Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. is fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

I remember my Dad, who was City editor of the Atlanta Journal, getting the call. No twitter in those days...

On April 3, back in Memphis, King gave his last sermon, saying, “We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop…And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.”

I think we will get there. So much of what he was working towards, we are still working towards, 50 years later. We are more conscious than we have ever been as a nation and there is more hope everyday if you choose to see it.

He was 39 years old.

Only in darkness, can we see the stars. - Martin Luther King, Jr.