On the 75th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s birth, American Experience premiered “Citizen King,” which explores the last five years in King’s life by drawing on the personal recollections and eyewitness accounts of friends, movement associates, journalists, law enforcement officers and historians to illuminate this little-known chapter in the story of one of America’s most important and influential moral leader.

Framed by the Lincoln Memorial speech and his assassination in Memphis, Tennessee, “Citizen King” traces King’s effort to recast himself by embracing causes beyond the civil rights movement- to “transform and re-structure the whole of American society” as he put it. In this brief five-year span, his decision would alienate many of his closest friends and further inflame his enemies. King took repeated leaps of faith as he cast aside political caution in favor of following a path that would make more difficult- and dangerous- his already challenging life.