The Nation - News from March 3, 1988

The last resident of the small motel in Memphis, Tenn., where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. died in 1968 refused orders from sheriff’s deputies to leave the rundown building and was carried sobbing to the sidewalk. “You people are making a mistake,” said Jacqueline Smith, 37, who had been holed up at the Lorraine Motel since it was closed by state order Jan. 11 to make way for an $8.8-million civil rights museum. Deputies evicted Smith after forcing open the door to the room where she had set up residence. Smith had lived at the motel for 11 years.