By Robert Alan Glover |  OSV News

Almost everyone familiar with the life and death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. knows the value that the civil rights leader put on living a long life. The phrase “longevity has its place” is now enshrined within his last speech, given the night before King’s murder in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4,1968.

That fateful day, Franciscan Sisters Jane Marie Klein and Sister Anna Marie Hofmeyer were both in Memphis ministering at Saint Joseph Catholic Hospital. Saint Joseph’s was the only Catholic health care facility in Memphis in 1968, and King — just 39 years old — was brought there after being shot by an assassin.