Assassination of Martin Luther King, Pt. 2 Quiz

Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts

1. Just after Martin Luther King was shot, there was a very famous picture taken of many of his aides standing on the balcony, pointing in the direction from which the gunshot had come, a nearby rooming house. One of his aides is pictured over King's prone body, trying to attend to his wound. All had raced onto the balcony as soon as they heard the gunshot. Which prominent member of the civil rights community is NOT it the picture?

Answer: John Lewis

John Lewis, who was badly beaten during the 1964 Freedom Rides, was not at the Lorraine Motel. He has been a member of Congress from the state of Georgia for many years. Ralph Abernathy, who was King's closest friend, reached King first because he was in the room he and King shared, with the door open. Andrew Young, who would become a Congressman representing the state of Georgia, the Mayor of Atlanta and the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations was in the parking lot and quickly ran up the steps to the balcony. Jesse Jackson, who was with Young in the parking lot and has held numerous positions within the civil rights movement over the years, also raced up the stairs.

Although there are others in the picture, Young and Jackson are the most visible. Abernathy, who was kneeling next to King, and King himself,whose body was sprawled across the balcony with one foot resting on the bottom of the railing, almost look like an afterthought because of the palpable intensity of Young's and Jackson's reactions.

2. Coretta Scott King was at home in Atlanta with her children when the first television bulletins had come that her husband had been shot. Where was she when she learned he had died?

Answer: Entering the airport in Atlanta to take a flight to Memphis to be with her husband.

Coretta Scott King was accompanied to the Atlanta airport by Mayor Ivan Allen and his wife, Louise. Allen was white and a good friend of the Kings. He felt that not only did he have the duty to be there for Mrs. King, he thought it was incredibly important for the Blacks in Atlanta to see the government was standing with the King family.

It worked. Atlanta was one of the few major cities in the U.S. that did not have riots as a result of Dr. King's assassination While Coretta Scott King and the Allens raced to the airport, Eastern Airlines held a flight for her which was scheduled to fly to Memphis. Upon her arrival, she was met by her husband's executive secretary, who pulled her into a ladies' room and told her King had died. Mayor Allen was given the information at the same time.

He felt that she needed to be informed of her husband's death by a government official and he also told her. She decided that her children needed her more than anyone else at that moment. So she, accompanied by the Allens, returned to her home.

3. James Earl Ray, King's assassin, had checked into a rooming house which gave him an unfettered view of the balcony on the Lorraine Motel, where King was staying. He found the clearest view came from the bathtub in the communal bathroom. Where did Memphis police find the gun he used to shoot King?

Answer: Wrapped in a green blanket, along with binoculars and clothes in the alley next to a store.

Ray fled from the rooming house as soon as he fired the shot. He had to go past a business called Canipe's Amusement in order to get to his car. So, he dumped the green blanketroll, apparently thinking no one would pay it much attention. He was wrong. The owner of Canipe's immediately called police when he saw it.

4. Coretta Scott King went to Memphis the next day to bring her husband's body home to Atlanta. Who made all the arrangements to charter the plane that brought King home?

Answer: Senator Robert F. Kennedy

Ironically, just two months later, the very same arrangements would have to be made to fly Robert Kennedy's body back to his New York after he was assassinated in Los Angeles, following his big win in California's Democratic primary election. Ironically, President Lyndon Johnson was essentially forced to provide a military plane to fly Kennedy's family and the late Senator to New York. During their lifetimes, Johnson and Kennedy despised each other.

5. When Dr. King was killed, he was the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Counference. Who had to immediately take over for him, not only to represent them at the funeral, but to continue the plans for a Poor People's March on Washington which was scheduled to begin within weeks?

Answer: Rev. Ralph David Abernathy

It was assumed by all of those present in Memphis when King was killed that Abernathy was the natural choice to move into the leadership of the SCLC. And, plans for him to succeed King were made that night. The Poor People's March, which saw people camped out in tents on the Mall for months, was generally considered to be a failure. Considering Abernathy's overwhelming grief, it's hardly a surprise. Rev. Lowery eventually succeeded Abernathy as head of the SCLC.

6. Among the hundreds of dignitaries who attended Dr. King's funeral was the most famous woman in the world at that time, Jacqueline Kennedy. Aside from Dr. King's funeral, at the funerals of which other men who were assassinated did Jacqueline Kennedy and Coretta Scott King meet?

Answer: at both President John F. Kennedy's and Senator Robert F. Kennedy's

NAACP activist Medgar Evers was assassinated in his own driveway as he got out of his car in front of his home in Jackson, Miss. just after midnight on June 12, 1963. Just a few hours before Evers was murdered by Byron de la Beckwith, President Kennedy had given his first nationally-televised speech on civil rights.

At the time of his death, Evers was the Mississippi state coordinator for the NAACP. He was not well-known outside of Mississippi and the civil rights movement. The state of Mississippi twice prosecuted de le Beckwith for Evers murder in the 1960's and twice came away with hung juries--which shocked many Whites in Mississippi, who expected an acquittal.

In 1994, de la Beckwith was tried for the third time in Mississippi and was convicted. Medgar Evers' widow, Myrlie Evers, became chairman of the board of the NAACP in 1995.

7. The funeral service for Dr. King was held in the church where he and his father were both ministers, Ebenezer Baptist Church, in Atlanta.

Answer: True

Dr. King's father, Martin Luther King, Sr., had been the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church since the younger Martin was a little boy. In 1960, when Martin, Jr. decided to return with his family to live in Atlanta, he and his father became co-pastors of the church.

8. The funeral procession that took Martin Luther King's body from the church to the place where his body would be temporarily interred seemed to be modeled in some ways on the funeral procession for President John F. Kennedy. Ordinary people who had quietly mobbed the streets between the church and King's temporary grave, fell in line behind the official mourners, so that by the time the procession reached the burial site at Morehouse College, at least 50,000 people were walking along with the casket. JFK's casket had been carried to his gravesite at Arlington National Cemetery atop a gun carriage drawn by horses. How was Martin Luther King's body taken to its burial site?

Answer: Atop a large wooden wagon, drawn by mules.

It was very important to King's family and close friends that he be seen in death, as in life, as a part of the black community, a true man of the people who put on no airs. The mourners who walked behind the casket, including Ralph Abernathy, were dressed in work clothes--many wearing plaid shirt, blue jeans and heavy boots.

The mules pulling the body were meant to show that King was just like anyone else. His body shouldn't be drawn by more elegant horses. King was temporarily buried at the family plot at South View Cemetery. Around 1980, King's body was moved into a casket amid a pool of water at the King Center for Non-violence.

When Coretta Scott King died on January 30, 2006, she was buried next to him.

9. The car James Earl Ray used in his escape from Memphis after he killed King was found a week later in a very odd city. Where?

Answer: Atlanta, Ga.

It is truly ironic that in Ray's race to get out of Memphis to escape police capture. Atlanta was, after all, Martin Luther King's hometown. His wife and children lived there, as did his parents. Martin Luther King, Sr. had been the pastor at Ebenezer Baptist church their since his sone was just a little boy. Was Ray's choice of Atlanta to taunt the King family further? Or was it just a convenient getaway point? No one will ever know since when Ray died in 2008 he had never told anyone.

10. On the night before his death, exhausted and wanting nothing but a good night's sleep, King decided to cancel a rally he had planned at a nearby church. But he changed his mind when Ralph Abernathy, who had already been at the church, told him people were all worked up, excited to be hearing from the incredible man. So King got out of his bed, got dressed and made one of the most remarkable speeches of his life. In it, be talked about "the promised land". His words betrayed his dark sense of foreboding. He told the screaming, clapping parishoners that he "might not get there with you," but he had seen promised land, and although he might not get there,that was okay. He felt protected by God's and feared no one. That speech came to be known as:

Answer: "I've Been to the Mountaintop"

"I've Been to the Mountaintop" is among the most extaordinary speeches of the 20th--or any onther--centuty. He essentially tells the audience he knows he is not going to live long enough to see his "four little children" holding hands--"the sons of sons of slave owners"--holding hands with the former elite who would have never even considered touching a black person before. But, he tells them, he has been to the top of the mountain, looked over it and seen that it will come to pass.
The "I Have a Dream" speech is arguably the best-known and best speech of the 20th century. Given on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August, 1963, King talks of what real freedom should be in such simple but powerful terms that it is hard not to be moved.
When it comes to the "Drum Major for Justice," King often said in his various speeches was that was precisely what he was going. He was cheering on Justice.
As for "Letters from the Birmingham Jail"--that wasn't a speech. It was exactly what it sounded like: letters being written during his incarceration in Birmingham on an ancient automobile citation. The letters were published in a book during King's lifetime.

Source: Author goodreporter

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor bloomsby before going online.
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The assassination of Martin Luther King was one of the darkest points in American history. This quiz, which is the 2nd part of a look back to that horrifying time, is to see how much you know about an event that changed American history.

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