#MLK50: Barack Obama and John Lewis remember Martin Luther King and the day he was shot

In honour of the 50th anniversary of Dr Martin Luther King Jr's death, former US president Barack Obama and Congressman and civil rights activist John Lewis, discuss MLK's legacy.

Leading the conversation, Obama asks Lewis if he remembers where he was when he heard MLK had been assassinated.

He said: "On April 4, 1968, I was in Indianapolis, Indiana, campaigning for Robert Kennedy.

"It was Kennedy who announced to the group that Dr King had been assassinated."

The 44th president told the students who were invited to take part in the discussion that John Lewis was a huge influence for him to enter public office.

Lewis was asked by a young audience member about coping with the passing of Dr King and gave a moving response about his relationship with the leader of the civil rights movement.

He said: "It was a very sad and dark time for me.

"He was my leader, he was my inspiration."When he was assassinated I said 'Listen...You cannot get down, you got to pick them up and keep going.

"The thing I regret more than anything else is I probably didn't spend enough time with him...I thought he would have been around a long time."

Watch the full video below to hear more about John Lewis' work with the civil rights movement.

Congressman Lewis is the last surviving speaker from the march on Washington, on the day when Dr King delivered his famous I Have A Dream speech.

"Dr King spoke at number 10, I spoke number six.

"There were some people who suggested that my speech was too extreme, it was too radical, but I thought what I had to say, was important to be said.

"Black people in the South couldn't register to vote simply because of the colour of their skin.

"In some places, people were asked to count the bubbles on a bar of soap or the number of jelly beans in a jar."

President Obama highlighted the struggle of people like Lewis, who were speaking up on behalf of minority groups.

He said: "If you are speaking on behalf of social justice, then, by definition, there's going to be some controversy, because if it wasn't controversial, somebody would have already fixed it.

"Dr King was controversial but he studied and thought and crafted what he had to say, and he knew when he spoke that he was expressing a truth as well as he could know it."