On the night of April 4, 1968, a news bulletin shook the USA to its core: Martin Luther King Jr., the most visible and important leader of the civil rights movement, was dead, killed by an assassin's bullet in Memphis at the age of 39. Of the many tumultuous events of 1968 , the King assassination was one of the most earth-shattering. The news touched off race riots in Washington, D.C., Chicago and dozens of other cities, causing damage that took decades to repair.