Which African American civil rights activist was assassinated in 1968 by escaped convict James Earl Ray?
African Americans in Tennessee riders from Washington, D.C., were stopped in Birmingham, Alabama. A sanitation workers' strike in Memphis in 1968 was linked to both the Civil Rights Movement and the Poor People's Campaign. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had come to the city in support of the striking workers, was assassinated on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel, the day after giving his prophetic "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech at the Mason Temple. The assassin, James Earl Ray, was a racist escaped convict who had no previous connection to the city. African Americans, most of whom were then enslaved, were politically
Jim Williams (civil rights activist) Jim Williams (civil rights activist) Jim Williams (c 1830 - March 6, 1871) was a civil rights leader and African-American militia leader in the 1860s and 1870s in York County, South Carolina. He escaped slavery during the US Civil War and joined the Union Army. After the war, Williams led a black militia organization which sought to protect black rights in the area. In 1871, he was lynched and hung by members of the local Ku Klux Klan. As a result, a large group of local blacks emigrated to Liberia. Williams was born James Rainey in York County, South Carolina,