Convicted of armed robbery in 1960, James Earl Ray escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary on April 22, 1967. Ray's hatred for the population blackness and his support for Nazism fueled his desire to assassinate pacifists. leader, Martin Luther King, Jr. During the civil rights era, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s strong political and religious presence made him a potential target, as many denounced his promotion of equality between blacks and white people in America. Additionally, using a Remington rifle, Ray shot King from a hotel bathroom window across the street from the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where he had a perfect view on King standing on the balcony of the motel room. On the eve of April 4, 1968, King was pronounced dead. Subsequently, Ray fled to Canada where he changed his identity and created a false passport which would later be used to flee to Brussels, Belgium from a Scottish airport. However, Ray was arrested at Heathrow Airport on June 8, 1968 and deported to America. James Earl Ray was convicted in March 1969 for the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. In court, Ray voluntarily pleaded guilty before Judge W. Preston Battle, which reduced his sentence to 99 years in prison instead of the death penalty. As will become apparent, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. led to an immediate outbreak of riots, Robert Kennedy's praise of King, large attendance at King's funeral, and the implementation of the Fair Housing Act; the pursuit of James Earl Ray; and in the longer term, the creation of the national Martin Luther King holiday as well as the desire to reopen the James Earl Ray case in 1997. In the immediate aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King...... middle paper.... ....chulke, Flip. He had a dream: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement. New York: WW Norton and Company, 1995. Scott King, Coretta. My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc, 1969. Sides, Hampton. Hell at his trial: the hunt for Martin Luther King Jr. and the international hunt for his assassin. New York: Doubleday, 2010. Sundquist, The Dream of Eric J. King. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, United States. HUD.gov. History of fair housing. Washington DC: Department of Housing and Urban Development. Accessed March 13, 2014, http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/aboutfheo/history.Waldschmidt-Nelson, Britta. Dreams and Nightmares: Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and the Struggle for Black Equality in America. Florida: Florida University Press, 2012.