50 Years Ago - The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. from NBCUniversal Archives

It was April 4, 1968 and Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis, Tennessee, to march with the city's striking sanitation workers. That evening, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed.
 
King, born in Georgia in 1929, had spent more than a decade fighting for civil rights. He was instrumental in the success of the Montgomery bus boycott, the March on Washington, and the march from Selma to Montgomery. His work had been dangerous and grueling. King had almost died from a stab wound, his home had been bombed, and he had been jailed over twenty times though the years. Nevertheless he persisted, and in 1964, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1964 and 1965, he watched President Johnson sign the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts into law.
 

In honor of MLK, NBCUniversal Archives has assembled highlights from his life and his work in the civil rights movement.
To view, download and license this footage, go to: Martin Luther King, Jr. at NBCUniversal Archives.