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New York Times: The View From Room 306

The View From Room 306

By DAVID BROOKS
Op-Ed Columnist

April 4, 2008

On Wednesday morning I was in Memphis, and I walked over to the Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated 40 years ago today. I toured the National Civil Rights Museum and then went up to the room by the balcony where King was shot.

The Rev. Billy Kyles happened to be filming a documentary with his daughter Dwania as I arrived, going through a second-by-second account of the last moments of King?s life. The Rev. Kyles was with King when he was shot and was due to host him for dinner that evening.

You can watch Dwania?s documentary someday to hear his description of that afternoon, but I was curious for him to describe King?s mood during the final hour of his life. When you read the accounts of his final months, you get a sense of building pressure, of a rising atmosphere of menace and doom.

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