Your gaze meets Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, the balcony where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot on April 4, 1968. He had come to Memphis to support the sanitation workers' strike and was scheduled to lead another march the following day. He stepped onto the balcony to speak with colleagues in the parking lot below — Jesse Jackson, Ralph Abernathy, and others.
A single rifle shot fired from a rooming house across the street struck him in the jaw and neck. He was pronounced dead at St. Joseph's Hospital at 7:05 p.m. He was thirty-nine years old.
The city of Memphis erupted in grief and then in rage. President Lyndon Johnson went on national television to plead for calm. Cities across America burned.
The wreath on the balcony marks the exact spot where he fell. The Lorraine Motel has been preserved as part of the National Civil Rights Museum. Room 306 is visible exactly as it was that day — the same bedspread, the same ashtray, the same half-eaten meal on the table.
History is always closer than we think.