The life of Martin Luther King Jr.

King is embraced by his wife, Coretta Scott King, after being convicted in Montgomery of a charge connected to the bus boycott. The Kings home was bombed during the boycott. (GENE HERRICK / Associated Press)

Sept. 16, 2014 8:04 AM PT

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., is seen in this undated file photo. Forty years after his assassination on April 4, 1968, after the deaths of his wife and others who knew the man and what he stood for, some say King’s fate, like that of many a historical figure, is to be frozen in a moment in time, the full complexity of the man and his message obscured.

Columns of demonstrators in Birmingham, Ala., are led by King center, with Ralph David Abernathy in April 1963, when King was sentenced to a jail term in connection with desegregation protests. During this time King wrote his famous Letter From Birmingham Jail. (Horace Cort / Associated Press)

King, center, strides arm in arm with Abernathy at a march for striking Memphis sanitation workers in 1968. A few days later, King was assassinated at Memphis Lorraine Motel. (Sam Melhorn / Associated Press)

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