For Xernona Clayton, standing over Martin Luther King Jr.’s body as it lay in a casket inside Spelman College’s Sisters Chapel, the feeling was unreal. Looking at her friend, she noticed a “big blob on his right cheek. Red like the red clay of Georgia. It was pretty unsightly.” Her mind flashed back to just three months earlier when she planned a rousing surprise party for King to celebrate his 39th birthday. She thought about how exhausted she was after trudging, without a cent to her name, to a local dress shop to secure dresses for Coretta Scott King to wear at her husband’s funeral. But Cl ..read more

Martin Luther King III had to grow up fast. Maybe too fast. He was 10 years old when his father, Martin Luther King Jr., was murdered on April 4, 1968. At such a young age, the eldest son of the civil rights icon was forced to break away from his shy and inward personality to take on the role of the man of the house. In this 2008 interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, King III gave insight into the King household after the tragic death of the family patriarch. Their family was, according to King III, no different from any other American family with the now-immediate challenges of bei ..read more

When the whole world wanted the story, it was up to Kathryn Johnson to tell them. “How was Coretta?” “When is the funeral?” “Who has visited the family?” In the hours and days following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Johnson, a veteran reporter for the Associated Press, was the only journalist allowed in the home of Coretta Scott King to tell the family’s story. That was the bond and trust she had established with the King family through her coverage of the Civil Rights Movement and her relationship with Coretta Scott King. The legendary reporter, who died in 2019, talked to The ..read more

Christine King Farris couldn’t force herself to get off the plane. Who could blame her really? The older sister of Martin Luther King Jr. had rushed to Memphis to retrieve the body of her brother after he had been gunned down a day earlier on April 4, 1968. She didn’t want to step foot on the soil where her brother was murdered. In a gripping 2008 interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Farris, the last living King sibling, sat down to talk about the last days of her brother and the immediate impact that his death had on the family. Part of a project marking the then 40th anniversary ..read more

Tyrone Brooks had never driven so fast in his young life. But there he was in the early morning hours of April 5, 1968, racing toward Memphis in a brand-new white Thunderbird. The 22-year-old was determined to reach the city where Martin Luther King Jr. had just been murdered hours earlier on April 4. The Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, who suddenly became the new president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, had summoned all members to Memphis to quickly strategize the next steps for the organization. When Brooks arrived at 2 a.m., Memphis was burning. Abernathy told the distraught B ..read more

Andrew Young was still recovering from the pillow fight. In the early evening hours of April 4, Young walked into Martin Luther King Jr.’s room at the Lorraine Motel. Young, one of King’s key lieutenants had spent all day testifying in federal court to get a restraining order lifted on the march in support of Memphis sanitation workers, who had been on strike since early February. When he walked in the door, King mocked agitation and demanded to know where Young had been all day. Young told him that he was “on the witness stand trying to get you the right to march and keep you out of jail.” Ki ..read more

They were on their way to dinner. In the early evening hours of April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. stepped out onto the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis to gather his troops. Soon, they would be expected at the home of the Rev. Samuel Billy Kyles for dinner. The prominent pastor of Monumental Baptist Church in Memphis, Kyles had helped organize King’s visit to town. But as they gathered, a shot rang out. In this 2008 interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Kyles sat down to talk about King’s last hours and his influence. Part of a news project for the 40th anniversary of Ki ..read more

In 2008, on the 40th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s death, John Lewis was one of 13 people that The Atlanta Journal-Constitution sat down with to record their stories.  We are re-releasing these interviews as a 13-part podcast hosted by Multimedia Journalist Ryon Horne called the Voice of King.   Lewis is synonymous with the Civil Rights Movement. In 1965, during a protest in Selma, Alabama, Lewis became the symbol of the assault in Civil Rights when state troopers attacked peaceful marchers near the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The goal of the march was to bring attention to ..read more

Getting arrested at the age of 6 or 7, was just something COULD HAPPEN, when you’re the child of a civil rights icon. Ralph David Abernathy, III, a former Georgia state senator and namesake son of a civil rights icon, describes in an interview with the AJC in 2008, how intimately close his family was with the King family. Perhaps one of the more emotionally interviews we conducted ten years ago, Abernathy, III, shared the dynamics of the due that made up his father and Dr. King.  Please subscribe to the Voices of King from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Spotify, Apple Podca ..read more

It was humor, in the face of danger and possible death, that stands out the most when Reverend Joseph Lowery remembers his friend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In this episode of “The Voices of King,” Lowery dissects some of King’s sermons that made the civil rights icon a revolutionary leader. Please subscribe to the Voices of King from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,  Stitcher, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are re-released every Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices ..read more