Twelve Days After the Balcony

On April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. almost did not return to Memphis. His first visit in late March had ended in violence — a march that dissolved into chaos. Advisors urged him to stay away. Threats against his life were constant. But thirteen hundred sanitation workers were still on strike, still carrying signs that read "I AM A MAN," still marching for dignity after Echol Cole and Robert Walker had been crushed to death inside a faulty garbage truck on February 1.…