The Night MLK Was Murdered: A Photographer’s Story
The Night MLK Was Murdered: A Photographer’s Story
Not published in LIFE. Will D. Campbell, alone on the Lorraine Motel balcony, gazes out into the night. "This picture was probably made as soon as we got there," Groskinsky told LIFE.com. "When I saw him standing there, alone, I thought it looked as if he was just asking himself, My God, what has happened here?"Henry Groskinsky—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
On April 4, 1968, LIFE photographer Henry Groskinsky and writer Mike Silva, on assignment in Alabama, learned that Martin Luther King, Jr., had been shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. The two men jumped into their car, raced the 200 miles to the scene of the assassination, and there — to their astonishment — found that they had unfettered access to the motel’s grounds; to nearby abandoned buildings from which the fatal rifle shot likely came; to Dr. King’s motel room; and to the bleak, blood-stained balcony where the civil rights leader fell, mortally wounded, hours earlier.
“I was astonished by how desolate it all was,” Groskinsky, now 79 years old, told LIFE.com when asked about the mood in the neighborhood around the motel. “Then again, everyone probably thought that the person who shot Dr. King might still be out there somewhere.”
For reasons that have been lost in the intervening decades, Groskinsky’s photographs from that eerily quiet night in Memphis — taken at the site, and on the very day, of one of the signal events of the 20th century — were not published in LIFE magazine, and the story behind them was not told. Until now.
(Note: A slightly different version of this post appeared on an earlier version of LIFE.com.)
Not published in LIFE. The Lorraine Motel photographed in the hours after Dr. King's assassination, April 4, 1968.Henry Groskinsky—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. Will D. Campbell, alone on the Lorraine Motel balcony, gazes out into the night. "This picture was probably made as soon as we got there," Groskinsky told LIFE.com. "When I saw him standing there, alone, I thought it looked as if he was just asking himself, My God, what has happened here?"Henry Groskinsky—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. Outside of room 306, Theatrice Bailey, the brother of the Lorraine Motel's owner, cleans blood from the balcony. "There was no friction with the people there at the Lorraine," Groskinsky recalled, "even though here was this white man with a camera on the scene."Henry Groskinsky—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. Theatrice Bailey attempts to clean blood from the balcony, hours after the 6 PM shooting of Dr. King. "I don't know if there were official people around taking notes and pictures and things like that," Groskinsky told LIFE.com. "Nobody was there when we were there. But the fact that the blood was still on the floor, and this man was actually putting it in a jar ... well, when you see a picture like that, God, it feels invasive."Henry Groskinsky—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesThe back of a photograph taken by LIFE photographer Henry Groskinsky on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel, Memphis, Tenn.Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. The building on the left is the abandoned building from which Groskinsky took several of his photographs on the night of April 4. "It was a little scary crawling into the building, because who knew who was going to be there? Who doesn't want you to be there? The atmosphere was very dark, very creepy."Henry Groskinsky—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. Colleagues gather on the balcony outside the Lorraine Motel's room 306, just a few feet from where Dr. King was shot, April 4, 1968.Henry Groskinsky—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s neatly packed, monogrammed briefcase in his room at the Lorraine Motel, April 4, 1968 — with his brush, his pajamas, a can of shaving cream and his book, Strength to Love, visible in the pocket.Henry Groskinsky—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. Stunned, silent members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Dr. King's room at the Lorraine Motel, April 4, 1968, including Andrew Young (far left, under table lamp) and civil rights leader and Dr. King's colleague, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, in the middle on the far bed. "I was very discreet," Groskinsky recalls. "I shot just enough to document what was going on. There, almost in the center of the picture, in the mirror, you can see my reflection. I took a couple of pictures and just kind of backed off."Henry Groskinsky—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. Ralph Abernathy and Will D. Campbell, a long-time friend and civil rights activist, embrace in Dr. King's room. "I was documenting a momentous event," Groskinsky told LIFE.com, "and I thought that at any time I was going to be asked to leave, so I did what I could as quickly as I could."Henry Groskinsky—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. A photo taken through tree branches by Henry Groskinsky from a derelict building across the street from the Lorraine Motel, April 4, 1968, very close to where the shot that killed Dr. King likely came from.Henry Groskinsky—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. An airplane dispatched by the U.S. government to retrieve Dr. King's body and return it to Atlanta, Ga., waits on the tarmac in Memphis, Tenn., the day after MLK's assassination. "Here we were, two white guys in the Deep South right after the murder of the preeminent leader of the black community — voyeurs, in a sense," Groskinsky remembers. "We were apprehensive about it. But when we got there, there were no big problems for us."Henry Groskinsky—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesThe cover of the April 12, 1968, issue of LIFE magazine.Fred Ward—Life Magazine
