Mason Temple in Memphis, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his final sermon, is set to undergo a renovation supported by a $1.2 million federal grant, Church of God in Christ leaders said Monday.
The leaders said the grant will help modernize the historic church near the former Lorraine Motel, where King was fatally shot on the evening of April 4, 1968. They described the Mason Temple as the site of King’s “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” address, delivered the night before his assassination during a storm outside the church.
Presiding Bishop J. Drew Sheard said the church’s role goes beyond a physical landmark. Speaking at a news conference joined by U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen and Memphis Mayor Paul Young, Sheard called Mason Temple a place “where faith has always met history, and where the ordinary has always produced the extraordinary,” and said it is “the living witness of a movement that changed the entire world.”
Sheard said the church’s preservation will continue as long as the denomination exists, saying, “As long as the Church of God in Christ exists, we will honor that witness.” Bishop Melton Timmons, superintendent of national properties for the Church of God in Christ, said the funding would be used to upgrade the church’s sound system and other technology.
Timmons added that workers will inspect the church’s foundation and make structural improvements as part of the remodeling effort. He and the other leaders tied the renovation to Mason Temple’s ongoing role in the church.
The Mason Temple was completed in 1945 after the destruction of the original church by fire. Leaders said the current building serves as the world headquarters for the Church of God in Christ.
Cohen and Young said the $1.2 million grant is part of a nearly $18 million package for Memphis projects included in the annual congressional appropriations process. They also pointed to other preservation work in the same package, including $3.1 million for the restoration of historic Clayborn Temple, described as the staging area for the 1968 sanitation workers strike that brought King to Memphis.
The grant package, leaders said, comes amid ongoing federal attention to projects tied to civil-rights history and related community memory. They said investigators believe Clayborn Temple was heavily damaged by a fire intentionally set in April 2025.
The leaders’ remarks also linked the Mason Temple renovation to the site’s broader public history. The AP report noted that the church was the venue for a January 2023 memorial service for Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man who died after he was beaten by Memphis police officers after he fled from a traffic stop.
In describing King’s final speech, the report said that in the “Mountaintop” address, King—then 39—accounted for his life experiences and appeared to foresee his own death. The report quoted King saying, “I’ve seen the Promised Land. … I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”
The AP report also recalled that during a thunderstorm, King captivated people inside the packed church, describing noises from the tin roof and wind hitting the church’s rafters. It quoted the Rev. James Lawson recalling, “It’s a tin roof, so that’s banging. There’s rafters up there above us, and the rafters are blowing with the wind and hitting each other and hitting the walls from the fierceness of the wind and the rain,” and it quoted the Rev. Jesse Jackson describing ministers and men crying after King finished.