Medals of the American Negro Commemorative Society
The assassination of
Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968, sent shockwaves across the country. Almost immediately, riots erupted in several of the nation’s largest cities, including
Chicago,
Washington, D.C., and
Baltimore, a public display of the Black community’s grief and anger not only towards King’s assassin but also towards the racism that was then deeply rooted in the American system. The loss of such a prominent figure of the Civil Rights Movement only exacerbated Black Americans’ discontent with segregation, redlining, and other forms of institutional racism that had existed in the country for decades.