MLK’s Final Speech
MLK Arrives in Memphis for What Will Be His Final Speech
On Wednesday April 3rd, 1968, the community of Memphis Tennessee spent the day under siege by strong winds and violent thunderstorms. After a bomb threat had delayed his flight from Atlanta, Martin Luther King Jr. and his contemporaries from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference checked in at the Lorraine Hotel, in advance of a sanitation worker’s rally at the Mason Temple that night, followed by a planned protest march the following Monday.
Doc, as he was affectionately known to his colleagues, checked into his usual room at the Lorraine—room 306—with his habitual roommate Ralph Abernathy at his side.
Out on the rain-soaked streets, the Memphis Police set up a dragnet around the hotel, doing what they could to protect the famed Nobel laureate and civil rights leader from untold threats by white racists intent on silencing MLK’s message of nonviolent protest.
Injunction and Injustice for Martin Luther King Jr.
Barely installed in room 306, two officers from the Memphis Sheriff’s Department arrived to serve Dr. King with an injunction issued by the Fifth Circuit Court of Tennessee, indicating that next Monday’s planned sanitation worker’s strike had been banned.
Combined with the bomb threat, Doc asked Abernathy and Jesse Jackson to stand in for him at the Mason Temple that night, while he turned in early for some much-needed sleep.
Hours later, Doc awakened to the sound of his hotel room phone, and when he answered it, Abernathy informed him that the over-capacity crowd at the Meson Temple refused to take no for answer regarding a morale-boosting speech by the civil rights legend.
In response, Doc dressed in a suit and cabbed over to the church for what would become his final speech before his life was unjustly ended the following day.
MLK Mountaintop Quotes
Below are some motivational quotes from MLK’s final speech:
“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life – longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.”
“It really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop … I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”
The next day, stealing off with Abernathy for lunch at one of MLK’s favorite fried catfish joints, Doc confessed to his friend that he hadn’t prepared for last night’s monumental speech, but rather he let the holy spirit guide his thoughts and words. Six hours later, while departing the Lorraine Hotel for a planned dinner at a local reverend’s home, Doc received the worst injustice when an assassin’s bullet found its mark.