work as organist and as director at Ebenezer is considered to have deeply contributed to the respect her son had for music. She served as choir director for nearly 25 years, leaving for only a brief period in the early 1960s to accompany her son and assist him with his work. She returned to the position in 1963 and continued in the role until "retiring" in 1972. In addition to the choir, Alberta would also serve as the organizer and president of the Ebenezer Women's Committee from 1950 to 1962. By the end of this period, Martin Luther King Sr. and Jr. were joint pastors of the church. Outside of her work at Ebenezer, King was the organist for the Women’s Auxiliary of the National Baptist Convention from 1950 to 1962. She was also active in the YWCA, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Family tragedies, 1968–1974 Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. King was in Memphis to lead a march in support of the local sanitation workers' union. He was pronounced dead one hour later. Mrs. King, a source of strength following her son's assassination, faced fresh tragedy the next year when her younger son and last-born child, Alfred Daniel Williams King, who had become the assistant pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, drowned in his pool. Assassination Alberta King was shot and killed on June 30, 1974, aged 69, by Marcus Wayne Chenault, a 23-year-old Black man from Ohio who had adopted the theology of the Black Hebrew Israelites. Chenault's mentor, Hananiah Israel of Cincinnati, castigated Black civil rights activists and Black church leaders as being evil and deceptive, but claimed in interviews not to have advocated violence. Chenault did not draw any such distinction, and first decided to assassinate Rev. Jesse Jackson in Chicago, but canceled the plan at the last minute. Two weeks later he set out for Atlanta, where he shot Alberta King with two handguns as she sat at the organ of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. Chenault said that he shot King because "all Christians are my enemies," and claimed that he had decided that Black ministers were a menace to Black people. He said his original target had been Martin Luther King Sr., but he