text: US President Lyndon B. Johnson hands a pen to the civil rights leader Martin Luther King (2nd-R) after signing the historic Civil Rights Bill in the East Room of the White House, in Washington, DC, July 2, 1964. In 1968, King was killed by a single bullet to the head while on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in downtown Memphis, Tennessee. The Nobel Peace Prize winner was just 39 years old.