Life magazine

Life magazine photographer Henry Groskinsky was on assignment in Selma when he heard the bulletin on the radio: The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis. Life magazine photographer Henry Groskinsky was on assignment in Selma when he heard the bulletin on the radio: The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis.

On that April 4, 1968, evening, Groskinsky ended up in King’s hotel room, where the civil rights leader’s associates including Andrew Young and the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy Sr. were solemnly huddled. Surprisingly, there were few members of the press around the Lorraine Motel. “I felt like I was intruding,” he said. “It was like a wake.”

He captured a series of numbing images that, until Thursday —- when they were posted at Life magazine’s Web site, www.life.com —- had never been seen by the public. They are stark and powerful. One shows a motel worker sweeping King’s blood from the balcony. “Once they got the famous photo” of King’s associates pointing in the direction of the assassin, “that was it,” Groskinsky said, referring to the widely circulated Associated Press photo.