April 1968

Martin Luther King Jr. was shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, at 6:01 PM by James Earl Ray using a Remington rifle. King died at St. Joseph's Hospital. He had come to Memphis to support striking sanitation workers, many of whom were Black. Ray pleaded guilty in 1969 and was sentenced to 99 years.

Martin Luther King Jr. was shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had traveled to support a sanitation workers' strike. He died at St. Joseph's Hospital. James Earl Ray was arrested and convicted. Uprisings erupted in over 100 U.S. cities; 46 people died. The assassination directly accelerated passage of the Fair Housing Act.

President Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act one week after MLK's assassination, banning discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, and (amended in 1974) sex. Congress had blocked the bill three times before; MLK's assassination and nationwide uprisings created the political conditions for passage.

Following Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination on April 4, uprisings erupted in over 100 American cities. In Washington DC, 12 people were killed, over 1,000 injured, and 7,600 arrested over several days. More than 1,200 buildings were burned. President Johnson deployed over 13,000 federal troops and National Guard to the capital.

Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (the Fair Housing Act) prohibited not only discrimination in housing sales and rentals but also in mortgage lending and home insurance — practices known as redlining that had systematically excluded Black Americans from wealth-building homeownership since the 1930s. Enforcement mechanisms were initially weak.

Students from the Student Afro-American Society, led by William Sales, occupied Hamilton Hall at Columbia University to protest the university's plan to build a gym in Morningside Park — a park serving the predominantly Black Harlem community — and Columbia's ties to the Institute for Defense Analyses. The occupation helped spark a broader student rebellion.

King is murdered in Memphis while supporting striking sanitation workers; uprisings follow nationwide.

Passed days after King's death, it bans housing discrimination — though redlining's damage endures.