Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel is frozen in time since the day Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in Memphis. It still contains the ashtray with the last cigarette MLK ever smoked.
Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel is exactly the way it was on April 4th, 1968. The bed is made. The food tray is on the coffee table. The ashtray with a partially smoked cigarette is on the desk. As you peer into the hotel room, you see Dr. King’s surroundings during the final minutes of his life — frozen in time.
Dr. King stayed at the Lorraine Motel numerous times while visiting Memphis. In April 1968, he came to the city to support striking sanitation workers. On April 4th, he stepped onto the balcony outside room 306 to talk to friends in the parking lot below. He asked the saxophonist, Ben Branch, to play ‘Take My Hand, Precious Lord’ at a rally that would be held that evening. As he turned to walk back into his room, a bullet struck him in the neck. He died instantly.
