A mule-drawn farm wagon carried King's coffin through Atlanta streets lined by an estimated 150,000 mourners, symbolizing his commitment to the poor. Dignitaries including Vice President Hubert Humphrey and civil rights leaders attended, while riots continued to smolder in over 100 American cities following his April 4 assassination in Memphis.
The choice of a simple, mule-drawn wooden farm cart to carry King's casket through the streets of Atlanta was deliberate and symbolic, echoing the Poor People's Campaign he had been organizing at the time of his death. Coretta Scott King insisted on this detail, wanting the funeral to reflect her husband's solidarity with the impoverished sanitation workers he had traveled to Memphis to support.
An estimated 150,000 people lined the route from Ebenezer Baptist Church to Morehouse College, where King had once studied. Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis Jr., and other celebrities marched alongside sharecroppers and day laborers. At Morehouse, Benjamin Mays delivered the eulogy, describing King as a prophet unashamed to challenge his nation's conscience.
The funeral took place against a backdrop of national chaos—riots had erupted in more than 100 cities after King's assassination five days earlier, and thousands of National Guard troops were deployed to keep order in Washington, Chicago, and Baltimore. King's tombstone bore an epitaph he had written himself, quoting the spiritual 'Free at Last.'