It was an event that ended a life and would forever change the climate and course of civil rights in the U.S. The day was April 4, 1968 and at 6:01 that evening, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., would be killed by a sniper’s bullet as he stood on the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. The Lorraine would continue to operate as a motel until 1982 when it went into foreclosure. Five years later, at auction, it was purchased by the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Foundation and turned into the National Civil Rights Museum. Open since 1991, the museum includes the 420 Main Street rooming house from where James Earl Ray fired the fatal shot.