THE week will be remembered for a long time. Surprise was followed by astonishment and then hope; violent tragedy elicited a response that at times soared to tragic violence. For journalists of all venues, the fantastic succession of events posed special problems.

Here at TIME, our aim was the same as it is every week--except a little more so. We try to channel the flow of events into a coherent pattern of stories, to emphasize the important details and, whenever possible,to provide perspective.

One of the first questions that occurs after an event as shocking as the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is whether the man had been adequately explained to the public. This sent us back to our own coverage of Dr. King throughout his remarkable career. Our first cover story on him was published on Feb. 18, 1957, when he was 28 years old. That was soon after he won his first big civil rights gain--integration of buses in Montgomery, Ala. We found him to be a man "who in little more than a year has risen from nowhere to become one of the nation's remarkable leaders of men." He was working, we said, "with a spiritual force that aspired even to ending prejudice in man's mind." He was the Man of the Year for 1963, appearing on our Jan. 3, 1964, issue as "the unchallenged voice of the Negro people and the disquieting conscience of the whites." At the time of the historic integration confrontation in Selma, Ala., he was on our cover (March 19, 1965) as "the foremost leader of the civil rights movement."

It is a cause for reflection that through these stories ran a strain of warning about the danger to Dr. King. The 1957 story commented on how he "unflinchingly faced the possibility of violent death"; when he was Man of the Year, it was clear that "wherever he goes, death hovers in the form of crackpots."

Then in Memphis, the shot was fired that killed Martin Luther King. His martyrdom, as the President suggested, must not be a cause for mourning alone, but above all for action to expiate his death. Thus, in the months remaining to him as President, Lyndon Johnson faces the challenge and opportunity to resolve the racial crisis that has bedeviled his Administration and at the same time to heal the agony of Viet Nam.

Few Presidents in U.S. history have ever been confronted with such a confluence of events--or had as much power to influence them. That is why Lyndon Johnson is on the cover of TIME this week. His and the nation's period of hope and trial is reflected in the cover portrait, which was drawn from life by Italy's Pietro Annigoni.

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