ust after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. is fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers’ strike and was on his way to dinner when a bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. King was pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital. He was 39 years old. CLICK FOR MORE at History.com

Walter Cronkite had almost finished broadcasting the “CBS Evening News” when he received word of Martin Luther King’s assassination. His report detailed the shooting and the nation’s reaction to the tragedy. (CBSNews.com)