45 years ago: The death of Martin Luther King

45 years ago tonight, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr was shot and killed as he stood on a motel balcony, aged just 39. Here is the leader from the following week’s Spectator:

The agony of America, The Spectator, 12 April 1968

The assassination of Dr Martin Luther King at Memphis, Tennessee, on Thursday 4 April has brutally reminded America and the world of the existence of a cancer that is even more menacing than the Vietnam war itself. For the well-intentioned but horribly mistaken imperialist adventure in Vietnam will eventually be ended by American withdrawal. What the conditions of that withdrawal will be, when it will occur, and what political regime will exist in the South after it has been completed, are matters for speculation — and for negotiation. But that the brutal and brutalising fighting will within the foreseeable future come to an end, and America’s military disengagement from Vietnam begin, can hardly be doubted.