Starting in 2002, I circulated an email within my law firm to mark Martin Luther King Day.  Each year through 2008, I looked back at Dr. King's life 40 years before, from 1962 until his assassination in 1968.  Here is my 2008 email.

In late 1967, Dr. King launched the Poor People's Campaign, which he saw as the next step after desegregation and the right to vote in the struggle for genuine equality.  He described the campaign as "the beginning of a new co-operation, understanding, and a determination by poor people of all colors and backgrounds to assert and win their right to a decent life and respect for their culture and dignity."    

As part of the campaign, Dr. King traveled to Memphis in March 1968 to support a strike for better wages and working conditions by the sanitation workers union.  The striking workers carried signs saying simply "I AM A MAN."  After a march on March 28, 1968, turned violent, the city called in 3,800 National Guard soldiers.  Troops armed with rifles and mounted bayonets, armored personnel carriers with 50-caliber machine guns, and tanks patrolled the city streets.   

On April 3, 1968, an U.S. Marshal served Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a temporary restraining order from a federal judge, barring him from leading another march in Memphis without court approval.  That evening, at the Mason Temple, Dr. King gave his last speech to an audience of 2,000.  At the conclusion of his speech, he said:

And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? 

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.

At 6:01 p.m. on April 4, 1968, as he stood on the balcony outside of room 306 of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Dr. King was assassinated.  He was 39 years old.   

Two months earlier to the day, Dr. King, on February 4, 1968, in a sermon at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, said the following: 

If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk too long. (Yes)  And every now and then I wonder what I want them to say. Tell them not to mention that I have a Nobel Peace Prize—that isn’t important. Tell them not to mention that I have three or four hundred other awards—that’s not important. Tell them not to mention where I went to school. (Yes)  

I'd like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. (Yes) 

I'd like for somebody to say that day that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody. 

I want you to say that day that I tried to be right on the war question. (Amen) 

I want you to be able to say that day that I did try to feed the hungry. (Yes) 

And I want you to be able to say that day that I did try in my life to clothe those who were naked. (Yes) 

I want you to say on that day that I did try in my life to visit those who were in prison. (Lord) 

I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. (Yes)  

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. (Amen) Say that I was a drum major for peace. (Yes) I was a drum major for righteousness.

And all of the other shallow things will not matter. (Yes) I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind.

But I just want to leave a committed life behind. (Amen) And that's all I want to say.