Under your feet runs the route of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s final marches through Downtown Memphis in support of the 1968 Sanitation Strike. King had come to Memphis three times in the final weeks of his life, drawn by the moral clarity of the sanitation workers' cause. On March 28, 1968, a planned march turned violent when a group of young militants broke windows along Beale Street, and National Guard troops were called in.
It was the only march in King's career that ended in violence, and it weighed heavily on him. He returned to Memphis on April 3, determined to lead a peaceful march before the April 8 date set for the next attempt. He never led that march.
He was killed on April 4. But on April 8, four days after his assassination, Coretta Scott King and the children led a silent march through these streets with the sanitation workers. No one spoke.
Fifty thousand people walked in silence. The march Dr. King never led became one of the most powerful protests in American history. Stand on this sidewalk and imagine fifty thousand people walking past in silence, their grief and their resolve indistinguishable from each other.