ASSASSINATION ANNIVERSARY Family recalls last sermon by Dr. King

The civil rights leader was killed before he could finish the job in Memphis.
ATLANTA (AP) -- Christine King Farris clearly remembers the sermon that her brother, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., gave the day before he was assassinated 36 years ago.
"It was very touching and piercing to me, so much so that I had to leave the choir loft and go outside and shed a tear," Farris said.
Farris spoke Saturday as part of the fourth annual "Day of Remembrance" at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. King had given the Sunday sermon at Ebenezer a day before he was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4, 1968.
Farris told about 300 people packed into Ebenezer's sanctuary that when King last spoke in the church, the civil-rights leader said he wanted to be remembered as a "drum major for justice."
Farris said King told his wife when he got home, "I might have preached my eulogy this morning," foreshadowing his death a day later.
She said the sermon was so moving that she and Coretta Scott King, King's widow, decided to use it at his funeral.
What happened in Memphis
Farris recalled how King had earlier directed a march in Memphis at the request of Memphis garbage collectors. When rocks and bottles were hurled, his staff had to push the civil rights leader into a car and take him away.
A few days later in Atlanta, Farris said, King told his staff he felt the need to return to Memphis.
"He felt he was leaving the people, and he didn't like that," Farris said. "He said, 'We must go back to Memphis and lead a peaceful march,' and of course, he didn't get a chance to lead that march because he was taken from us."
An exhibit on display through April 30 at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site displays several photographs, documents and artifacts related to King's death.