The Assassinations of 1968

🔍 The Assassinations of 1968

1968 was the year that shattered American optimism. Two assassinations within two months decapitated the progressive movement and changed the country's political direction.

Martin Luther King Jr — April 4, 1968

King was in Memphis supporting a sanitation workers' strike — Black workers demanding equal pay and decent conditions. He was planning a Poor People's Campaign to march on Washington and demand economic justice for all poor Americans, regardless of race. This shift from racial to economic justice was King's final evolution — he had come to believe that legal equality meant little without economic equality.

He was shot by James Earl Ray, a white supremacist, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. The riots that followed his death — in over 100 cities — were the most widespread civil unrest in American history. Federal troops were deployed in Washington, Chicago, and Baltimore. The destruction was concentrated in Black neighbourhoods, devastating the very communities King had fought to uplift.

Congress, shaken by the violence, passed the Fair Housing Act (April 11, 1968) — banning racial discrimination in housing sales and rentals. It was the last major piece of civil rights legislation.

Robert F. Kennedy — June 5, 1968

Robert Kennedy (RFK), brother of the assassinated President JFK, was running for the Democratic presidential nomination on a platform of racial justice, ending the Vietnam War, and fighting poverty. He had won the California primary and seemed likely to win the nomination. He was shot by Sirhan Sirhan (a Palestinian-American angry about Kennedy's support for Israel) and died the next day.

RFK's assassination removed the one political leader who might have held together King's coalition of Black activists, white liberals, and working-class voters. His death cleared the path for Richard Nixon's victory in November 1968 — on a very different platform.