Billy Graham Reacts to the Death of Martin Luther King Jr.

Posted by Kevin D. Hendricks on January 19, 2009

An assassin’s bullet killed the radical civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Billy Graham heard the news on a golf course in Australia where he was holding a series of crusades. Journalists approached him with the news and asked for a comment:

“I was almost in a state of shock,” Graham wrote in his autobiography. “Not only was I losing a friend through a vicious and senseless killing, but America was losing a social leader and a prophet, and I felt his death would be one of the greatest tragedies in our history.”

Graham prayed there on the golf course with the journalists for King’s family and the healing of racial divisions. He tried to cancel his schedule and return for the funeral, but it wasn’t possible.