Only journalist on the scene at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis where
Martin Luther King was assassinated April 4, 1968. Louw had been making a documentary about King and was staying on the second floor of the motel when the fatal shots rang out. Louw immediately grabbed his camera and began taking pictures of the pandemonium as it unfolded around him. Also present at the motel were King's friends the Rev.
Ralph Abernathy and
Jesse Jackson who'd planned to have dinner with King that evening. As Louw's photographs began to circulate later in the day, rioting started to erupt in several American cities. King's assassin,
James Earl Ray, was apprehended at London's Heathrow Airport in June 1968 and later pleaded guilty to the crime.