The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., despite having taken place nearly 50 years ago, remains one of the most notorious cases of murder in the public consciousness. Among assassinations it ranks third on Google, behind the higher profile cases of presidents Lincoln and Kennedy, but that makes it no less important. Dr. King died at the age of 39, an age only four years older than the requirement for Presidency, yet he accomplished more than many who held that highest office.

The facts surrounding the assassination are simple enough, yet to this day the identity of the perpetrator of the crime of killing Dr. King remains controversial. King received countless death threats over his years of activism, and even as early as 1963, following the assassination of Kennedy, King seemed to make peace with the fact that he would face a malicious end to his life. Facing a bomb threat just days before his death he reaffirmed this position in the now famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, where he said that “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will.” It’s difficult to imagine being in such an elevated, yet dangerous, position of power, but the equanimity of King is certainly worthy of respect.

King was murdered at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, where a group of African American sanitation workers went on strike in the hopes that they would be paid the same wages that white workers were. At 6:00 p.m. on April 4, King was shot in the head while standing on the balcony of the hotel. Witnesses later reported seeing fugitive James Earl Ray fleeing from the scene of the crime. He was caught several months later and put on trial, receiving a lifetime sentence after pleading guilty. Case closed, right?

In any high profile event there are allegations of conspiracy, and this is no exception. Some people believe that the assassination was a high level conspiracy perpetrated by the government. What surprised me most about this theory is that the King’s family stands by the existence of conspiracy. In a very strange civil case, Coretta Scott King, Dr. King’s widow, led a prosecution against Loyd Jowers, owner of a restaurant nearby to King’s place of death. The jury determined that Jowers and a group of unnamed co-conspirators were guilty of the assassination of Dr. King, and the King family was awarded a whopping $100 in damages. This civil suit is extremely silly and proves nothing, of course, but it is an interesting tidbit of information about the mindset of the King family following the brutal murder of their patriarch.

I wish I could talk some more about the legacy of King following the assassination, but there simply isn’t enough room. We can wonder, though, what would have happened if King lived just a few months longer. Soon after King’s death his supporters Poor People’s Campaign, occupying Washington D.C. in search of an “economic bill of rights.” This attempted activism is widely considered to have been a failure, but we can wonder what would have happened if King had been alive to lend his massive reputation and leadership ability to this particular cause.