Commentary: The tense months before Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination

Through the months preceding his assassination on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was haunted by a sense of impending death. He shared that premonition with his aide Andrew Young, who was with King when a fatal bullet struck, 50 years ago.

"He talked about death all the time," Young told Tavis Smiley, author of "Death of A King."

For his 2014 book, Smiley asked those who had marched alongside King what they recalled of his mood in 1968. The comedian and activist Dick Gregory reported King, with tears in his eyes, said he was certain to be killed.

King had faced death threats since the 1950s, when he emerged as the acknowledged leader of the civil rights movement. But in 1968, the threats reached a crescendo.

The Chicago Tribune saw it