martin luther king assassination essay

JFK Assassination Records

Findings on MLK Assassination

• Biography of James Earl Ray
• The committee's investigation
• Dr. King was killed by one shot fired from in front of him
• The shot that killed Dr. King was fired from the bathroom window at the rear of a roominghouse at 422 1/2 South Main Street, Memphis, Tenn.
• James Earl Ray purchased the rifle that was used to shoot Dr. King and transported it from Birmingham, Ala., to Memphis, Tenn., where he rented a room at 422 1/2 South Main Street, and moments after the assassination, he dropped it near 424 South Main Street
• It is highly probable that James Earl Ray stalked Dr. King for a period immediately preceding the assassination
• James Earl Ray fled the scene of the crime immediately after the assassination
• James Earl Ray's alibi for the time of the assassination, his story of "Raoul," and other allegedly exculpatory evidence are not worthy of belief
• James Earl Ray knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily pleaded guilty to the first degree murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• The Q64 bullet was a .30-06 caliber bullet of Remington-Peters manufacture.
• The bullet was imprinted with six lands and six grooves and a right twist by the rifle from which it had been fired.
• The Q2 rifle-had general class characteristics of six lands and six grooves with a right twist.
• The cartridge case (Q3) found in the Q2 rifle had been fired in the Q2 rifle.
• The damage to Dr. King's clothing, when tested microscopically and chemically, revealed the presence of lead from a disintegrating bullet and also revealed the absence of nitrites (the presence of nitrites would have indicated a close-range discharge).
• The damage to the clothing was consistent with the caliber and condition of the Q64 bullet. (51)

STAFF COUNSEL. ...[W]hen you first heard the bulletin that Dr. King had been shot did you in your mind then realize that this had nothing to do with you or Raoul?

RAY. I didn't even pay too much attention to that. There was another bulletin, and I listened to it, and I think music was on before it, and--

STAFF COUNSEL. But his question is that, when you heard that, did you at least then assume that that must have been what the police car was blocking the--

RAY. No, no there was no connection there whatsoever. (85)

STAFF COUNSEL. Well, that's what I'm trying to pinpoint-- when you started to think Raoul may be involved in the shooting of Dr. King, what was it you were thinking of? It can't be the broadcast about the car, it's got to be some other things, and what were they?

RAY. Well, of course, the guns was always a consideration. I thought that when I, I first pulled out of the area in the car, but I hate to keep getting back to this same thing, but that Mustang was what really concerned me.

STAFF COUNSEL. That's why you wanted to get out of there, but I'm trying to find out what is it that made you decide or think Raoul may be involved in the shooting of King?

RAY. Well, I think it was his association with the Mustang, he was in the general area, and, of course, the guns.... (88)

RAY. ...The assumptions were step by step. The first assumption I made was when they started looking for the Mustang, was that they were looking probably for me. If they were looking for me, then the next assumption was that they might have been looking for this Raoul, and there may have been some offense committed in this area. (89)

• Ray's alibi
• Conflicting descriptions of Raoul
• Absence of witnesses to corroborate Raoul's existence
• The rifle purchase
• Fingerprints on the rifle
• Rental of room 5-B at Bessie Brewer's roominghouse
• The binocular purchase
• Grace Walden Stephens

Chairman STOKES. All I want to know is why you didn't tell this man [Hanes] who is representing you in a capital case the truth.

RAY. It wasn't I wasn't telling you the truth; I just didn't tell him that. It was my intention to tell the jury that.

Chairman STOKES. You were going to spring this on your attorney at the trial?

RAY. Yes; that's correct. (97)

Congressman EDGAR. Can you tell the committee why you told this false story with such serious implications to the National Enquirer and also to Mark Lane?

Mr. COWDEN. Yes. Renfro Hays was a fellow that supported me for a period of about 4 months, completely, while I was unemployed. He befriended me in that he gave me food and lodging and he had the great ability to, you know, let you know, make you feel like that you really owed him something, you know, and really what he was trying to do was sell the movie rights, a book, I believe. There were several things that he mentioned from time to time that he was trying to market, and he would call on me, especially with Mark Lane and some other people that came by to talk to me from time to time, with basically this same story. This story--I don't remember how many of us, not only Mark Lane and the National Enquirer, but this was to five or six different people. I do not know who they represented, what publication. (99)

STAFF COUNSEL. What did he do? How did he decide that it was OK? What did he do with the rifle?

RAY. I really couldn't say, he just looked at it and that was it.

STAFF COUNSEL. When you say he looked at it, ah, how did it, what did he do?

RAY. Well he just checked it over and that was it. Just like you check a rifle over I guess, you---

STAFF COUNSEL. Well, I wasn't there, how did he check it over?

RAY. Well he checked the mechanism and every--I don't remember all the details, maybe he checked the mechanisms I think and just give it cursory glance and that would be it.

STAFF COUNSEL. Did he check, pick it up and check the weight to see if it, how heavy the rifle was?

RAY. I think he just said this was, this will do or something of that order.

STAFF COUNSEL. When you say he checked the mechanism, how did he check the mechanism?

RAY. I don't recall, see I don't, I don't have the least idea on what the mechanism was all about.

STAFF COUNSEL. Well he took it out, did he take it out of the box?

RAY. Ah, yes I think it was in the box, yes.

STAFF COUNSEL. And he took it out of the box?

RAY. Yes, it was taken, it was taken out of the box and looked at yes.

STAFF COUNSEL. Now he did that, Raoul?

STAFF COUNSEL. Did you lift it and check the weight and check the sight and look through the magnifying mechanism?

RAY. No, I, no the only time I looked at it, and I looked at it quite a bit when I first purchased it. I wanted to try to give the guy the impression that I knew what I was doing. But after that I never did touch it. There was never any touching of the sights or checking the mechanism or anything like that.

STAFF COUNSEL. From the time you purchased that rifle in Aeromarine, that was the last time that you touched the rifle?

RAY. Ah, yes, I would say so.

STAFF COUNSEL. And then after that Raoul picked up the rifle and checked it out at, at the motel in Birmingham, is that right?

STAFF COUNSEL. And then how did it get back into the package?

RAY. Well he must of put it there.

STAFF COUNSEL. And then he left the package with you?

RAY. Yes. (144)

He mentioned that if he were not in a room at the South Main Street address when I arrived he would be in a bar and grill located on the ground floor of the building .... (149)

Chairman STOKES. Well, when you got there you didn't know whether he had taken a room in the name of John Willard or not then, did you?

Mr. RAY. No, I didn't know whether he had or not.

Chairman STOKES. And you didn't inquire, did you?

Mr. RAY. No, I didn't make any inquiries.

Chairman STOKES. So you just went right in, furnished your name as John Willard and got a room, even though he might have still been there already ahead of you and gotten that room?

Mr. RAY. He very well could have, yes. (151)

...it was a matter of standard operating procedure for record of arrest to be filed with respect to each person who was diagnosed by a staff physician to be dangerous to himself or others and to be in need of admission for psychiatric treatment.

...the judicial commitment of Grace E. Walden was handled no differently than hundreds of other judicial commitments handled by me over my 13-year tenure. (175)

The treatment and medication afforded Walden were, in general consistent with her diagnosis and fell well within the acceptable standard of psychiatric care. In addition, according to an examination of her records, Walden's medical history was consistent with her subsequent diagnosis. (180)

The numerous conflicting descriptions of what she saw or did not see on April 4, 1968;

The evidence indicating there was nothing sinister in her commitment to John Gaston or Western State hospitals; and

That her commitment was in no way related to her role as a possible witness in the King assassination investigation;

• Irreconcilable conflicts of interest of Foreman and Hanes
• Foreman's failure to investigate the case
• Coercion by Foreman and the Federal Government
• Ray's belief a guilty plea would not preclude a new trial

The COURT. You are entering a plea of guilty to murder in the first degree as charged in the indictment as a compromise and settling your case on an agreed punishment of 99 years in the State penitentiary. Is that what you want to do?

ANSWER. Yes, I do.

The COURT. Is this what you want to do?

ANSWER. Yes, sir.

The COURT. Do you understand that you are waiving which means you are giving up a formal trial by your plea of guilty although the laws of this State require the prosecution to present certain evidence to a jury in all cases on pleas of guilty to murder in the first degree by your plea of guilty you are also waiving [the court explains Ray's rights in great detail] ...Has anything besides this sentence of 99 years in the penitentiary been promised to you to plead guilty? Has anything else been promised to you by anyone?

ANSWER. No, it has not.

The COURT. Has any pressure of any kind by anyone in any way been used on you to get you to plead guilty?

ANSWER. No, no one in any way.

The COURT. Are you pleading guilty to murder in the first degree in this case because you killed Dr. Martin Luther King under circumstances that would make you legally guilty of murder in the first degree under the law as explained to you by your lawyer?

ANSWER. Yes, legally yes.

The COURT. Is this plea of guilty to murder in the first degree with an agreed punishment of 99 years in the State penitentiary free, voluntarily and understandingly made and entered by you?

The COURT. Is this plea of guilty on your part the free act of your free will made with your full knowledge and understanding of its meaning and consequences?

ANSWER. Yes, sir. (188) 23

Considering "all of the relevant circumstances" surrounding Ray's plea ...we agree with the district court that the plea was entered voluntarily and knowingly. As stated, Judge Battle very carefully questioned Ray as to the voluntariness of his plea before it was accepted on March 10, 1969. Ray specifically denied at that time that anyone had pressured him to plead guilty .... (197)

Irreconcilable conflicts of interest involving his attorneys, Percy Foreman and Arthur Hanes, Sr.;

Inadequate investigation by Foreman, Ray's chief defense counsel at the time of the guilty plea; Mental coercion exerted by Foreman and the Federal Government to force Ray to plead guilty; and Ray's belief that his guilty plea would not preclude his ability to secure a subsequent trial.

That the FBI threatened to have his father arrested and returned to a prison he had escaped from 40 years earlier; (249)

That the FBI burglarized the home of his sister, Carol Pepper; (250)

That his brother, John Ray, had been sentenced to 18 years for bank robbery, an excessive sentence compared to those of his codefendants; (251)

That Foreman told him that his brother, Jerry Ray, would be arrested and charged with conspiracy in the assassination if Ray did not plead guilty; (252) and That Foreman tried to induce members of Ray's family to convince him he should plead guilty. (253)

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My Life in the Aftermath of Martin Luther King’s Assassination

The last time Martin phoned me, on the day of his assassination, the call came into my office in New York. I knew him so well that I figured I could anticipate the purpose for his call. He was in Memphis with Andrew Young and the Reverend Billy Kyles, going over the details of his schedule. I expected that he wanted to make sure he knew exactly when I’d be arriving in town to assist him. It was a matter of logistics—clerical stuff, really—and I was buried in other work. I shouted to my secretary, “Tell him I’ll be there on time.”

“You don’t want to speak with Dr. King?” she asked.

Not really; I’d had this conversation many times before. “Just let him know I need someone to pick me up at the airport. I’ll be there on time.”

And thus, I missed my chance at goodbye.

Later, a verse from the Book of Matthew would repeat itself in my mind: “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ ”

Martin did the most for the least. And everything we did for him was the least we could do. The day after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy , I had met Martin at LaGuardia Airport. He had stepped out of the jetway, shaking his head. “See, if they can kill the President of the United States, Clarence, then you and all the others might as well stop worrying about the fantasy that I can be protected,” he had said.

We didn’t ever stop worrying, but he was right.

February, 1968, was rough for the city of Memphis, Tennessee. On the first of the month, two members of the mostly Black Local 1733 of the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees were crushed to death in the faulty trash compactor of their own garbage truck. Two weeks later, the union members staged a work stoppage, protesting the city’s lack of urgency in dealing with outdated equipment and dangerous working conditions. Before long, by the city’s count, nine hundred and thirty of a thousand and one hundred sanitation workers and two hundred and fourteen of two hundred and thirty sewage and drainage workers refused to show up for work. Garbage piled up in the streets, and the mayor, the stubborn former head of the Department of Public Works (a role in which he had overseen sanitation workers), was not interested in negotiation. He brought in white strikebreakers, and the animus intensified.

Dr. King wanted to go to Memphis in support of Local 1733. I opposed the idea—not on principle but because I had already scheduled several meetings that month in Manhattan to broker introductions with generous donors, introductions that Martin had repeatedly asked me to arrange. Moreover, the relationship between the striking African American garbage workers and the city of Memphis had become increasingly bitter.

Roy Wilkins, the executive director of the N.A.A.C.P. ; Bayard Rustin; and Billy Kyles convinced Martin that his presence in Memphis would be invaluable to the cause. So he went. On March 18th, he marched with the sanitation workers, and he planned to march with them again four days later, but the union postponed its second demonstration because of an unseasonable snowstorm. On the 28th, the workers resumed their march. This time, riots erupted. Amid the tumult, a police officer shot and killed Larry Payne, an unarmed sixteen-year-old boy. In the wake of that horror, the mayor called in the National Guard.

Martin showed no signs of leaving Memphis anytime soon, but I needed to prep him for the meetings, so I planned a trip to Memphis myself. My flight was scheduled to land in the evening of April 4, 1968. I was packing for the trip when my home phone rang. I was running late, and though my first impulse was to ignore the call, I answered.

Harry Belafonte was on the line. “I can’t talk now,” I told him. “I’m jumping in a cab for the airport.”

“Turn on the TV,” Harry said, “Martin’s been shot.” He hung up the phone.

I turned on the television that I kept in the bedroom. Walter Cronkite was reporting breaking news that echoed Harry’s words. “Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., has been shot,” Cronkite said.

I was stunned. I picked up the phone again and started calling my contacts in Memphis. One after another, every line was busy. A cold resignation swept through me. They finally got him.

I managed to reach Harry by phone again. “Am I getting on the plane?” I asked. We discussed the possibility, and we agreed that I could do more from my home, coördinating with our colleagues in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (S.C.L.C.), some of whom were in Memphis, but most of whom were still in Atlanta.

In the following hours, I was lost in the daze that often accompanies a sudden death. There was so much to be done. A practiced responsibility guided my movements, and my mind was occupied with plans and logistics, displacing grief. I tried to help from New York, making calls and introductions, responding to press inquiries. But it quickly became apparent that I needed to be down South, so Stanley Levison and I travelled to Atlanta to meet up with Harry.

The next few days were a tangle of duties and obligations.

There wasn’t a moment to waste on reflection. I held myself steady, assisting the family in planning the funeral, along with Harry and Stanley. Both men had long offered such stalwart support in Martin’s life and work—one, out front, the other, in the shadows—and here, at the end, they did everything they could to continue that legacy.

Together, the three of us tried to unburden Martin’s widow, Coretta, as much as possible. The Kings’ living room in Atlanta doubled as a command post. Planning the funeral was an enormous undertaking: there were questions about controlling the crowd, managing the media frenzy, selecting the pallbearers, deciding who might preside over the service itself. We were even worried about the safety of the funeral party and mourners—my friend Martin was a much more divisive figure during his lifetime than the man memorialized on library buildings and freeways today. In fact, the racist governor of Georgia refused to let Martin’s body lie in state, and he even kept the flag flying at full staff, until a federal mandate ordered him to lower it.

One day, Xernona Clayton, a Black female journalist and a member of the S.C.L.C., came to the house holding a bundle of clothes. She had gone to a store downtown, to pick out some outfits for Coretta so that she would have appropriate clothing to wear in the next few days and, of course, to Martin’s funeral. She had left the store with the bill unpaid, promising to return, she told us. Harry, Stanley, and I all took out our cards and handed them to Xernona, telling her to split the charges up among all three. “And, if there’s any problem,” I told her, “have the clerks call here for approval.”

Coretta liked the selection, and Xernona returned to the store to pay for them. We didn’t hear from anyone, and when Xernona returned, she gave us back our cards. The shopkeeper had refused payment, wanting to support the King family in their time of grief, Xernona said.

The day before the funeral, I received a call from William vanden Heuvel, a good friend of mine and a close friend to the Kennedy family. He told me that he was calling on behalf of Jacqueline Kennedy . The former First Lady would be attending the funeral, and she wanted to visit Coretta beforehand. Bill and I coördinated the details, and, on the eve of the funeral, I met Mrs. Kennedy at the door, escorting her into the private area off the dining room where Coretta had been spending most of her time.

“Coretta,” I said. “I have someone who wants to give her condolences.” The world’s second most famous widow turned to face the first. It was certainly no pleasure, but it was a surreal kind of honor to introduce two of America’s most prominent victims of political violence to each other.

In the days after the funeral, I returned to New York and tried to resume my work. With the planning behind me, I struggled to ignore a question that resurfaced in my mind again and again: Can you really live in a country that allowed something like this to happen?

I tried to reckon with the bitter heartbreak, but I fell short.

Soon, I began refusing some calls from the S.C.L.C. On other occasions, I called people there, and my messages went unreturned. As the weeks passed, I began to see my relationship with the movement differently: although I knew I had been inspired by Dr. King, I had never really understood—until circumstances forced me to understand—that I was really working only for the man. Dr. King had sculpted the S.C.L.C. mission, and I believed in that mission. But the nature of things became clear: the S.C.L.C. was an organization, not much better than most organizations, rife with ego, posturing, sabotage, blame, angst over employment and salary and status. In short, it was a group of people—well-intentioned as they might have been—who acted as people do when they are at work. Some organizations succeed at the nuts-and-bolts level, and others are meant to rise or fall with a “key man.” In the case of the S.C.L.C., Martin was the magic.

And, within the grander scope of the civil-rights movement, Martin had his enemies: those who were jealous of his influence, his presence on the national stage. And I was his man. Now persona non grata. Fine with me. I became so angry, I lost all interest in the S.C.L.C. version of the movement. There was nothing anybody could do. I was tired of giving and getting nowhere. I pulled away, retreating north, where I felt I really belonged, to a life that I decided would be more self-centered.

A return to form, I suppose.

I also believed that the American government had allowed Martin’s death to happen. His shift in focus—from demanding desegregation to demanding economic parity and an end to the unjust slaughter overseas—had led to his assassination. If worrying about Black folks, in 1963, made him the most dangerous Negro leader in the country, just imagine what the government thought of him by the time he was at Riverside Church, criticizing the President of the United States over the war in Vietnam .

Throughout the summer of 1968, I strongly considered becoming a militant. I could imagine taking up arms against the government. If you could do this to Martin King, who stood for nothing but peace and dignity, if you could bring your copper-jacketed tools of destruction and oppression to bear on such a man, maybe I’ll do the same thing to you. Why not join the Black Panthers ? Why not learn to make a bomb? Why not arm myself to the teeth and burn the whole motherfucker down?

In 2015, I met with James Comey , then the director of the F.B.I., for an hour in his office in Washington, D.C. We spoke about many things, including the assassination. He showed me what was beneath the glass on his desk: a photocopy of a memorandum from the former F.B.I. director J. Edgar Hoover , requesting authorization from Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to wiretap Dr. King, and Kennedy’s authorization to do so. Comey kept a copy in plain sight, he said, so that, when his agents visited him in the office, they could be reminded of what the F.B.I. should not do.

I thought of Martin’s funeral. The procession stretched three miles long; the casket was placed on the back of a farm wagon pulled by mules. The eulogy was Martin’s own voice, prerecorded, delivering a sermon on how he should be remembered—asking that no one mention awards and honors but only the simple good he tried to do.

Mahalia Jackson, always Martin’s favorite, sang “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.” Later, there was a chorus of “We Shall Overcome.”

I didn’t think we would. Not this time.

There is a color picture from the funeral that I come across occasionally: Harry Belafonte, eyes rimmed red, right next to Coretta at Martin’s funeral. Fifty-five years have passed since that day; Martin’s been dead much longer than he was ever alive, and Harry died in April, never taking enough credit for the work that he did for the cause. And then here I am, nearing the age of ninety-three: the only one of the three left standing.

In time, I’ve come to terms with the assassination, but I’ve never come to peace with it. For years, my grief made me selfish and self-destructive. Long gone are the days when I considered domestic terrorism, but the pain still runs as deep now as it did then. After some time, I realized that to turn my back on the struggle would be to turn my back on Dr. King.

I never worked with the S.C.L.C. again, but I did get involved in politics, becoming a New York State delegate at the 1968 Democratic Convention. In the early seventies, I invested in one of America’s oldest and most influential Black papers, the New York Amsterdam News , and I tried to protect prisoner rights as a negotiator during the Attica uprising. I did my best to elevate Black culture, working to restore Harlem’s Apollo Theatre and build a network of Black radio stations.

And I’ve continued to bear witness to Martin’s life and character. There’s an African saying that I often reflect upon when I think about his legacy and my own part in his movement: if the surviving lions don’t tell their stories, the hunters will take all the credit. ♦

This is drawn from “ Last of the Lions . ”

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
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The Event, Key Dates, and Description Key Individuals Involved

Public opinion of the event, effects of the event.

Martin Luther King Jr. was the leader of the civil rights movement in the United States. He led the fight for civil rights by example, speaking to the public and organizing massive peaceful protests. Despite the arrest and imprisonment of King Jr.’s direct killer, James Earl Ray, the potential sponsors of the murder have never been identified. It is logical to assume that these were people who had power and who were against the changes that the victory of the civil rights movement promised.

Of the 10% of Minnesota survey participants who felt guilty or responsible, 68% said that whites or they themselves did not do enough to address racial issues and improve conditions for the Negroes (“Assassination Nation,” 2018). Another 27% believed that all whites were responsible for the situation because of the prejudice and acts of racial discrimination prevailing in society. Survey participants who did not consider themselves involved, guilty or responsible for King’s death stated that “no involvement with assassination or with Negro problem is general” (28%), “I am not prejudiced against Negroes, have supported civil rights” (23 %), and “King’s (Negroes’) own fault was just stirring up trouble” (11%) (“Assassination Nation,” 2018, par. 5).

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. dealt a blow to the ideology of nonviolence and love that underpinned King’s philosophy and which he sought to make basic ideas for the civil rights movement. Congress for Mass Equality Director Floyd McKissick made the famous speech on the night after King’s assassination that “racial equality is a dead philosophy because it was killed by white racists” (Love, 2021, par. 7). Some civil rights advocates such as Stokely Carmichael suggested that the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., who encouraged the movement for nonviolent marches and tried to teach the people to show love and compassion, made a big mistake. According to Carmichael, in this way, the killers declared war on the members of the movement, among whom there were no others like Martin Luther King Jr.

Assassination Nation: Public Responses to King and Kennedy in 1968 . (2018). Web.

Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr . (2021). Web.

Love, D. (2021). What impact did King’s assassination have on the Black community? Web.

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IvyPanda. (2022, October 29). Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination. https://ivypanda.com/essays/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-assassination/

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IvyPanda . 2022. "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination." October 29, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-assassination/.

1. IvyPanda . "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination." October 29, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-assassination/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination." October 29, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/dr-martin-luther-king-jr-assassination/.

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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and its Impact

The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Its Impact

by Megan Bernth with Kyle Novak

The life, ideas, and achievements of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. enter the curriculum during an examination of the African American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s or if a school commemorates his birthday or Black History Month. Reverend King’s impact on the United States continued after he was assassinated on April 4, 1968 because his ideas lived on and his achievements continued to influence people. His assassination also contributed to the racial divide in the United States, as African American communities exploded in anger. The material in this curriculum package focuses on the immediate response to his murder, testimonials and rioting, controversy about his killer, and King’s long-term legacy. Material in the package includes photographs, videos, quotes, and compelling questions. As a culminating activity, the students read three quotes statements by Reverend King that discuss his ideas of nonviolence and passive civil resistance, compare them to examples of contemporary protests, and consider the implications of Reverend King’s ideas for today.

Background: In early April of 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was visiting Memphis, Tennessee to support a sanitation workers’ strike. He had faced mounting criticisms from young Blacks who thought his nonviolent attitude was doing their cause a disservice. It was because of these criticisms he had begun moving his support beyond blacks to all poor Americans and those who opposed the Vietnam War. While standing on a balcony the evening of April 4, a sniper shot and killed him. James Earl Ray was eventually arrested and convicted of the crime.

Martin Luther King Is Slain in Memphis; A White is Suspected; Johnson Urges Calm

By Early Caldwell, New York Times , April 5, 1968, p. 1

Memphis, Friday, April 5 – The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who preached nonviolence and racial brotherhood, was fatally shot here last night by a distant gunman who raced away and escaped. Four thousand National Guard troops were ordered into Memphis by Gov. Buford Ellington after the 39-year-old Nobel Prize-winning civil rights leader died. A curfew was imposed on the shocked city of 550,000 inhabitants, 40 per cent of whom are Negro. But the police said the tragedy had been followed by incidents that included sporadic shooting, fires, bricks and bottles thrown at policemen, and looting that started in Negro districts and then spread over the city.

Police Director Frank Holloman said the assassin might have been a white man who was “50 to 100 yards away in a flophouse.” Chief of Detectives W.P. Huston said a late model white Mustang was believed to have been the killer’s getaway car. Its occupant was described as a bareheaded white man in his 30’s, wearing a black suit and black tie.

A high-powered 30.06-caliber rifle was found about a block from the scene of the shooting, on South Main Street. “We think it’s the gun,” Chief Huston said, reporting it would be turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Dr. King was shot while he leaned over a second-floor railing outside his room at the Lorraine Motel. He was chatting with two friends just before starting for dinner. Paul Hess, assistant administrators at St. Joseph’s Hospital, where Dr. King died despite emergency surgery, said the minister had “received a gunshot wound of the right side of the neck, at the root of the neck, a gaping wound.” In a television broadcast after the curfew was ordered here, Mr. Holloman said, “rioting has broken out in parts of the city” and “looting is rampant.” Dr. King had come back to Memphis Wednesday morning to organize support once again for 1,300 sanitation workers who have been striking since Lincoln’s Birthday. Just a week ago yesterday he led a march in the strikers’ cause that ended in violence. A 16-year-old Negro was killed, 62 persons were injured and 200 were arrested.

Policemen were pouring into the motel area, carrying rifles and shotguns and wearing helmets. But the King aides said it seemed to be 10 or 15 minutes before a fire Department ambulance arrived. Dr. King was apparently still living when he reached the St. Joseph’s Hospital, operating room for emergency surgery. He was borne in on a stretcher, the bloody towel over his head. It was the same emergency room to which James H. Meredith, first Negro enrolled at the University of Mississippi, was taken after he was ambushed and shot in June 1965, at Hernando, Miss., a few miles south of Memphis; Mr. Meredith was not seriously hurt.

• What does the New York Times report in the headline?
• How is Dr. King described in the article?
• In your opinion, why did cities declare curfews following Dr. King’s assassination?
• Why was Dr. King in Memphis?

President’s Plea, On TV, He Deplores “Brutal” Murder of Negro Leader

New York Times , April 5, 1968, p. 1

President Johnson deplored tonight in a brief television address to the nation the “brutal slaying” of the Re. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He asked “every citizen to reject the blind violence that has struck Dr. King, who lived by nonviolence.” Mr. Johnson said he was postponing his scheduled departure tonight for a Honolulu conference on Vietnam and that instead he would leave tomorrow. The President spoke from the White House. At the Washington Hilton Hotel, where Democratic members of Congress had gathered to honor the President and Vice President, Mr. Humphrey, his voice strained with emotion, said: “Martin Luther King stands with other American martyrs in the cause of freedom and justice. His death is a terrible tragedy.”

• How did President Johnson react to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.?
• Why did Vice President Humphrey describe Dr. King as one of the “American martyrs in the cause of freedom and justice”?

A Conversation with Dr. King

• Where do the ideas of non-violent civil disobedience come from?

“From the beginning a basic philosophy guided the (civil rights) movement. This guiding principle has since been referred to variously as non-violent resistance, non-cooperation, and passive resistance. But in the first days of protest none of these expressions were mentioned; the phrase most often heard was “Christian love.” . . . It was Jesus of Nazareth that stirred the Negroes to protest with the creative weapon of love. As the days unfolded, however, the inspiration of Mahatma Gandhi (a leader in the struggle for independence in India) began to exert its influence. I had come to see early that the Christian doctrine of love operating through the Gandhian method of nonviolence was of the most potent (powerful) weapons available to the Negro in his struggle for freedom.”

• When is civil disobedience necessary?

“There is nothing wrong with a traffic law which says you have to stop for a red light. But when a fire is raging the fire truck goes right through that red light, and normal traffic had better get out of the way. Or, when a man is bleeding to death, the ambulance goes through those red lights at top speed . . . Massive civil disobedience is a strategy for social change which is at least as forceful as an ambulance with its siren on full.”

• Why do you choose non-violent resistance over violence?

“To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system… Non-cooperation with evil is as much an obligation as is cooperation with good. Violence often brings about momentary results . . . But . . . It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.”

• There was a wave of rioting in African American communities following the assassination of Dr. King. In your opinion, what would Dr. King have said to the rioters if he were alive?
• As you learn about the riots that followed the assassination of Dr. King, consider: Were the riots a legitimate response to King’s assassination?
• In your opinion, what has been the impact of the assassination of Dr. King and the riots that followed on American society?

Race Riots following the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (April 5-9, 1968)

Background: In the week following the death of Dr. King, riots broke out across the country. It is important to note that while Dr. King’s death may have sparked the riots, the long-standing history of racial tensions and conflicts had created an environment where violent protests were widely accepted in the wake of King’s assassination. President Johnson urged Americans to “reject the blind violence” that had killed King. Despite the President’s pleas, violence erupted and tens of thousands of National Guard, military and police officers were called on to quell the riots. By the end of the week, more than 21,000 were arrested and 2,600 injured, with 39 dead. With economic damages estimated to reach at least $65 million, entire areas and communities were destroyed. Of the 125 cities affected, Washington, Chicago and Baltimore were three that stand out amongst the rest.

Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TZ_5FmnSMs

Washington D.C.

Eyewitness to the Riot

Virginia Ali (a black woman who owned a restaurant with her husband in Washington): “I remember the sadness more than anything else. The radio stations were playing hymns, and people were coming in crying. People were out of control with anger and sadness and frustration. They broke into the liquor store across the street and were coming out with bottles of Courvoisier. They had no money, these youngsters. They were coming into the Chili Bowl saying, “Could you just give us a chili dog or a chili half smoke? We’ll give you this.”

George Pelecanos (an eleven-year-old black boy living in Washington): “The biggest mistake on the administrative side was not closing the schools and the government on Friday. Fourteenth Street had burned down, and officials thought it was over. But overnight, people all over the city had started talking about what was going to happen the next day. It got around by what they called the ghetto telegraph – the stoop, the barbershops, the telephones. Very early  in the morning, the teachers and school administrators started freaking out because the students were out of control – they just started to walk out. People realized: This isn’t over. It’s just beginning, and we have to get out of here.”

• Describe the scenes shown in the video. Which scene is the most powerful? Why?
• How are the rioters portrayed in the video?
• How do the people interviewed remember the riot forty years later?
• According to Georg Pelecanos , what was the biggest mistake by authorities?
• In your opinion, does Ali’s quote provide a possible explanation for the riots?
• After examining the video, the quotes, and the photographs, which source do you think provides the most accurate representation of the riots? Why?

Baltimore, Maryland

Ruby Glover (a Jazz singer and administrator at Johns Hopkins Hospital) – “It looked like everything was on fire. It appeared that everything that we loved and adored and enjoyed was just being destroyed. It was just hideous.”

James  Bready (editorial writer for the Evening Sun) – “We drove along North Avenue, and I remember seeing kids running along from store to store with lighted torches to touch them off. But nobody ever tried to stop the car or interfere with us. I think black people felt release after generations of ‘You mustn’t do this, you mustn’t go there, you can’t say that or think that.’ Suddenly, the lid was off.”

Tommy D’Alesandro (mayor of Baltimore during the riots) – “There was hurt within the black community that they were not getting their fair share. We were coming from a very segregated city during the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s – and it was still a segregated atmosphere.”

• How does Ruby Glover remember the riots?
• What is James Bready’s explanation for the riots?
• What is Tommy D’Alesandro’s explanation for the Baltimore riots?

Chicago, Illinois

• What does Richard Barnett believe is a positive outcome of these events?
• What is the “ragged adolescent army” described by Ben Heineman?
• What does Mrs. Dorsey accuse the police of doing?

Trenton, New Jersey

Carmen Armenti (mayor of Trenton during the riots): “This was something that was simmering in black communities for a while before our disturbances. It was not an easy time to be a public official. They were not good economic times, and there was high unemployment among African-Americans and a multitude of other frustrations for black people. Keeping the lid on racial strife was the top political priority in those days.”

Tom Murphy (a young police officer in Trenton): “I’ll never forget that scene as long as I live. They were really whacking them at us. The golf balls were hitting guys and smashing car windshields. You had to dive for cover. They ran him [another police office] over with a truck. He was lucky it had those high wheels like the ones on the SUVs we have today. If it was a car it would have killed him, but he only got hit in the head with that ‘pumpkin’ for the axle in the back of the truck.”

• Why does Mayor Armenti say “it was not a good time to be a public official”?
• How is Murphy’s account of the riots different from others we have read?
• How are events portrayed in The Trentonian ?

New York City and Buffalo, New York

Mayor John Lindsay: “It especially depends on the determination of the young men of this city to respect our laws and the teachings of the martyr, Martin Luther King. We can work together again for progress and peace in this city and this nation, for now I believe we are ready to scale the mountain from which Dr. King saw the promised land.”

Michele Martin (A young African American girl during the 1968 riot in conversation with her FDNY father): “Why is this happening?” “They killed King.” “Why is the supermarket on fire?” They’re mad.” “Why are they mad?” “Because they killed King.” “Why can’t we go out and play?” “There’s too much going on. Maybe when things calm down.”

David Garth (Mayoral press aide): “There was a mob so large it went across 125 th Street from storefront to storefront. My life is over. He [Lindsay] had no written speech. No prepared remarks. He just held up his hand and said, ‘this is a terrible thing,’ He just calmed people, and then this gigantic wave stared marching down 125 th Street, and somehow Lindsay was leading it.”

False Rumors Raise City’s Fears; Racial Unrest Exaggerated April 6, 1968, New York Times , pg. 1

Mayor, Quoting King, Urges Racial Peace Here; Lindsay Calls on Negroes in City to Follow Doctrine of Using Love to Fight Hate April 6, 1968, New York Times , pg. 26

VIOLENCE ERUPTS IN BUFFALO AREA; Looting and Fire Reported in Negro East Side  April 9, 1968, New York Times , pg. 36

• Why did Mayor Lindsay walk the streets and discuss the “young men of the city”?
• In your opinion, why did Michele Martin’s father offer such simple answers?
• How did David Garth feel when he and the mayor faced the rioters?

Senator Robert Kennedy Speaks to the Nation

After the assassination of Reverend King, Senator Robert Kennedy interrupted his Presidential campaign to address the nation. An audio version of the speech is available on the website of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

Source: https://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/RFK-Speeches/Statement-on-the-Assassination-of-Martin-Luther-King.aspx

(A) I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight. Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black–considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible–you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization–black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.

(B) Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love. For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times. My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: “In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

(C) What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black. So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that’s true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love–a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times; we’ve had difficult times in the past; we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; it is not the end of disorder.

(D) But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land. Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.

• What information does Senator Kennedy report”?
• In paragraph “B”, how does Kennedy suggest the country heal in this difficult time?
• According to Senator Kennedy, what did the United States need at this time?
• How did Senator Kennedy try to present a message of hope?

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✯ ✯ ✯ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ✯ ✯ ✯ His Life and Legacy

Martin Luther King Jr. dedicated his life to the nonviolent struggle for civil rights in the United States. King's leadership played a pivotal role in ending entrenched segregation for African Americans and to the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, considered a crowning achievement of the civil rights era. King was assassinated in 1968, but his words and legacy continue to resonate for all those seeking justice in the United States and around the world. As King said at the Washington National Cathedral on March 31, 1968, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

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Martin Luther King Jr.

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Playlist: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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Martin Luther King Papers

The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume V : Threshold of a New Decade, January 1959–December 1960

The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume VII : To Save the Soul of America, January 1961–August 1962

The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume III : Birth of a New Age, December 1955-December 1956

The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume I : Called to Serve, January 1929-June 1951

The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume VI : Advocate of the Social Gospel, September 1948–March 1963

The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume IV : Symbol of the Movement, January 1957-December 1958

The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume II : Rediscovering Precious Values, July 1951 - November 1955

The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.: a Turning Point in American History

This essay about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. explores the significant impact of his death on the civil rights movement and American society. It recounts the events of April 4, 1968, when King was killed in Memphis, Tennessee, and the immediate reaction of grief and violence across the United States. The essay discusses the political consequences, including the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, and the fragmentation of the civil rights movement following King’s death. It highlights King’s lasting legacy, his philosophy of nonviolence, and the continued relevance of his vision for equality and justice in addressing contemporary issues of racism and social injustice.

How it works

In addition to shocking the entire world with his untimely death, Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination on April 4, 1968, marked a turning point in American history and had a profound effect on the nation’s collective consciousness. King was well-known for his leadership and support of nonviolent resistance, and he dedicated his life to fighting racial injustice and inequality.

In spite of his confession, a number of conspiracy theories have persisted over the years, suggesting that King’s assassination was part of a larger, more sinister plot.

On that fateful evening, King was shot and died while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The African American sanitation workers were on strike against unfair treatment and poor working conditions. King’s presence in Memphis was evidence of his commitment to fighting for the rights of the oppressed, regardless of the personal risks involved. The assassin, James Earl Ray, was apprehended two months later and found guilty of the murder.

Much grief and indignation followed King’s assassination; riots and violent outbursts occurred in cities across the nation as African Americans let out their anger and frustration over the death of their leader and the injustices they still had to live with; the federal government responded by deploying the National Guard to restore order, highlighting the high level of tension that existed between the state and the black community.

In addition, King’s death had significant political ramifications: President Lyndon B. Johnson urged Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1968, also called the Fair Housing Act, which attempted to eradicate housing discrimination. Although the act was viewed as a memorial to King’s legacy and a significant step toward addressing systemic racism, it did not immediately quell the unrest because many people thought that King’s vision of equality and justice had not yet been fully realized.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination had a profound long-term impact on the civil rights movement. While the movement had already advanced significantly with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, King’s death left a leadership void that was difficult to fill. The movement gradually became more fragmented, with different factions advocating for different strategies to achieve racial equality. Some groups, frustrated with the violence and lack of progress, began to adopt more militant stances, deviating from King’s nonviolent philosophy.

As the civil rights movement expanded to address issues like mass incarceration, police brutality, and economic inequality, King’s vision of a “beloved community,” where people of all races and backgrounds could live in harmony, served as a beacon for those who persisted in their quest for a more just and equitable society. King’s legacy endured, inspiring new generations of activists despite the immediate obstacles. His stirring speeches and unshakable dedication to justice served as a moral compass for later social justice movements.

In addition, King’s assassination underscored the need for ongoing dialogue and action to address racial disparities in America, serving as a stark reminder that the fight for civil rights was far from over and that true equality required constant effort and vigilance. King’s message of love, tolerance, and nonviolence remains relevant today as the nation grapples with issues of systemic racism and social injustice.

In conclusion, as we reflect on the significance of King’s life and work, we are reminded of the importance of tenacity, bravery, and compassion in the ongoing civil rights movement. The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. exposed long-standing racial tensions in the United States and served as a catalyst for the ongoing fight for equality and justice. King’s legacy will always be a source of inspiration and a call to action for anyone who believes in the potential for a more just world and the power of nonviolence.

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• Starting Points

The Martin Luther King Assassination: Missing Pieces

by Larry Hancock & Stuart Wexler, 18 May 2009

A key factor in the investigation of Dr. King’s murder was the practice of Director Hoover and the Bureau to quickly focus FBI efforts on the physical evidence from the scene of the crime. In one sense, such a policy is perfectly understandable - it directs the resources and assets of the Bureau towards establishing the body of evidence which will be used in the prosecution of the criminal case. It also maximizes the resources available at the national FBI crime laboratories. And establishing such a body of evidence is, after all, one of the primary missions of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Perhaps the most dramatic example of such practice can be seen in the murder of President Kennedy, where we find open ended instructions issued to all FBI field offices to approach contacts and informants and begin checking suspect groups as of the afternoon of the assassination – and find those instructions canceled the following morning, directing all proactive FBI investigation towards Lee Harvey Oswald.

In the case of the King murder, with no suspect in custody, the Bureau spent the better part of two weeks initiating inquiries on the whereabouts and activities of probable suspects and beginning investigation of early leads provided by the public. Much of this attention was directed towards Klan members and militants known to have been involved in or having incited racial violence. We now have documents available which discuss a series of individuals who were investigated during the first 48-72 hours, many of them members and associates of the White Knights of Mississippi.

Once evidence had been processed which linked James Earl Ray to the crime, the Bureau’s proactive work became totally focused on Ray and individuals who were known to have been in contact with him, primarily his brothers. Leads which continued to come into the Bureau continued to be examined on the basis that others might have been involved in a conspiracy but such leads were closed relatively quickly if the suspect had no obvious or immediate association with Ray or if the individual could be shown not to have been in Memphis at the hour of the shooting.

This focus on Ray is illustrated in the handling of a lead which had been forwarded to the Justice Department from Miami immediately after the assassination. Dade County (Miami) Judge Seymour Gelber had written the U.S. Attorney General, suggesting that an investigation should be made of three men who had been involved in racial violence and a plot against Dr. King in 1964. The report contained several names and discussed the individuals’ involvement in the integration confrontations at the University of Mississippi, the possibility that the individuals might have been involved in instigating the 16th Street Church bombing in Birmingham and involved in plans to kill Dr. King in Alabama. One of the individuals had reportedly become so “hot” in Alabama at the time that he had to leave the state.[1]

That lead was forwarded to the relevant Bureau field offices and they did begin work on a background investigation of the individuals, including an attempt to determine where each had been the day of Dr. King’s murder. However, while that investigation was just getting underway, the field offices received an advisory message from Director Hoover. That message ordered that the background ID checks and as well as the overall investigation be held in abeyance. The reason given was that as of April 15th, the identification of a print from Memphis had been made and all general leads not dealing with that suspect were to be put on hold.[2] Placing such leads on hold, the closing of leads which showed no immediate evidence of suspects being in Memphis at the time of the murder or having personal contact with Ray, and the failure to correlate similar leads pointing to the same individuals may well have played a major role in the failure of the Bureau to surface a conspiracy which was indeed associated with Dr. King’s death in Memphis.

Neither the FBI nor the House Select Committee on Assassinations seemed able to conceive of a conspiracy involving people or groups who could effectively compartmentalize their actions. They also seem to have assumed that individuals who might have instigated such an act would have had to personally go to Memphis and be present at the scene of the crime. While the HSCA staff might be forgiven such a mistake, it is clear that individual FBI agents and offices had more than enough painful experience not to underestimate the “inner circle” operations of the Klan in such a fashion. Unfortunately the individuals with the most experience and understanding of the sophistication of such operations - and most success in breaking into such inner circles -were out in the FBI field offices, not directing the overall investigation. And FBI headquarters had no analysis section.

Within 48 hours of Dr. King’s murder, the FBI had received leads pointing towards White Knights leader Sam Bowers, members of his inner circle, and Klan fellow travelers as having been involved in a conspiracy which had brought about the death of Dr. King.[3] Of course those leads were among hundreds which began coming into the Bureau, but given the history of the White Knights and the Bureau’s own previous three year war against them, it would have seemed any names connected to the White Knights would have been highly suspect and worthy of a truly in-depth investigation.[4] The seriousness of such reports should have been magnified given that the FBI’s own informant and case files contained examples of at least two specific White Knight-connected plots to kill Dr. King, one in Alabama and one in Mississippi.v They also contained solid evidence that they had previously used high profile assassination as a provocation strategy in the Medgar Evers murder, that the White Knights were reported to have a standing high dollar bounty on Dr. King, and that they had recently begun to use totally unknown “outsiders” in terror attacks.

The FBI did follow up on such leads, however each was considered separately and there is no indication of any overall effort to collect or evaluate them in a coordinated fashion. In many cases the investigations appear relatively superficial, especially given that the fact that the Bureau should have been well aware of the actual amount of effort and time required to crack previous White Knight terror acts – they had learned that the hard way in their own massive MIBURN (“Mississippi Burning”) investigation, an investigation which had required hundreds of agents, many months of investigation and the combination of significant pressure and offers of both money and immunity – all targeted towards a single tightly knit radical network in Mississippi.

Analysis and follow-on to the Bureau’s King investigative effort is hindered by the fact that specific FBI interviews, provided to the House Select Committee, were classified and have yet to be released after thirty years. The Committee’s own interviews were then classified in turn. In addition, the vast majority of key FBI personal informant files remain confidential (there is also no indication that those were made available to the individual Bureau field offices in their individual King lead investigations) and we have no insight into the details of key field office files from Memphis, Jackson, Mobile, Atlanta or New Orleans. In our own work on the MLK murder, it has become apparent that a great number of documents and files which could allow a much fuller assessment of possible conspiracy in the murder of Dr. King are available. We have provided the following list to individuals pursuing Congressional action on release of King assassination records and share them with interested researchers as an illustration of what can potentially be done to jump start a common effort to unearth the conspiracy that the House Select Committee was able to characterize - but not to solve:

The Missing Pieces

FBI Central Headquarters HQ Files Sections 1-91, as well as the name index for those files, should be culled and reviewed for declassification with additional files released when found. The most abundant source of publicly available files on the MLK murder (MURKIN) are the FBI Central Headquarters files in the National Archives. At present the publicly available files on Dr. King include a few thousand pages of reports from the FBI’s MURKIN investigation, specifically Central HQ Worksheets, Department of Justice Referrals and Central Headquarters Files Sections 1 to 91. A new review (the last seems to have been in 2004) should commence to declassify material from these documents. A major obstacle to any release are the tightened standards of privacy applied to National Archive files in the past five years. Indeed, archive personnel and notations on finding aids indicate that many files or segments of files deemed suitable for full declassification as of 2005 have since been reclassified. Many sections of files are being held in abeyance, in fact, until archive staff can be sure that names and operations have been redacted from the record. Most notably, a name index that could expedite any researcher’s search of available files is being withheld in full for fear of privacy violations. This, although it is obvious that that many persons named on the list are certainly deceased and even though the name index was available to researchers even six years ago. All of these files should be reviewed for declassification using the latest death indices, and made available to the public. If possible, Congress should consider laws and statutes that would place the King material that was once in the public domain back into the public domain.

The materials from the Congressional investigation in the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. should be placed in the public domain. The House Selection Committee on Assassinations investigated King’s murder in the late 1970s, in conjunction with their more well known analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination. Yet the only material in the public record related to this investigation are those in the final report of the HSCA itself. The report makes clear, in its text and its footnotes, that thousands of new leads were unearthed and interviews were conducted as part of the investigation and none of this material is in the public domain. Experts estimate that 165 cubic square feet of material may be available in this regard. In contrast, virtually all of the HSCA’s investigative material on the Kennedy assassination is publicly available to the tune of millions of documents. Publicly available Kennedy materials include documents obtained from foreign intelligence sources and even the National Security Agency, that would obviously be more sensitive than 99% of the King material, which focused almost exclusively on domestic sources. Congress should release this King material as soon as possible by any means possible.

“Bulky files” on the King Assassination should be available to the public. Bulky files refer to the FBI’s investigation of physical evidence and would include photographs, fingerprint cards, lab reports, etc, sometimes even in original form. There are literally tens of thousands of such items publicly available on the Kennedy Assassination. A new search of the King files at the National Archives reveals a large quantity of bulky material, most notably material likely prepared for visual exhibits at the King trial. On the other hand, the kinds of material available in the Kennedy Assassination - fingerprint cards, autopsy materials, lab notes, suspect photographs, etc. - are virtually absent from the King material although it is obvious, from internal FBI communications, that hundreds of pages of such material should exist. The value of such material in the hands of skilled researchers has been demonstrated by such researchers as John Hunt and Gary Murr in the Kennedy case. The FBI laboratory should search its records for this material and provide it to the public.

All remaining records of the FBI Field Office investigations should be in centralized at the National Archives and reviewed for public access. At present, the National Archives has many boxes of records of the local investigations into various aspects of the King assassination, including records from Los Angeles Field Office, the Birmingham Field Office, the New Orleans Field Offices, and others. The record is incomplete, however, and subject to the same restrictions as those applied to the Central Headquarters files described above. To give one of the most obvious examples of “missing” material: none of the Jackson, Mississippi Field Office files are available at the National Archives. An internal FBI review in 1976, apparently done in anticipation of the future House investigation, revealed that the Jackson office had ~50% more material, in terms of boxes, than any other field office (17 boxes worth.) A reporter is now pursuing some of this material via the Jackson FBI, but this appears to be fewer boxes than that which was identified in the internal review. The next highest source of files from the local level - the Mobile, Alabama Field Office files (11 boxes) - is also nowhere to be found at the National Archives. Many other offices whose files were identified by the FBI review are not represented in the archives stash. Our understanding from talking with former FBI Special Agents is that many of these boxes were sent back to FBI Headquarters, and this appears to be confirmed by reviewing the footnotes of the House Selection Committee on Assassinations. All of these files should be located, centralized, reviewed for declassification using the latest death indices, and made available to the public.

Corollary files identified in the FBI Central Headquarters should be assumed as part of the King record, obtained and reviewed for declassification. The presently available FBI MURKIN (King murder investigation) frequently cited other relevant files - such as personnel and bureau files (BUFILES) on key figures and relevant investigations. The inference is that these files have important if indirect information to shed on the King case, yet none of these files are publicly available. When possible, they should be identified and subject to the same proposed review under the same proposed guidelines as the FBI Headquarters Central Files.

Records of prior investigations of attempted murders/assassinations of Dr. King should be publicly available; this should include past threats as well as overt attempts on Dr. King’s life. The record shows that when the FBI provided the MURKIN files to the public, they only included their investigation from April 4th, 1968 onward, when we know that they investigated prior attempts/threats on King’s life. One example would be the records of the FBI Birmingham Field Office participation in a 1958 sting investigation of a contract killing offer on Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders. This offer was reportedly extended by J.B. Stoner; Stoner would later serve as James Earl Ray’s defense attorney and employed his brother as a security assistant. Another example would be the FBI investigation of a $100,000 bounty offer on Dr. King circulated in several prisons in 1967; we only have fragmentary information from these files even though the files themselves indicate that a major investigation was undertaken. What’s more, some of the information we have is not from the MURKIN files but was obtained by researchers from a general King file. In short, the FBI did not parse out threats on Dr. King’s life out of the King Headquarters file and include them in the MURKIN files; they should do so now.

Intelligence Agency, Military files on Dr. King should be publicly available. It is clear that what we do have from the intelligence agencies and military represent a small fraction of what should be available. This has in part led to sensational claims that these agencies themselves were complicit in King’s murder. Yet much of what they have is likely innocent but relevant to the investigation of any crime. Military files would likely include detailed surveillance and security records for both Dr. King’s Memphis trip as well as past trips. Intelligence Agency files would likely include records related to James Earl Ray’s trips to Canada, to Mexico, to England and to Portugal. A massive review of CIA, NSA, DIA, DEA, Pentagon and other files should commence with the goal of identifying relevant King records and making them available to the public.

The Memphis District Attorney’s office investigatory/prosecution files should be obtained and included in the public record. Investigative journalist Gerald Posner makes clear that the Memphis District Attorney’s office has ample and often original material in their files; material that served as the basis for Posner’s book on the King murder that to which he was given privileged access. This material should be publicly available to everyone. In addition, any court and grand jury transcripts should be publicly available, as they are in the case of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s investigation of the Kennedy Assassination.

Foreign intelligence/police files should be obtained when possible and included in the public record. In the late 1970s, Congress had little success prying material from foreign sources, but what is in the public record suggests that this material is abundant and important. There are signs however that their reticence has dampened with time. The Mexicans, for instance, have created their own FOIA law within the past several years, and an investigative journalist in Canada has obtained a section of files from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that were not previously available. If possible, either a board created to obtain and release records, or a Congressional delegation/representative should consider making an effort to obtain the files of the Mexican DFS, the Canadian Royal Mounted Police, Interpol and Scotland Yard. The files indicate that all four groups conducted their own separate investigations, including one of James Earl Ray before the King murder (in the case of the DFS.) These materials should be pursued as they may prove invaluable to researchers.

Police agency files should be obtained and released to public if possible. The Memphis police were the first law enforcement agency to investigate the King murder and they had a continued role in investigating the case. Less known is the fact that other police agencies, such as the Atlanta police and the Miami police, were an important adjunct to the FBI investigations in their geographic area. Indeed, the Miami police went so far as to send an informant on a cross-country trip to help investigate the case. Additionally, based on FBI documents we also know that there should be a series of relevant files in the Birmingham police records regarding the purchase of the alleged murder weapon in Birmingham. These are just a few of the examples of where police files could provide important information for historians. It would be helpful to, when possible, obtain those materials and make them publicly available.

In summary, it seems clear that one major factor lacking in both the FBI and HSCA investigations of the King murder, was total and comprehensive access to all the field data pertaining to the more credible conspiracy leads and suspects. The lack of a centralized Bureau analysis effort during the initial murder investigation and the use of seemingly “naïve” criteria for closing out credible conspiracy leads also suggests the strong possibility that elements of a conspiracy against Dr. King were missed in the highly focused effort to prosecute the “identified” assassin, James Earl Ray. Our initial studies suggest that it is quite possible that the pieces of information which would expose the conspiracy - which the HSCA identified but could not solve - are buried within the files and documents which were never consolidated nor treated to the sophisticated computer data mining available to us today for small fees through such resources as the Mary Ferrell website. It certainly would be desirable to have the Justice Department open an inquiry into the MLK case, based on significant new information now available. However, it would also be possible to make significant progress in pursuing the HSCA's finding of conspiracy if information known to be in FBI files were released for public inquiry. Hopefully, with a new administration, the interests of history and public disclosure will break the iron grip of national security.

1 FBI Headquarters file, Murkin King Section 10; Birmingham to Director with copies to Memphis, LA, Mobile / response to Miami report of April 6, 1964

2 FBI Headquarters file, Murkin King Section 10, Director to SAC’s in Birmingham, Memphis and Los Angeles. Order to hold ID checks and leads.

3 It should be noted that over the course of his various legal actions, James Earl Ray would seek counsel from J.B. Stoner. Stoner met with Ray within weeks of his capture, even though he was not serving as his counsel. Later, after Ray’s first court appearance and guilty plea, Stoner would become Ray’s counsel of record. Stoner would also employ one of Ray’s brother’s for “security” purposes. Interestingly, Ray gave the HSCA client-attorney privilege waivers for all counsel, with the exception of Stoner. Equally interestingly, the FBI monitored correspondence from Ray’s brother which indicated that he was contacting a little known lawyer in regard to Ray’s defense; the lawyer in question, Percy Quinn, lived in Laurel, Mississippi (the home of Sam Bowers). Ray’s brother clearly had been referred to him; he noted that the individual was difficult to contact because he had no telephone in either his office or home. In his book on the White Knights, Jack Nelson writes that the Laurel lawyer was known to have acted as an agent for Sam Bowers, having been sent to visit Thomas Tarrants in the prison hospital after his capture – to check on Tarrants, assure him of support and determine to what extent Tarrants was talking. FBI Memorandum, Memphis to Director, Oct 25, 1968; Murkin Headquarters file, Section 72-80. Also, Terror in the Night , Nelson, pp. 194-195; quote below:

“One day hospital officials made an exception to the no-visitors rule and permitted Percy Quinn, an attorney from Laurel, to visit Tarrants. Bowers had dispatched Quinn to check on Tarrants’s condition, assure him of Klan support and learn as much as Tarrants could tell about the ambush.”

4 FBI investigative reports now available indicate following the King assassination, the Jackson FBI office did attempt to verify the location of certain high profile White Knight members including Thomas Beckwith and Danny Hawkins. The records indicate that the office reported that it had accounted for these individuals on the day of the assassination. However, given the lack of detail on actual sources for the verification and the degree to which these individuals had successfully used prepared alibis and arranged fake testimony on earlier occasions, the authors feel this remains an open question.

5 In fact we may well be able to document more such White Knight efforts. As this article is being written new documents posted to the Mary Ferrell MLK archive in early April 2009 have revealed what appear to be two more such efforts, with one involving an attempt to recruit an experienced criminal figure to shoot Dr. King.

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Overview of Investigation Of Allegations Regarding The Assassination Of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

On August 26, 1998, the Attorney General directed the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, assisted by the Criminal Division, to investigate two separate, recent allegations related to the April 4, 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. These allegations emanate from Loyd Jowers, a former Memphis tavern owner, and Donald Wilson, a former agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

In 1993, 25 years after the murder, Jowers claimed that he participated in a conspiracy to kill Dr. King, along with an alleged Mafia figure, Memphis police officers, and a man named Raoul. According to Jowers, one of the conspirators shot Dr. King from behind his tavern.

Wilson alleged in 1998 that shortly after the assassination, while working as an FBI agent, he took papers from the abandoned car of James Earl Ray, the career criminal who pled guilty to murdering Dr. King. Wilson claims he concealed them for 30 years. Some of the papers contained references to a Raul (the alternate spellings, Raoul and Raul, are discussed in Section I) and figures associated with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. According to Wilson, someone who later worked in the White House subsequently stole the other papers he took from Ray's car, including one with the telephone number of an FBI office.

Both the Jowers and the Wilson allegations suggest that persons other than or in addition to James Earl Ray participated in the assassination. Ray, within days of entering his guilty plea in 1969, attempted to withdraw it. Until his death in April 1998, he maintained that he did not shoot Dr. King and was framed by a man he knew only as Raoul. For 30 years, others have similarly alleged that Ray was Raoul's unwitting pawn and that a conspiracy orchestrated Dr. King's murder. These varied theories have generated several comprehensive government investigations regarding the assassination, none of which confirmed the existence of any conspiracy. However, in King v. Jowers , a recent civil suit in a Tennessee state court, a jury returned a verdict finding that Jowers and unnamed others, including unspecified government agencies, participated in a conspiracy to assassinate Dr. King.

Our mission was to consider whether the Jowers or the Wilson allegations are true and, if so, to detect whether anyone implicated engaged in criminal conduct by participating in the assassination. We have concluded that neither allegation is credible. Jowers and Wilson have both contradicted their own accounts. Moreover, we did not find sufficient, reliable evidence to corroborate either of their claims. Instead, we found significant evidence to refute them. Nothing new was presented during King v. Jowers to alter our findings or to warrant federal investigation of the trial's conflicting, far-ranging hearsay allegations of a government-directed plot involving the Mafia and African American ministers closely associated with Dr. King. Ultimately, we found nothing to disturb the 1969 judicial determination that James Earl Ray murdered Dr. King or to confirm that Raoul or anyone else implicated by Jowers or suggested by the Wilson papers participated in the assassination.

I. SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS OF THE INVESTIGATION

This report documents the findings of our investigation. Our conclusions are based on over 200 witness interviews, scientific testing and analysis of relevant documentary evidence, and review of tens of thousands of pages of records, including the files and papers from four previous official investigations, related litigation including King v. Jowers , private parties, and the media.

After original investigation and analysis of the historical record, we have concluded that neither the Jowers nor the Wilson allegations are substantiated or credible. We likewise have determined that the allegations relating to Raoul's participation in the assassination, which originated with James Earl Ray, have no merit. Finally, we find that there is no reliable evidence to support the allegations presented in King v. Jowers of a government-directed conspiracy involving the Mafia and Dr. King's associates. Accordingly, no further investigation is warranted.

A. Findings Regarding Jowers' Allegations

At the time of the assassination, Loyd Jowers owned and operated Jim's Grill, a tavern below the rooming house where James Earl Ray rented a room on April 4, 1968. Until 1993, Jowers maintained in several public statements that he was merely serving customers in his tavern when Dr. King was shot. He did not claim any involvement in the assassination or significant knowledge about it.

In December 1993, Jowers appeared on ABC's Prime Time Live and radically changed his story, claiming he participated in a plot to assassinate Dr. King. According to Jowers, a Memphis produce dealer, who was involved with the Mafia, gave him $100,000 to hire an assassin and assured him that the police would not be at the scene of the shooting. Jowers also reported that he hired a hit man to shoot Dr. King from behind Jim's Grill and received the murder weapon prior to the killing from someone with a name sounding like Raoul. Jowers further maintained that Ray did not shoot Dr. King and that he did not believe Ray knowingly participated in the conspiracy.

Since his television appearance, Jowers and his attorney have given additional statements about the assassination to the media, the King family, Ray's defenders, law enforcement personnel, relatives, friends, and courts. Jowers, however, has never made his conspiracy claims under oath. See Section IV.C.1.a. In fact, he did not testify in King v. Jowers , despite the fact that he was the party being sued. The one-time Jowers did testify under oath about his allegations in an earlier civil suit, Ray v. Jowers , he repudiated them. Further, he has also renounced his confessions in certain private conversations without his attorney. See Section IV.C.1.b . For example, in an impromptu, recorded conversation with a state investigator, Jowers characterized a central feature of his story -- that someone besides Ray shot Dr. King with a rifle other than the one recovered at the crime scene -- as "bullshit." Consequently, Jowers has only confessed in circumstances where candor has not been required by law or where he has not been required to reconcile his prior inconsistencies.

When Jowers has confessed, he has contradicted himself on virtually every key point about the alleged conspiracy. See Section IV.C.2 . For example, he not only identified two different people as the assassin, but also most recently claimed that he saw the assassin and did not recognize him. Jowers also abandoned his initial allegation that he received $100,000 with which he hired a hit man to kill Dr. King, claiming instead that he merely held the money for the conspirators. Additionally, Jowers has been inconsistent about other aspects of the alleged conspiracy, including his role in it, Raoul's responsibilities, whether and how Memphis police officers were involved, and the disposal of the alleged murder weapon.

Equally significant, the investigative team found no credible evidence to support any aspect of Jowers' varied accounts. See Section IV.D. There is no corroborating physical evidence, and the few isolated accounts allegedly supporting Jowers' claims are either unreliable or unsupportive. At the same time, there is evidence to contradict important elements of Jowers' allegations. For instance, investigators did not find a trail of footprints in the muddy ground behind Jim's Grill after the murder, undermining Jowers' claimthat the assassin shot Dr. King from that location and brought the rifle to him at the backdoor. Similarly, there is substantial evidence establishing that the assassin actually fired from the bathroom window of the rooming house above Jim's Grill.

The genesis of Jowers' allegations is suspect. See Section IV.F.1 . For 25 years following the assassination, Jowers never claimed any specific involvement in or knowledge of a conspiracy. It was not until 1993, during a meeting with the producer of a televised mock trial of James Earl Ray, that Jowers first publicly disclosed the details of the alleged plot, including the names of the purported assassin and other co-conspirators. He also initially sought compensation for his story, and his friends and relatives acknowledge that he hoped to make money from his account.

Jowers' conduct also undermines his credibility. He refused to cooperate with our investigation. See Section IV.E. Even though he repeatedly confessed publicly without immunity from prosecution, he was unwilling to speak to us without immunity. We were willing to consider his demand, but he refused to provide a proffer of his allegation, a standard prerequisite for an immunity grant, particularly where a witness has given contradictory accounts. His failure to provide a proffer demonstrates that he was unwilling to put forth a final, definitive version of his story. It further suggests he is not genuinely concerned about obtaining protection from prosecution, but instead has sought immunity merely to lend legitimacy to his otherwise unsubstantiated story.

From the beginning, Jowers' story has been the product of a carefully orchestrated promotional effort. See Section IV.F.2 . In 1993, shortly after the HBO television mock trial, Jowers and a small circle of friends, all represented by the same attorney, sought to gain legitimacy for the conspiracy allegations by presenting them first to the state prosecutor, then to the media. Other of Jowers' friends and acquaintances, some of whom have had close contact with each other and sought financial compensation, joined the promotional effort over the next several years. For example, one cab driver contacted Jowers' attorney in 1998 and offered to be of assistance. Thereafter, he heard Jowers' conspiracy allegations, then repeated them for television and during King v. Jowers . Telephone records demonstrate that, over a period of several months, the cab driver made over 75 telephone calls to Jowers' attorney and another 75 calls to another cab driver friend of Jowers who has sought compensation for information supporting Jowers' claims.

In summary, we have determined that Jowers' claims about an alleged conspiracy are materially contradictory and unsubstantiated. Moreover, Jowers' repudiations, even under oath, his failure to testify during King v. Jowers , his refusal to cooperate with our investigation, his reported motive to make money from his claims, and his efforts along with his friends to promote his story all suggest a lack of credibility. We do not believe that Jowers, or those he accuses, participated in the assassination of Dr. King.

B. Findings Regarding Wilson's Allegations

Unlike Jowers, Donald Wilson, a former agent with the FBI, does not make any claims about who assassinated Dr. King. Rather, in March 1998, he revealed that for the past 30 years he had been concealing evidence that might be relevant to the crime. Wilson alleged that in April 1968, as an FBI agent of less than a year, he went to the scene where Ray's Ford Mustang had been abandoned in Atlanta, Georgia. Once there, Wilson purportedly opened the Mustang's door and a small envelope containing several papers fell out. According to Wilson, he took the papers, hid them, and told no one about them for 30 years.

Dr. William Pepper, then Ray's lawyer, publicly disclosed Wilson's revelation at a press conference. Immediately before the press conference, Wilson told his story to the District Attorney in Atlanta and expressed a strong interest in providing the documents to the Department of Justice for a full investigation.

It was not until six months later that our investigation ultimately obtained the only two documents Wilson maintained he still had. One of the documents is a portion of a torn page from a 1963 Dallas telephone directory. It has handwritten entries and information associated with President Kennedy's assassination, including the telephone numbers of Jack Ruby, the man who murdered Lee Harvey Oswald, and the Hunt family, who some have alleged was involved in the President's murder. The other document is a piece of paper that has two handwritten columns of notations, the first of words and the second of numbers, neither of which appears to have a connection to Dr. King's assassination. Both documents have handwritten entries with the name Raul. See Attachment 1 , photostatic copies of the documents provided by Wilson.

Wilson has given materially inconsistent accounts about the documents and his discovery of them. See Section V.C. Most significantly, six months after telling the District Attorney in Atlanta, as well as the King family, Ray's attorney, and the media, that he had found four documents -- the two documents we ultimately obtained and two business cards we have never seen -- Wilson advised us that he actually took a significant, but previously undisclosed, fifth document from Ray's car. Wilson reported that the additional document had the telephone number of the FBI Atlanta field office where he worked, but he never explained his initial failure to reveal its alleged existence. He also gave contradictory stories about when he first looked at the documents, when he realized their significance, and whether and which documents were allegedly later stolen from him.

We found nothing to substantiate any of Wilson's varied claims about his discovery of the documents. At the same time, we found significant, independent evidence to contradict key aspects of his accounts. See Section V.D. For example, photographic evidence and expert opinion establish that the passenger-side door of the Mustang was closed and locked when the FBI was at the scene, not ajar and unlocked as Wilson claimed. Further, we found no evidence to corroborate Wilson's claims that he was at the scene of the Mustang's recovery, opened its door, or took the documents.

Scientific analysis of the documents obtained from Wilson could not resolve two critical questions presented by his allegation -- whether the documents came from Ray's car in 1968 and who authored them. See Section V.F. At the same time, analysis of the torn telephone page suggests that a handwritten notation in its margin may have been written to create the false impression that Ray was in possession of Raul's telephone number and that the assassinations of Dr. King and President Kennedy are connected. See Sections V.F.2.d. and G .

Important aspects of Wilson's account are implausible. See Sections V.E. and G. For instance, it is improbable that a torn page from a 1963 Dallas telephone directory linking the assassinations of Dr. King and President Kennedy would have been in Ray's car in 1968 or have fortuitously fallen out when Wilson allegedly opened the door. The paper has the telephone number of Jack Ruby, which was disconnected shortly after he shot Oswald in 1963, and Ray was in jail from 1960 until 1967. In addition, we found no credible evidence linking Ray to Jack Ruby or connecting the assassinations of President Kennedy and Dr. King.

The possibility that the documents actually came from Ray's car is even more remote since Ray himself did not remember them. Indeed, Ray had the most to gain from Wilson's revelation since the documents would have been the only physical evidence in 30 years to support his claim that Raoul existed. Nonetheless, he declined to confirm that the papers came from his car. See Section V.I.

It is equally implausible that a newly trained agent like Wilson, who joined the FBI because of his concern for civil rights, would have chosen to tamper with Ray's car, confiscate evidence, and potentially compromise the search for Dr. King's murderer. Wilson's claim that he concealed information potentially implicating the FBI for 20 years after he terminated his career as an agent and then again when he made his initial public disclosure in March 1998 is also particularly suspicious in light of his professed disdain for the FBI. See Section V.E.

Wilson's account is finally undermined by his failure to cooperate fully with our investigation. See Section V.J. Within days of his public disclosure in March 1998, he withdrew his offer to provide the documents to the Department of Justice. In September 1998, when he met with attorneys from our investigative team, he again refused to relinquish the original documents until the execution of a search warrant was imminent. Wilson also repeatedly refused to provide information that he claimed could lead to the recovery of the documents he says were stolen from him. Ultimately, once we provided an offer of immunity in response to his expressed concerns about prosecution, he cut off all communication. Accordingly, Wilson's resistance to assisting our investigation belies his public appeal for a thorough investigation by the Department of Justice.

Based upon an assessment of Wilson's conduct, his inconsistent statements, and all other available facts, his claim that he discovered papers in Ray's car is not credible. Accordingly, we have concluded that the documents do not constitute legitimate evidence pertaining to the assassination.

C. Findings Regarding Raoul

The name Raoul, or Raul, is central to both the Jowers and the Wilson allegations, as well as James Earl Ray's claims of innocence. Jowers contends that he conspired with Raoul, and two of the Wilson documents include the name Raul. Ray, soon after pleading guilty, claimed that someone he knew only as Raoul lured him to Memphis and framed him by leaving a rifle with his fingerprints at the crime scene. As a result, we reviewed the numerous past allegations regarding the identity of Raoul and investigated the most recent accusation about Raoul's identity.

Initially, the alternate spellings, Raoul and Raul, may have significance. For over 25 years following the assassination, James Earl Ray, his defenders, and others consistently referred to the man who allegedly framed Ray as Raoul. In the mid-1990s, Ray's defenders changed the spelling to "R-A-U-L" when they believed that a man living in New York state, whose first name is Raul, was the Raoul described by Ray. (1) Ray's attorneys then added the New York Raul as a defendant to a false imprisonment lawsuit brought by Ray against Jowers. The documents Wilson produced a few years later also utilized the same post-1995 spelling of Raul. See Section VI.C.2 .

A review of the historical record reveals that, during the 30 years following the assassination, numerous individuals have been erroneously identified as Raoul. Those who have been falsely accused do not share common characteristics or necessarily possess any of the physical characteristics Ray attributed to Raoul. See Section VI.B.

Moreover, the man most recently accused of being Raoul -- the Raul from New York state -- was not connected to the assassination. The methods used to identify the New York Raul and the witnesses identifying him, who include Ray and Jowers, are unreliable. In addition, at the time the New York Raul allegedly planned and participated in the assassination, he could not speak English, was employed full-time with a major corporation, and was often seen in a tightly-knit, Portugese community. See Section VI.C.3 .

More than 30 years after the crime, there still is no reliable information suggesting Raoul's last name, address, telephone number, nationality, appearance, friends, family, location, or any other identifying characteristics. The total lack of evidence as to Raoul's existence is telling in light of the fact that Ray's defenders, official investigations, and others have vigorously searched for him for more than 30 years. The dearth of evidence is also significant since Ray often claimed that he was repeatedly with Raoul in various places, cities, and countries, and many of Ray's associations unrelated to the assassination have been verified. See Section VI.D.

Because the uncorroborated allegations regarding Raoul originated with James Earl Ray, we ultimately considered Ray's statements about him. Ray's accounts detailing his activities with Raoul related to the assassination are not only self-serving, but confused and contradictory, especially when compared to his accounts of activities unrelated to the assassination. Thus, Ray's statements suggest that Raoul is simply Ray's creation. See Section VI.E.

For these reasons, we have concluded there is no reliable evidence that a Raoul participated in the assassination.

D. Findings Regarding The King v. Jowers Conspiracy Allegations

King v. Jowers was a civil lawsuit in a Tennessee state court brought by King family members against Loyd Jowers for the wrongful death of Dr. King. The trial concluded in December 1999. The jury adopted a verdict offered by the parties finding that Jowers and "others, including government agencies" participated in a conspiracy to assassinate Dr. King. The trial featured some, but not all, of the information already considered by our investigation. Significant evidence from the historical record and our original investigation that undermines the credibility of Jowers' allegations was not presented. Nothing offered during the trial alters our conclusion regarding Jowers' or Wilson's allegations. (2)

The trial also featured a substantial amount of hearsay evidence purporting to support the existence of various far-ranging, government-directed conspiracies to kill Dr. King. Witness testimony and writings related secondhand or thirdhand accounts of unrelated, and in some cases, contradictory conspiracy claims. For example, an unidentified person who did not testify alleged in an out-of-court deposition, which was read to the jury, that he participated in a conspiracy to assassinate Dr. King initiated by the President and Vice President of the United States and the head of the AFL/CIO labor union. Unrelated to that claim, the notes of an interview of an unidentified source, which were written by a journalist who did not testify, purported to document a claim that a military team was conducting surveillance of Dr. King and actually photographed the assassination.

Significantly, no eyewitness testimony or tangible evidence directly supported any of the conflicting allegations of a government-directed conspiracy. The only relevant non-hearsay eyewitness accounts presented at the trial suggest nothing more than the possibility that Dr. King, like other civil rights activists who were the subjects of government surveillance in the 1960s, may have been watched by military personnel around the time of the assassination. However, we found nothing to indicate that surveillance at any time had any connection with the assassination.

Critical analysis of the hearsay allegations in light of significant information that was not introduced at the trial demonstrates that the none of the conspiracy claims are credible. No evidence corroborated the various allegations and other information contradicted them. For instance, in the case of the interview notes of a source claiming that his military surveillance team witnessed and photographed the assassination, we found nothing to substantiate the allegation but, rather, information to contradict it. The journalist who wrote the notes also told us that he did not credit the source or his story. See Section VII.B.3.d .

Other evidence introduced in King v. Jowers suggested the existence of yet another conspiracy apparently unrelated to the alleged government-directed conspiracies. In this regard, witnesses testified offering observations and hearsay accounts implying that two African American ministers associated with Dr. King were part of a plot to kill him.

The allegations against the African American ministers are far-fetched and unpersuasive. Additionally, we found no information during our investigation of the Jowers and Wilson allegations or our review of the historical record to substantiate these claims, while significant information, not introduced at the trial, contradicts them. See Section VII.C.

In sum, the evidence admitted in King v. Jowers to support the various conspiracy claims consisted of inaccurate and incomplete information or unsubstantiated conjecture, supplied most often by sources, many unnamed, who did not testify. Because of the absence of any reliable evidence to substantiate the trial's claims of a conspiracy to assassinate Dr. King involving the federal government, Dr. King's associates, Raoul, or anyone else, further investigation is not warranted.

E. Findings Of Earlier Official Investigations

Our findings are consistent with the conclusions reached by prior official investigations. A 1977 Department of Justice Task Force found "no evidence of the complicity of the Memphis Police Department or the FBI" in the assassination of Dr. King. Italso concluded that Ray's assertions that someone else shot Dr. King were "so patently self-serving and so varied as to be wholly unbelievable." In 1979, a congressional investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) arrived at similar conclusions, additionally finding that one or both of James Earl Ray's brothers might have been his accomplices and that two racist St. Louis businessmen, who were dead by the time the HSCA probe began, may have put up a bounty for Dr. King's murder.

In 1998, the Shelby County, Tennessee District Attorney General completed a four-year investigation of the early versions of Jowers' allegations and concluded that "there is no credible evidence that implicates Loyd Jowers for the murder" of Dr. King. That investigation further determined that the Raul from New York, whose photograph was identified by Jowers, Ray and others, was not connected to the assassination. Earlier, in 1997, a Shelby County Grand Jury also concluded that there was no credible evidence to justify investigation of any of Jowers' claims.

II. DESCRIPTION OF THE INVESTIGATIVE PROCESS

A. The Investigative Team

Our investigative team consisted of four attorneys from the Department of Justice and three federal investigators. (3) No one on the investigative team, or supporting it, was involved in any prior official investigation of the assassination. (4) We utilized the United States Secret Service (USSS) forensic laboratory to test and analyze the documents Wilson allegedly retrieved from Ray's car and to conduct handwriting comparisons with the written entries on them. Other governmental forensic services and private experts performed analysis pertaining to other issues.

B. The Investigation's Methodology

The investigative team reviewed materials generated by federal, state, and local law enforcement officials, prior investigations, private parties, the media, and courts. In the end, the investigative team considered tens of thousands of pages of documents, hundreds of items of evidence, hundreds of witness statements, and the extensive work product of private parties and other investigations.

With regard to official records, we examined documents and evidence from the original 1968 criminal investigation conducted by the FBI, state and local law enforcement, and the state prosecutor's office; the 1976-1977 investigation of the assassination by a Department of Justice Task Force (DOJ Task Force); the 1977-1979 investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA); and the 1993-1998 investigation by the Shelby County, Tennessee District Attorney General's office. As to the HSCA investigation, we reviewed the 14 published volumes of testimony and evidence and, with the permission of the House Administration Committee, relevant records sealed at the National Archives since 1979. The FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Department of Defense also furnished relevant, and in some cases classified, records not available to previous investigations.

The investigative team also considered documents and information provided by private parties who have conducted their own investigations. Specifically, we spoke with Dr. William Pepper, who formerly represented James Earl Ray and currently represents the King family; Jack Saltman, producer of the 1993 HBO mock trial of James Earl Ray; Hickman Ewing, the "prosecutor" for the mock trial and a former United States Attorney in Memphis; Arthur Haynes, Jr., one of Ray's first attorneys; and Gerald Posner, an author who recently wrote a book about the King assassination, including the Jowers allegations. We considered information and materials each provided. In addition, we considered witness "testimony" from the 1993 HBO mock trial of James Earl Ray. We also reviewed relevant pleadings, discovery materials, and hearing transcripts from post-conviction and civil litigation related to the assassination, including evidence from the trial of King v. Jowers . Finally, we collected and read hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles and several pertinent books.

The investigative team reviewed these materials to determine whether there was any credible evidence to support any aspect of Jowers' or Wilson's allegations. The process was time-consuming and labor-intensive and the sheer volume of materials was enormous. In fact, because of the depth and number of prior investigations and the breadth of media coverage, most witnesses have given several prior statements, and some have provided as many as five detailed accounts of what occurred. For example, James Earl Ray's official statements and testimony, by themselves, cover more than a thousand pages.

At the outset, we reviewed the materials to learn about the assassination and prior investigations and to gain a historical perspective regarding claims relating to the crime. We analyzed prior statements, affidavits, and testimony of relevant witnesses to determine whether they were internally consistent and in accord with each other and other evidence. When we found significant contradictions, we investigated further in an attempt to determine reasons for the inconsistencies.

Notwithstanding the breadth of our review of the historical record, the investigative team did not consider everything related to the King assassination because of restrictions on time, resources, and access to documents. For example, because standard House of Representatives Rule VII mandates that the materials from the HSCA investigation, like all similar House records, remain sealed in the National Archives for at least 30 years, the House Administration Committee permitted us to review only information relevant to our investigation. As a result, while nothing we requested from the Committee was withheld, we did not examine the great volume of sealed records in their entirety. Rather, with the assistance of the HSCA's former chief investigator, we examined the records catalogue and then identified, obtained and studied all materials we believed to be pertinent. Also, while numerous books and articles have been written about the assassination, we did not review all of these works. (5) Nonetheless, we found nothing to suggest that we failed to review the necessary historical record to evaluate Jowers' and Wilson's allegations.

The investigative team also conducted its own original inquiry of the allegations, including interviewing more than 200 witnesses. We attempted to locate and interview every civilian and law enforcement officer who witnessed events related to the shooting or the recovery of Ray's Mustang. We also attempted to locate and interview all witnesses who had information relevant to the allegations by Jowers or Wilson or who purported to corroborate any portion of such allegations. (6) In addition, we interviewed individuals who previously investigated the assassination, who took statements from eyewitnesses, or who represented James Earl Ray. With regard to witnesses who were particularly significant, we interviewed, when appropriate, their friends, relatives, and associates. After a review of the evidence presented during King v. Jowers , we conducted additional witness interviews and records review as warranted.

We conducted most interviews in person. Some were conducted by telephone when necessary. When helpful and practical, we conducted interviews at the scene of the assassination. We also contacted and interviewed many witnesses more than once to clarify what they had said or to obtain further information based on what we subsequently learned from other sources.

Because our investigation comes more than 30 years after the crime, a number of witnesses, not surprisingly, have died or were unavailable due to poor health. We were also unable to interview a few persons because they refused to cooperate or could not be located. Even so, we were able to consider the observations and opinions of nearly all relevant witnesses since most persons who were now unavailable had given prior statements.

Scientific testing and analysis were conducted on the two documents we obtained from Wilson. We collected handwriting exemplars and known samples from relevant subjects to compare with the writing on the Wilson documents. Moreover, because one of the documents appeared to be a list of numbers and words, we had a cryptologist analyze the writing for evidence of a code.

We consulted several experts in firearms identification regarding testing and analysis performed over the years on the evidence discovered at the crime scene. We also had experts at Ford Motor Company evaluate photographs taken during the recovery of Ray's abandoned Mustang to determine whether its doors were ajar or unlocked, as Wilson claimed. In addition to inspecting the crime scene in person, we reviewed numerous photographs and diagrams of the area.

Despite the volume of material we obtained and reviewed and the number of witnesses we interviewed, our investigative options were sometimes limited. Most importantly, we had no subpoena power because the tolling of the statute of limitations on any underlying federal crime prevented the convening of a federal grand jury. (7) Thus, we were generally unable to obtain documents disclosing personal information about individuals and could not compel witnesses, such as Jowers or Wilson, to meet with us, answer questions, furnish information, or provide testimony under oath.

To the extent possible, the investigative team carried out its inquiry in the same manner it would have conducted any other federal criminal investigation. When appropriate, we advised witnesses that a willful and knowing false statement to our investigation could be prosecuted. We also explored the possibility of granting certain witnesses immunity from prosecution.

On one occasion, we sought the assistance of a federal court to obtain information. Because Wilson refused to provide us the original documents he allegedly took from Ray's car, we obtained a search warrant for his safe deposit box at his bank. Shortly thereafter, he released the documents to avoid execution of the warrant.

Our investigation and report were nearly finished in November 1999, when trial began in King v. Jowers . We monitored the trial, obtained transcripts of witness testimony, and conducted additional follow-up investigation as warranted. Accordingly, we have now considered all relevant information presented during the trial, as well as information derived from the additional investigation it prompted.

C. Scope Of The Investigation And Report

This investigation was not initiated to consider every allegation and all speculation about the assassination of Dr. King. Rather, the Attorney General specifically limited the scope of the investigation to Jowers' and Wilson's recent allegations and logical leads resulting therefrom. We respected the limits of our mandate, but at various times also considered whether it should be broadened.

During our investigation, various private parties presented allegations unrelated to those made by Jowers and Wilson. For example, Dr. Pepper and Dexter King, Dr. King's son, advised us of their view, which was also advocated during King v. Jowers , that the federal government and the United States military, as well as certain African American ministers closely associated with Dr. King, were involved in the assassination. As discussed in Section VII, we analyzed these conspiracy allegations and found they were unsupported by sufficiently credible evidence to warrant further investigation. Likewise, none of the allegations we received from other private parties were sufficiently substantiated to justify investigation.

This report presents a general discussion of factual information about the assassination and our specific findings and conclusions relating to the Jowers and the Wilson allegations. Section III of the report provides a brief overview of the events surrounding the assassination. We consider Jowers' allegations in Section IV, Wilson's allegations in Section V, allegations relating to Raoul in Section VI, and conspiracy allegations presented in King v. Jowers in Section VII. We conclude with our recommendation in Section VIII.

As a matter of fairness, we do not provide the names of persons accused of wrongdoing unless there is credible evidence to substantiate the accusation or they have already been the subject of substantial media attention. We nevertheless have provided all the information necessary to understand the accusations against them.

III. SUMMARY OF FACTS RELATED TO THE ASSASSINATION

On April 3, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. arrived in Memphis, Tennessee, to march in support of a labor strike organized by Memphis sanitation workers. Because a demonstration the month before erupted in violence, Dr. King, according to his associates, returned determined to lead a non-violent protest.

Dr. King and several associates checked into the Lorraine Motel on Mulberry Street, a motel in Memphis patronized primarily by African Americans. Dr. King's room, 306, was on the second floor, faced Mulberry Street, and had a door that opened onto a balcony directly above the motel's parking lot. The motel still exists but is now a museum.

Across from the motel on Mulberry Street arethe backyard areas of buildings that front on South Main Street. South Main and Mulberry Streets run parallel to one another. Fire Station No. 2 faces South Main Street and is on the corner between South Main and Mulberry Streets. See Attachment 2 , diagram of the area surrounding the Lorraine Motel.

At the time of the shooting, a fenced-in parking area was adjacent to the fire station on South Main Street, followed by Canipe's, a record store, and Jim's Grill, a tavern. Directly above Jim's Grill, on the second floor, was a rooming house. The backdoor to Jim's Grill opened to backyards, which overlooked Mulberry Street and the Lorraine Motel.

The buildings on South Main Street, as well as their backyards, are elevated and higher than Mulberry Street. A retaining wall, approximately eight feet high, extends from the street to the ground level of the backyards on Mulberry Street opposite the Lorraine Motel. At the time of the assassination, overgrown bushes and small trees bordered the backyards and the adjacent parking lot.

Loyd Jowers, who is white, owned and operated Jim's Grill, a tavern that served a racially-mixed group of customers and specialized in lunch and after-work beer drinking. After 4:00 p.m., Jowers generally worked alone or with one other person.

Sometime before 4:00 p.m. on April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray parked his white Mustang on South Main Street and, under an assumed name, rented a room in the second floor rooming house directly above the grill. That room and the communal bathroom at the end of the hall both had windows overlooking Dr. King's motel room at the Lorraine. Shortly after renting the room, Ray purchased binoculars from a nearby store and then returned to the rooming house.

Just before 6:00 p.m., Dr. King was outside on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in front of his room. At about 6:01 p.m., while conversing with associates in the parking lot below, he was shot and fatally wounded by a single bullet fired from a 30.06 rifle. The shot came from the direction of the rear of the buildings on South Main Street across from the Lorraine.

Within minutes of the assassination, police found a "bundle" on the sidewalk in front of Canipe's record store. It contained a 30.06 rifle with a spent cartridge casing in its chamber, an attached scope, unfired 30.06 ammunition, and items belonging to James Earl Ray. Ray's fingerprints were on the rifle and scope.

Firearms testing could not positively determine whether the fatal shot was or was not fired from the rifle recovered in front of Canipe's. The markings on the bullet removed from Dr. King's body, however, match the general rifling characteristics of the discarded 30.06 rifle. General rifling characteristics are the consistent features inside the barrel of all rifles of the same model.

At the time of the shooting, a tactical team of twelve Memphis police officers and county deputies were in and around Fire Station No. 2. Another Memphis police officer was also at the rear of the station to conduct surveillance of Dr. King and his party. After Dr. King was shot, officers from the tactical team raced to the Lorraine and South Main Street. Other police officers quickly joined in searching the areaaround the Lorraine, as well as the buildings on South Main and their backyards.

Minutes after the shooting, a deputy sheriff entered Jim's Grill. Inside, Jowers was behind the counter and there were nearly a dozen customers. Law enforcement officers spoke with Jowers that evening and several times over the next few days.

Sometime after the assassination, Ray left Memphis and drove to Atlanta where he abandoned his Mustang the next day. Several days later, the FBI impounded and searched the Mustang. At the time, Donald Wilson was a newspecial agent in the FBI Atlanta field office.

After abandoning the Mustang, Ray fled to Canada, where he had traveled the previous year after his escape from prison. Following a massive search, law enforcement officers arrested Ray in London, England, two months after the assassination.

In March 1969, Ray pled guilty to murdering Dr. King. When he entered his plea, he stipulated to various facts, including that he: (1) purchased the 30.06 rifle; (2) parked his Mustang just south of Canipe's [between Canipe's and Fire Station No. 2]; (3) shot Dr. King from the second floor bathroom of the rooming house; (4) ran from the rooming house to his Mustang and dropped the rifle and other items in the "bundle" in front of Canipe's; and (5) left the scene in his Mustang. Thereafter, he was sentenced to 99 years in prison.

Three days after pleading guilty, and for the next 30 years until his death in April 1998, Ray repeatedly attempted to withdraw his plea and obtain a trial. Ray continually filed motions and separate lawsuits in both state and federal court. He claimed that his plea was involuntary, that he was denied the effective assistance of counsel, that he was imprisoned in violation of his constitutional rights, and that various persons had conspired against him. In 1994, Ray filed the last of his several state petitions for post-conviction relief, Ray v. Dutton . He sought to obtain a new trial based upon his claim that the 30.06 rifle, which the police discovered on South Main Street, was not the murder weapon. Additional firearms identification testing conducted pursuant to this claim was inconclusive. The petition was still pending in April 1998, when Ray died in prison.

In addition to Ray's post-conviction relief efforts, Dr. Pepper filed a false imprisonment civil suit in state court in 1994, claiming that Jowers and others conspired to kill Dr. King and frame Ray. That lawsuit, Ray v. Jowers, was dismissed in 1997.

After pleading guilty, Ray persistently maintained that he was innocent and not at the rooming house when the fatal shot was fired and that Raoul orchestrated the assassination plot, framing him. He nonetheless failed to provide a coherent, consistent description of his own activities with Raoul prior to the assassination or offer any affirmative evidence to corroborate his contentions.

Over the years, parties other than Ray have filed additional lawsuits related to the assassination. Most recently, after Ray's death in 1998, King family members, represented by Dr. Pepper, filed a civil complaint in Tennessee state court charging Loyd Jowers with participating in a conspiracy that resulted in the wrongful death of Dr. King. The evidence presented in the jury trial of that lawsuit is discussed in Section VII below.

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What would Martin Luther King, Jr. think of America 56 years after his assassination?

“All of the healers have been killed or betrayed.” – Gil Scott-Heron, “ Winter in America ”

By 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was flailing. Like W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, and others he had been abandoned by many leaders of the NAACP and other Black legacy organizations. He was still hounded by the U.S. government as J. Edgar Hoover and COINTELPRO continued efforts to destroy Black leaders and resistance to racial inequality. He was struggling to hold together his own coalition of lieutenants like Ralph Abernathy, Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, Hosea Williams and others, who all quickly went their separate ways after King’s death.

King hadn’t had a major victory in years and his popularity had plummeted. As he neared death, almost 75% of Americans disapproved of him , labeling him a race-baiting troublemaker. Painfully for him, even a majority of Black people didn’t support him. Those closest to King wondered how he could go on as he tumbled into depression.

The immediate past provided no encouragement in 1968. Medgar Evers had been shot to death in his Jackson, Mississippi driveway in June 1963. King’s simultaneous rival and comrade Malcolm X was murdered just over a year and a half later in New York. The Black Power Movement had been born a few years earlier and its leaders were already targeted, persecuted and, at times, marked for death.

More Ricky Jones: Yes, Black athletes should disrupt March Madness in defense of diversity. They won’t.

W.E.B. DuBois , one Black America’s greatest intellectuals, had given up 7 years earlier. He wrote to his friend Grace Goens in September of 1961, “I just cannot take any more of this country’s treatment. Chin up, and fight on, but realize that American Negroes can’t win.” DuBois left for Ghana the next month and never returned. He died the day before the 1963 March on Washington , a mere two months after Evers.

King’s 13 years on the frontlines of America’s Civil Rights War ended when he was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968. He was only 39 years old.

King did not live to see racist anti-Black politicians and pundits misuse his words arguing people should “not be judged by the color of their skin, but the content of their character” to oppose Black progress. He did not live to see the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for which he fought for so fiercely weaponized by the U.S. Supreme Court and attorneys general like Kentucky’s Russell Coleman to justify the legal destruction of affirmative action, diversity initiatives, and set the fight for racial equality back decades. King did not live to see the Voting Rights of 1965 of which he was so proud gutted and rendered little more than a “dead letter” by the Shelby County v. Holder ruling in 2013. Since then, racial voting disparities in America have increased exponentially.        

King was a brave man born out of the Black radical tradition

King did not live to see cowardly Black free-riders (not Freedom Riders) who will not open their mouths in defense of their people benefit from his sacrifice and suffering. He did not live long enough to see the Ward Connerlys, Clarence Thomases , Candace Owens and Daniel Camerons of the world. He didn’t live to see Tim Scott skinning, grinning, and genuflecting before Donald Trump as he bastardized the words of Fannie Lou Hamer. He did not live long enough to see a Black man running for governor of North Carolina proudly proclaim that Black people owe America reparations . Nor did King live long enough to see a Black president or the unrelenting white backlash that has followed him.

Listen up, Louisville. Mattie Jones has advice for today's racial justice leaders.

The searing truth-telling writer James Baldwin didn’t see most of it either. He outlived King by 21 years, eventually dying in 1987 during the racial onslaught of the Reagan era. He was only 63. For those decades, Baldwin was the one left behind. He lived long enough to bear witness to the grief, pain, and white retribution that followed his friends’ murders. What Baldwin saw was neither pretty nor encouraging. He damningly reflects on America in Raoul Peck’s Oscar-nominated documentary I am not your Negro, “I’m terrified at the moral apathy – the death of the heart which is happening in my country. These people have deluded themselves for so long that they really don’t think I’m human. I base this on their conduct, not on what they say. And this means that they have become, in themselves, moral monsters.” 

Current political and social anti-Blackness has grown more and more brazen in America and, unfortunately, there are no Kings or Baldwins left to fight it. What would Baldwin, King, and their fellow warriors think of America today? The “Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute’s Baldwin-King Project,” which I founded, will wrestle with that question on the 56 th anniversary of King’s death on Thursday, April 4 th at Roots 101 African American Museum in Louisville, Kentucky at 5 pm. We hope you will join us! I encourage you to REGISTER FOR THIS FREE EVENT HERE.

Dr. Ricky L. Jones is the Baldwin-King Scholar-in-Residence at the Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute and Professor of Pan-African Studies, University of Louisville. His column appears bi-weekly in the Courier-Journal. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, and X.

Martin Luther King Essay for Students and Children

500+ words essay on martin luter king.

Martin Luther King Jr. was an African-American leader in the U.S. He lost his life while performing a peaceful protest for the betterment of blacks in America. His real name was Michael King Jr. He completed his studies and attained a Ph.D. After that, he joined the American Civil Right Movement. He was among one of the great men who dedicated their life for the community.

Reason for Martin Luther King to be famous

There are two reasons for someone to be famous either he is a good man or a very bad person. Martin Luther King was among the good one who dedicated his life to the community. Martin Luther King was also known as MLK Jr. He gained popularity after he became the leader and spokesperson of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

Martin Luther King was an American activist, minister, and humanitarian. Also, he had worked for several other causes and actively participated in many protests and boycotts. He was a peaceful man that has faith in Christian beliefs and non-violence. Also, his inspiration for them was the work of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. For his work in the field of civil rights, the Nobel Committee awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize.

He was a great speaker that motivated the blacks to protest using non-violence. Also, he uses peaceful strategies like a boycott, protest march , and sit-ins, etc. for protests against the government.

Impact of King

King is one of the renowned leaders of the African-American who worked for the welfare of his community throughout his life. He was very famous among the community and is the strongest voice of the community. King and his fellow companies and peaceful protesters forced the government several times to bend their laws. Also, kings’ life made a seismic impact on life and thinking of the blacks. He was among one of the great leaders of the era.

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Humanitarian and civil rights work

As we know that King was a civic leader . Also, he has taken part in many civil right campaigns and boycotts like the Bus Boycott, Voting Rights and the most famous March on Washington. In this march along with more than 200,000 people, he marched towards Washington for human right. Also, it’s the largest human right campaign in U.S.A. history. During the protest, he gave a speech named “I Have a Dream” which is history’s one of the renowned speeches.

Death and memorial

During his life working as a leader of the Civil Rights Movement he makes many enemies. Also, the government and plans do everything to hurt his reputation. Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. Every year the US celebrates his anniversary as Martin Luther King Jr. day in the US. Also, they honored kings’ memory by naming school and building after him and a Memorial at Independence Mall.

Martin Luther King was a great man who dedicated his whole life for his community. Also, he was an active leader and a great spokesperson that not only served his people but also humanity. It was due to his contribution that the African-American got their civil rights.

Essay Topics on Famous Leaders

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• Jawaharlal Nehru
• Swami Vivekananda
• Mother Teresa
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May 19, 1925 to February 21, 1965

As the nation’s most visible proponent of  Black Nationalism , Malcolm X’s challenge to the multiracial, nonviolent approach of Martin Luther King, Jr., helped set the tone for the ideological and tactical conflicts that took place within the black freedom struggle of the 1960s. Given Malcolm X’s abrasive criticism of King and his advocacy of racial separatism, it is not surprising that King rejected the occasional overtures from one of his fiercest critics. However, after Malcolm’s assassination in 1965, King wrote to his widow, Betty Shabazz: “While we did not always see eye to eye on methods to solve the race problem, I always had a deep affection for Malcolm and felt that he had the great ability to put his finger on the existence and root of the problem” (King, 26 February 1965).

Malcolm Little was born to Louise and Earl Little in Omaha, Nebraska, on 19 May 1925. His father died when he was six years old—the victim, he believed, of a white racist group. Following his father’s death, Malcolm recalled, “Some kind of psychological deterioration hit our family circle and began to eat away our pride” (Malcolm X,  Autobiography , 14). By the end of the 1930s Malcolm’s mother had been institutionalized, and he became a ward of the court to be raised by white guardians in various reform schools and foster homes.

Malcolm joined the Nation of Islam (NOI) while serving a prison term in Massachusetts on burglary charges. Shortly after his release in 1952, he moved to Chicago and became a minister under Elijah Muhammad, abandoning his “slave name,” and becoming Malcolm X (Malcolm X, “We Are Rising”). By the late 1950s, Malcolm had become the NOI’s leading spokesman.

Although Malcolm rejected King’s message of  nonviolence , he respected King as a “fellow-leader of our people,” sending King NOI articles as early as 1957 and inviting him to participate in mass meetings throughout the early 1960s ( Papers  5:491 ). Although Malcolm was particularly interested that King hear Elijah Muhammad’s message, he also sought to create an open forum for black leaders to explore solutions to the “race problem” (Malcolm X, 31 July 1963). King never accepted Malcolm’s invitations, however, leaving communication with him to his secretary, Maude  Ballou .

Despite his repeated overtures to King, Malcolm did not refrain from criticizing him publicly. “The only revolution in which the goal is loving your enemy,” Malcolm told an audience in 1963, “is the Negro revolution … That’s no revolution” (Malcolm X, “Message to the Grassroots,” 9).

In the spring of 1964, Malcolm broke away from the NOI and made a pilgrimage to Mecca. When he returned he began following a course that paralleled King’s—combining religious leadership and political action. Although King told reporters that Malcolm’s separation from Elijah Muhammad “holds no particular significance to the present civil rights efforts,” he argued that if “tangible gains are not made soon all across the country, we must honestly face the prospect that some Negroes might be tempted to accept some oblique path [such] as that Malcolm X proposes” (King, 16 March 1964).

Ten days later, during the Senate debate on the  Civil Rights Act of 1964 , King and Malcolm met for the first and only time. After holding a press conference in the Capitol on the proceedings, King encountered Malcolm in the hallway. As King recalled in a 3 April letter, “At the end of the conference, he came and spoke to me, and I readily shook his hand.” King defended shaking the hand of an adversary by saying that “my position is that of kindness and reconciliation” (King, 3 April 1965).

Malcolm’s primary concern during the remainder of 1964 was to establish ties with the black activists he saw as more militant than King. He met with a number of workers from the  Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee  (SNCC), including SNCC chairman John  Lewis  and Mississippi organizer Fannie Lou  Hamer . Malcolm saw his newly created Organization of African American Unity (OAAU) as a potential source of ideological guidance for the more militant veterans of the southern civil rights movement. At the same time, he looked to the southern struggle for inspiration in his effort to revitalize the Black Nationalist movement.

In January 1965, he revealed in an interview that the OAAU would “support fully and without compromise any action by any group that is designed to get meaningful immediate results” (Malcolm X,  Two Speeches , 31). Malcolm urged civil rights groups to unite, telling a gathering at a symposium sponsored by the  Congress of Racial Equality : “We want freedom now, but we’re not going to get it saying ‘We Shall Overcome.’ We've got to fight to overcome” (Malcolm X,  Malcolm X Speaks , 38).

In early 1965, while King was jailed in Selma, Alabama, Malcolm traveled to Selma, where he had a private meeting with Coretta Scott  King . “I didn’t come to Selma to make his job difficult,” he assured Coretta. “I really did come thinking that I could make it easier. If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King” (Scott King, 256).

On 21 February 1965, just a few weeks after his visit to Selma, Malcolm X was assassinated. King called his murder a “great tragedy” and expressed his regret that it “occurred at a time when Malcolm X was … moving toward a greater understanding of the nonviolent movement” (King, 24 February 1965). He asserted that Malcolm’s murder deprived “the world of a potentially great leader” (King, “The Nightmare of Violence”). Malcolm’s death signaled the beginning of bitter battles involving proponents of the ideological alternatives the two men represented.

Maude L. Ballou to Malcolm X, 1 February 1957, in  Papers  4:117 .

Goldman, Death and Life of Malcolm X , 1973.

King, “The Nightmare of Violence,”  New York Amsterdam News , 13 March 1965.

King, Press conference on Malcolm X’s assassination, 24 February 1965,  MLKJP-GAMK .

King, Statement on Malcolm X’s break with Elijah Muhammad, 16 March 1964,  MCMLK-RWWL .

King to Abram Eisenman, 3 April 1964,  MLKJP-GAMK .

King to Shabazz, 26 February 1965,  MCMLK-RWWL .

(Scott) King,  My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr. , 1969.

Malcolm X, Interview by Harry Ring over Station WBAI-FM in New York, in  Two Speeches by Malcolm X , 1965.

Malcolm X, “Message to the Grassroots,”  in Malcolm X Speaks , ed. George Breitman, 1965.

Malcolm X, “We Are Rising From the Dead Since We Heard Messenger Muhammad Speak,”  Pittsburgh Courier , 15 December 1956.

Malcolm X to King, 21 July 1960, in  Papers  5:491 .

Malcolm X to King, 31 July 1963, 

Malcolm X with Haley,  Autobiography of Malcolm X , 1965.

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Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929–68

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Minister and social activist Martin Luther King, Jr. , was the preeminent leader of the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. His guidance was fundamental to the movement’s success in ending the legal segregation of Black Americans in the South and other parts of the United States. He rose to national prominence as a leader of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955–56 and later as the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference , which pursued civil rights through nonviolent tactics, such as the Selma March (1965) and the massive March on Washington (1963), at the culmination of which, King, an immensely gifted orator, delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech . He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and is commemorated by the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial in Washington, D.C. Learn more about Dr. King’s extraordinary accomplishments through our timeline of his life.

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Sample Essay On The Martin Luther King Assassination

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Death , American Government , Evidence , Theory , Crime , Government , Martin Luther King , Politics

Words: 1200

Published: 03/30/2020

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Introduction

The assassination of Luther King is one of the conspiracy theories that has sparked a lot of controversy. Martin Luther King Jr., a civil rights leader was killed on April 1968 using a sniper bullet. King was killed while on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel located in Memphis. The conspiracy theory regarding the death of Martin Luther King Jr. does not have sufficient evidence that would make it possible to peg the death of King on particular individuals. This is because some of the evidence to assert the claims do not have sufficient backing as they are different from the actual facts.

Discussion: Arguments

The proponents of this conspiracy theory argue that Earl Jones was responsible for the death of King while many say that the US government was largely responsible for his death. It was alleged that Earl had killed King from a bathroom window that was behind the rooming house. However, it was later established that the gunfire that resulted in King’s death must have come from a window that was much higher than the rooming house where James had been staying. The argument that Ray was responsible for the murder of King is not valid. This is because there was no strong physical evidence that could back up the claim that James Earl Ray was responsible for the assassination of King. If the investigations showed that the angle used to shoot King was from a higher position than the bathroom window was alleged to have shot King from then this position is false and frees Ray from the accusation. The sole reason why Ray spent his entire life in prison was because he pleaded guilty to the murder charges preferred against him (Stein 90). He was coerced into making a false confession, so even though he retracted his statement he was never released. He remained in prison until his death. In any case, Dr. King’s family believed that Ray was innocent. In fact, they were able to win the court, which was aimed at proving that the death of Martin Luther King Jr. had been a conspiracy. Solomon Jones, King’s driver during his visit in Memphis said that he had seen someone run into the bush that was opposite the motel. However, King’s aides said that they had not seen anyone in the bushes where Ray was alleged to have gone into hiding. Some of the witnesses were Andrew Young, the former U.N ambassador, Reverend Bernard Lee and Chauncey Eskridge who was an attorney. U.S investigators later concluded that what Jones had seen was probably police officers heading towards the scene of the incident (Dyson 102). After some years, Jones further changed his testimony and said that a man came to his bar from the back door and handed him a rifle to hide. In fact, he changed his version of the story two times and even died without taking a definite stand. The fact that Jones changed his statement twice shows that he was not certain about what happened during King’s death. The statements given by King’s aides and police officers contradicted his position, hence this theory was dismissed. Another theory that was staged by Pepper, the lawyer in charge of the Earl’s case said that intelligence agents had taken a photo of the real killer while spying on King. Pepper confessed that he had never seen the photo of the shooter, but they were confident it was not Ray. Actually, the fact was that the intelligence agents were not there during the death of King given that they had been on the roof of the motel two days earlier. The finger prints of Earl Ray were found on a binoculars and rifle, which was found close to the scene of the incident and which he had bought six days prior to King’s shooting (Pepper 72). Given that there was no photo it cannot be determined with certainty whether Earl is guilty. Additionally, the fingerprints on the rifle and binoculars do not suffice as evidence because they could have been planted at the scene of a crime. The other popular belief was that the US government had killed King. It was suspected that the government in Tennessee and Memphis might both be involved in the assassination of King. The government would have had a motive to kill Martin Luther Jr. In order to stop him from engaging in the campaign of alleviating poverty and suffering amongst the poor. What is even more intriguing was the insistence of the US government that the jury had made a mistake to convict Earl, yet they did not offer any substantial argument for their claim. Despite the fact that James Earl Ray had been a criminal the federal government still insisted that he was innocent of the charges regarding King’s assassination. Since, 1955 King had engaged in civil rights movements. For instance, in 1955, he held a peaceful protest for the Montgomery Bus Boycott. It is speculated that the other reason the federal government may have killed King was to prevent black supremacy. King had been extremely vocal about issues, and it was feared that the blacks would become extremely powerful (Dyson 80). The US government felt that the superiority of the whites was threatened by the activities of Martin Luther King Jr. thus; they would be able to secure their position by eliminating King. As such, there is no concrete evidence that one can use to determine with certainty the real assassins of King.

I believe these conspiracy that Ray was the assassin of King is not true. This is because it is evident that the allegations leveled against Ray did not have a solid backing. At some point, it was alleged that he was the man who ran to the bush after the shoot out yet in actual sense it was discovered that the police officers who had conducted a search in the bush had not found a trace of anyone. Moreover, the family of King and the US government were convinced that Ray was innocent. The US government, especially must have had a legitimate reason for insisting that Ray was innocent. This shows that there were certain secrets the federal government was hiding from the public. Additionally, there is no concrete evidence that the US government assassinated King, rather this is just a popular speculation.

Dyson, Michael E. April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2008. Print. Pepper, William F, and William F. Pepper. An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King. London: Verso, 2003. Print. Stein, R C. The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. New York: Children's Press, 1998. Print.

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Remembering MLK on April 4 in Memphis: Event to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy

Martin Luther King III, the eldest son and second of the four children of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., will be the speaker at a free public celebration of his father's life and legacy on April 4 in the plaza of the National Civil Rights Museum, near the balcony where his father was slain by an assassin's bullet on that date in 1968.

The name of the event is " Remembering MLK: The Man. The Movement. The Moment. " King, 66, the former president of the Atlanta-based Southern Christian Leadership Conference (his father was the founding president), will be joined by his wife, Arndrea Waters King, and daughter, Yolanda Renee King.

According to the museum's website, the event will be an occasion "to reflect on the significant impact of Dr. King's work and the path that lies ahead in the pursuit of justice and equality."

The commemoration is set to begin at 4:30 p.m. and end with a moment of silence at about 6:05 p.m. — the time when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed outside his room at the Lorraine Motel, which was preserved in the construction of the civil rights museum, which opened in 1991. In addition, the annual placement of a new wreath on the balcony outside King's room, Room 306, will take place.

A SNAPSHOT OF HISTORY: Rare color photos show 1968 Freedom Train in Memphis

The celebration will include performances by winners of the Youth Poetry and Spoken Word competitions, in addition to music and tributes by various speakers.

Martin Luther King III was 10 years old when his father was murdered. He followed in his father's footsteps as a peace and civil rights activist, and has participated in such events as "Ministers March for Justice," a 2017 protest that brought close to 3,000 people to Washington in opposition to the policies of President Donald Trump, and a 2023 national bus tour to safeguard voting rights. He also was a speaker at the 2009 memorial service for singer Michael Jackson that was held in the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

The other surviving child of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is Bernice King, 60, a lawyer and minister. King's other son, Dexter King, died Jan. 22 at 62, and his other daughter, Yolanda King, died at 51 in 2007.

For more information, visit civilrightsmuseum.org .

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In an hourlong exchange with reporters, the former president criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for not doing the same, insulted her intelligence and boasted about the size of his rallies.

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By Maggie Haberman Shane Goldmacher and Jonathan Swan

Reporting from Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla.

Follow live updates on the 2024 election .

Former President Donald J. Trump tried on Thursday to shoehorn himself back into a national conversation that Vice President Kamala Harris has dominated for more than two weeks, holding an hourlong news conference in which he assailed Ms. Harris’s intelligence and taunted her for failing to field questions similarly from journalists.

Throughout the event, held in the main room at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and home in Palm Beach, Fla., Mr. Trump assailed the state of the U.S. economy, described the country as in mortal danger if he did not win the presidential election and falsely described his departure from the White House — which was preceded by his refusal to concede his election loss in November 2020 and the violent attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by a mob of his supporters — as a “peaceful” transfer of power.

Mr. Trump also flashed frustration when asked about the size of Ms. Harris’s crowds while boasting about the attendance at his own rally on Jan. 6, 2021, and insisted that the group of hundreds that stormed the Capitol was relatively small. But he fixated on the size of the crowd that he initially gathered on the national mall, making comparisons to — and declaring it was larger than — the one drawn by Martin Luther King Jr. for his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

“Nobody’s spoken to crowds bigger than me,” Mr. Trump said. “If you look at Martin Luther King, when he did his speech, his great speech, and you look at ours — same real estate, same everything, same number of people, if not — we had more.”

The Trump team has been looking for ways to interrupt Ms. Harris’s momentum as she has quickly consolidated the Democratic Party behind her and risen in the polls. The goal of Mr. Trump’s news conference, which he announced on Thursday morning on his social media site, was to highlight that Ms. Harris has yet to hold a news conference of her own or to give an unscripted interview to the news media.

It was a point he made during his event, arguing that she had avoided doing so because “she’s not smart enough.”

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