The church where MLK gave his final speech is getting a $1.2 million renovationBy ADRIAN SAINZAssociated PressThe Associated PressMEMPHIS, Tenn.The church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his final speech is getting upgraded with a $1.2 million federal grant. Leaders of Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, and a Democratic U.S. congressman are planning a news conference Monday about preserving this treasured piece of the Civil Rights Movement. It’s where King spoke the night before his assassination in April 1968, seeming to foretell his own death in his stirring “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” address. The renovation is part of nearly $18 million in federal money for projects in Memphis, including renovating another Civil Rights landmark church that investigators say was intentionally burned last year.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Mason Temple, a church in Memphis where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his final speech, will be upgraded with a $1.2 million federal grant to preserve a treasured piece of the Civil Rights Movement, officials are expected to announce Monday.
It’s part of a nearly $18 million package for Memphis projects included in the annual congressional appropriations process.
The package also includes $3.1 million for the restoration of historic Clayborn Temple, the staging area for the 1968 sanitation workers strike that brought King to Memphis. It was heavily damaged by a fire investigators say was intentionally set in April 2025…