Lewis & Sons Funeral Home in an open bronze casket, the black suit tidily pressed, the wound in the throat now all but invisible.

[1]Later that day, police and National Guardsmen escorted the long procession of cars which carried King's body to the airport for the flight to Atlanta.

In that sermon he makes a request that at his funeral no mention of his awards and honors be made, but that it be said that he tried to "feed the hungry", "clothe the naked", "be right on the [Vietnam] war question", and "love and serve humanity".

Per King's request, his good friend Mahalia Jackson sang his favorite hymn, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" (the hymn that King requested to musician Ben Branch to play at a meeting moments before his assassination), though not as part of the morning funeral service but later that day at a second open-air service at Morehouse College.

[4] The private funeral was followed by the loading of King's casket onto a simple wooden farm wagon pulled by two mules named Belle and Ada from Gee's Bend.

The procession down the three-and-a-half miles from Ebenezer Baptist Church to Morehouse College was observed by over 100,000 people; the Southern Christian Leadership Conference commissioned a security detail to manage the crowd, while the Atlanta Police Department limited their participation to management of automobile traffic and to accompany dignitaries attending the events.

Following the funeral, King's casket was loaded into a hearse for his final trip to the South-View Cemetery, a burial place predominantly reserved for African Americans.