered what would be his final speech at Mason Temple.

King left behind a powerful legacy, in no small part due to his impactful speeches. At the end of the Selma to Montgomery marches, organized to demand voting rights for Black Americans, King delivered one of his many speeches on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol.

Today, in the face of current right-wing white supremacy and fascism, the dream that King shared during the 1963 March on Washington remains one of the shining moments in U.S. history.

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