Martin Luther King Jr.’s youngest son Dexter King has died after a prolonged battle with cancer. He was 62.
The King Center in Atlanta, which is operated by Rev. Dr. Bernice King, made the official announcement of Dexter King’s death on Monday, Jan. 22, 2024.
Dexter King reportedly succumbed to prostate cancer, The King Center reports, a battle that he fought under the radar. There is no indication when he was first diagnosed.
His wife, Leah Weber King, was at his bedside home in Malibu, a wealthy seaside suburb north of Los Angeles. Weber King penned the following after Dexter King transitioned, “He transitioned peacefully in his sleep at home with me in Malibu.”
Dexter King followed in the footsteps of his legendary dad as he attended Morehouse College and was a proponent of equity and justice in America. Later, he moved from the King base in Atlanta to Southern California.
The younger son, whom many noted that he bared a remarkable resemblance to his famous father, is most noted for sitting down with MLK’s alleged assassin James Earl Ray in prison and asking him if he murdered his dad. Ray said ‘no,’ even though he was convicted to life in prison for the infamous shooting death at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. Ray and Dexter King believe that members of the government’s intelligence community, mainly the FBI and CIA, played a major part in MLK’s murder.
Dexter also played his father in the enthralling movie, The Rosa Parks Story, which detailed the iconic seamstress who refused to sit at the back of the bus during the dastardly Jim Crow years in Alabama. That day in 1955 sparked the seismic Civil Rights Movement and first unveiled Martin Luther King Jr. to the masses.
