President Johnson spent most of this day in New York City, meeting with local political leaders and with officials at the United Nations. He returned to the White House around 6:30 p.m. (EST).[note 1] Memphis was on Central Standard Time (CST), one hour earlier than Eastern Standard Time (EST). All times in this conversation are EST. Approximately 30 minutes later in Memphis, Tennessee, a sniper’s bullet struck Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the neck and face. At that moment, the President was meeting in Washington, D.C., with his close friend and former Georgia governor Carl E. Sanders Sr. and with former president of Coca-Cola and Atlanta philanthropist Robert W. “Bob” Woodruff. At 7:24 p.m., a White House aide delivered the news of the King shooting. At 8:05 p.m., King was declared dead. The President received that notice from an aide 15 minutes later. For the next half hour, Johnson continued to watch news reports about the assassination and prepared to go before TV cameras. At 9:07 p.m., he read the following short statement to a national audience:

“America is shocked and saddened by the brutal slaying tonight of Dr. Martin Luther King. I ask every citizen to reject the blind violence that has struck Dr. King, who lived by nonviolence. I pray that his family can find comfort in the memory of all he tried to do for the land he loved so well. I have just conveyed the sympathy of Mrs. [Lady Bird] Johnson and myself to his widow, Mrs. [Coretta Scott] King. I know that every American of good will joins me in mourning the death of this outstanding leader and in praying for peace and understanding throughout this land. We can achieve nothing by lawlessness and divisiveness among the American people. It is only by joining together and only by working together that we can continue to move toward equality and fulfillment for all of our people. I hope that all Americans tonight will search their hearts as they ponder this most tragic incident. I have canceled my plans for the evening. I am postponing my trip to Hawaii until tomorrow. Thank you.”[note 2] President Johnson had planned to meet Gen. William C. Westmoreland in Honolulu to discuss Vietnam, but Westmoreland would end up coming to the capital instead. Presidential Daily Diary, 4 April 1968; “Statement by the President on the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” 4 April 1968, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1969), doc. 179.

At 9:36 p.m., President Johnson received an update from Tennessee governor E. Buford Ellington, a southern moderate and a close ally who had served in the White House as director of the Office of Emergency Planning and had managed the administration’s responses in Selma and Watts in 1965. Ellington reported that Memphis was “in a real rough situation” and that he had called out the Tennessee National Guard. This telephone call was apparently recorded, but no audio remains. The record of that exchange survives in a contemporary transcript made by the White House staff.[note 3] Presidential Daily Diary, 4 April 1968.

The only audio from that day’s White House telephone recordings involved the following conversation between President Johnson and Ivan E. Allen Jr., the mayor of Atlanta, King’s hometown.

What followed over the next several days was the most widespread moment of domestic civil disorder in the United States in a century, with notable riots occurring in over 125 cities. On the afternoon of 5 April, one day after the murder of Dr. King, the situation in the nation’s capital had deteriorated to the point that President Johnson mobilized 11,000 federal troops. For several other states, he federalized the National Guard in an attempt to restore order.[note 4] Presidential Daily Diary, 5 April 1968; Ben A. Franklins, “Army Troops in Capital as Negroes Riot; Guard Sent Into Chicago, Detroit, Boston,” New York Times, 6 April 1968; Murray Seeger, “Washington Ghetto Smoldering Ruins Block After Block,” Los Angeles Times, 7 April 1968. By 8 April, approximately 34,000 National Guardsmen were in action across the country, and the White House had deployed over 21,000 federal troops in Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.—all from the U.S. Army, except for 700 Marines in the capital. Another 22,000 stood by, if needed.[note 5] Neil Sheehan, “22,000 More G.I.’s Ready for Riot Duty,” New York Times, 9 April 1968. According to the Army’s history of the events (written by military historian Paul Scheips), the three disorders requiring federal forces involved 23,008 regular troops and 15,586 federalized Guardsmen. Those soldiers set off 5,972 tear gas canisters, “but only 16 rounds of ammunition.” The casualty toll for the disturbances in those cities was “31 deaths . . . 3,219 injuries, 16,268 arrests, and over 2,000 fires.”[note 6] For a thorough exploration of the use of troops in Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Chicago, see Paul J. Scheips, The Role of Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1945–1992 (Washington, DC: United States Army Center of Military History, 2012). According to Scheips, “the Army prepared to use troops if necessary in a number of cities, including Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City (Missouri), Memphis, Nashville, New York City, Oakland (California), Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania), and Washington” (272).