As riots erupted and smoke billowed from black neighbourhoods in the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination, Robert F Kennedy met with black activists, politicians, and celebrities in a hotel suite ‘to tamp things down and divine what should come next,’ writes David Margolick in ‘The Promise and the Dream: The Untold Story of Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert F Kennedy’. In this excerpt, Margolick examines Kennedy’s response to the killing — and his belief that he, too, would die by an assassin’s hand.

CORETTA SCOTT KING, who turned a life shattered by the assassination of her husband Martin Luther King into one devoted to enshrining his legacy of human rights and equality, has died at the age of 78.