Chasing King's Killer: The Hunt for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Assassin

by James L. Swanson

  The Department of Justice finally closed the investigation of this case in June 2016.

  The FBI suicide letter. For the text of the letter, see Beverly Gage, “What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals,” New York Times, November 11, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/magazine /what-an-uncensored-letter-to-mlk-reveals.html

  For a scholarly treatment of the harassment activities of the FBI against King, see David J. Garrow, The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr., from “Solo” to Memphis (New York: W. W. Norton, 1981).

  The Nobel Peace Prize. To see a video of King’s acceptance speech, go to: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates /1964/king-acceptance.html. For the complete text, go to: http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc _acceptance_speech_at_nobel_peace_prize_ceremony/index.html and see Carson, Call to Conscience, 101–110.

  1965: NEW CHALLENGES AND WARNING SIGNS: THE ASSASSINATION OF MALCOLM X, THE BATTLE FOR SELMA, THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT, AND THE WATTS RIOTS

  Assassination of Malcolm X. Most of the works published on this assassination propound conspiratorial motifs with nefarious involvement of the New York Police Department, the FBI, the CIA, and even Louis Farrakhan (the current leader of the Nation of Islam). Malcolm X’s family supports this latter allegation. See Karl Evanzz, The Judas Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcolm X (Emeryville: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992), and George Breitman, Herman Porter, and Baxter Smith, The Assassination of Malcom X (New York: Pathfinder’s Press, 1976). For an overview of Malcolm X’s life, see Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley (New York: Grove Press, 1966) and Peter Goldman, The Death and Life of Malcolm X (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).

  Selma. For a firsthand account, see John Lewis and Michael D’Orso, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998). Also visit the websites of the National Voting Museum and Institute in Selma at: http://nvrmi.com/, and the National Park Service Trail at http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel /civilrights/al4.htm. See also David J. Garrow, Protest at Selma: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1978); Thornton J. Mills III, Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery and Selma (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002); and for the text of King’s “On the Move” speech at the end of the march, go to: http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry /doc_address_at_the_conclusion_of_selma_march/, and Carson, Call to Conscience, 111–132.

  The Voting Rights Act. This monumental statute was signed into Public Law by President Lyndon Johnson on August 6, 1965 (Public Law 89-110). See https://ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true& doc=100. For the events leading up to the passage of this legislation, see the second volume of Taylor Branch’s trilogy, Pillar of Fire. And to put this legislation into the historical and legal significance of the advancement of American democracy, see Gary May, Bending toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy (Durham: Duke University Press, 2014); Richard M. Valelly, ed., The Voting Rights Act: Securing the Ballot (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2005); and Chandler Davison and Bernard Grofman, eds., Quiet Revolution in the South: The Impact of the Voting Rights Act, 1965–1990 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

  Watts riot. See Jerry Cohen and William S. Murphy, Burn, Baby, Burn! The Los Angeles Race Riot, August 1965 (New York: Dutton, 1966); Gerald Horne, Fire This Time: The Watts Uprising and the 1960s (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1995); and David O. Sears and John B. McConahay, The Politics of Violence: The New Urban Blacks and the Watts Riot (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973).

  1966: A YEAR OF DOUBTS AND DIVISIONS: CHICAGO, BLACK PANTHERS, AND MILITANTS

  King in Chicago. See Andrew Young, An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996), Chapter 13, “Going to Chicago”; David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (New York: William Morrow, 1986), Chapter 8, “Chicago and the ‘War on Slums,’ 1965–1966; James R. Ralph, Northern Protest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago and the Civil Rights Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993); and Alan B. Anderson and George W. Pickering, Confronting the Color Line: The Broken Promise of the Civil Rights Movement in Chicago (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986).

  The radical black movement vs. King’s nonviolence approach. While the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and its leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., were central and pivotal forces, the civil rights movement was not a monolithic entity. There were several other organizations, such as the Black Panthers and the Black Muslims. They advocated a more confrontational, and even violent approach, to gain civil rights for African Americans, who had seen little progress in more than a century, since the end of the Civil War. Even within the SCLC, there was a great diversity of opinion as to how to best proceed to achieve success.

  1967: SPLITTING THE MOVEMENT AND OPPOSITION TO THE VIETNAM WAR

  King, LBJ, and Vietnam. See Nick Kotz, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws That Changed History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005). For the text of King’s “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence” speech of April 4, 1967, go to: http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry /doc_beyond_vietnam/, and Carson, Call to Conscience, 133–164. To listen to the audio of most of the speech, go to: https://archive.org /details/MartinLutherKing-BeyondVietnam-1967. For the text of King’s “Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam” sermon of April 30, 1967, at the Riverside Church in New York, go to: http://www.lib .berkeley.edu/MRC/pacificaviet/riversidetranscript.html

  See also Garrow, Bearing the Cross, Chapter 10, “Economic Justice and Vietnam, 1966–1967,” 527–574.

  PART TWO: A COLLISION COURSE

  APRIL 23, 1967: A JAIL BREAK

  Ray’s early life, military service, crimes, and prison escape. Two important indispensable early works are: Gerold Frank, An American Death: The True Story of the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Greatest Manhunt of Our Time (Garden City: Doubleday, 1972), and William Bradford Huie, He Slew the Dreamer: My Search for the Truth about James Earl Ray and the Murder of Martin Luther King (New York: Delacorte Press, 1970). For an insightful examination of the psychology of Ray, see George McMillan, The Making of an Assassin: The Life of James Earl Ray (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976). The two most comprehensive works on James Earl Ray and the assassination of Martin Luther King are Gerald L. Posner, Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Random House, 1998), and Hampton Sides, Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin (New York: Doubleday, 2010).

  1968: A VERY BAD YEAR

  The Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike. For a photographic history of this incident, see D’Army Bailey, Mine Eyes Have Seen: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Journey (Memphis: Towery Publishing, 1993) and Jeff McAdory, ed., I Am a Man: Photographs of the 1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Memphis: Memphis Publishing, 1993). Also for a comprehensive overview, see Michael K. Honey, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007); and for an important primary source account, see Joan Turner Beifuss, At the River I Stand: Memphis, the 1968 Strike, and Martin Luther King (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1989).

  PART THREE: THE ASSASSINATION

  PLANNING A MURDER

  Ray’s activities. The most comprehensive works on this subject are Posner, Killing the Dream and Sides, Hellhound on His Trail, and the earlier work, Huie, He Slew the Dreamer.

  King’s activities and his relationship with Ralph Abernathy, SCLC, and the final days in Memphis. See Ralph David Abernathy, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: An Autobiography (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), 412–493. Also, for fir
sthand accounts of King’s activities in the final days, see Andrew Young, An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996), Chapter 16, “Let Us Slay the Dreamer.”

  MARCH 31, 1968: MOMENTOUS DAYS

  LBJ’s decision to not seek reelection. See Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1968–69, Book 1 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1970), 469–476. http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom /680331.asp

  See also Horace W. Busby, The Thirty-First of March: An Intimate Portrait of Lyndon Johnson’s Final Days in Office (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005); George Christian, The President Steps Down: A Personal Memoir of the Transfer of Power (New York: Macmillan, 1970); Herbert Y. Schander, The Unmaking of a President: Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977); and Robert Dallek, Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1975 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 519–530.

  APRIL 1 AND 2, 1968: COUNTDOWN TO MEMPHIS

  King’s and Ray’s movements. As sourced above.

  APRIL 3, 1968: A GREAT DAY—“I WOULD LIKE TO LIVE”

  Bishop Charles Mason Temple and the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech. For a complete audio of this speech, go to: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop .htm and excerpted video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q -OIjLDMWec For the complete text, go to: http://kingencyclopedia .stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/ive_been_to_the _mountaintop/, and Carson, A Call to Conscience, 201–223.

  APRIL 4, 1968: THE LAST DAY

  King’s and Ray’s movements. As sourced above.

  PART FOUR: MANHUNT!

  ESCAPING MEMPHIS

  The King assassination. The most comprehensive and authoritative books on the King murder are Sides, Hellhound on His Trail, and Posner, Killing the Dream.

  Witness statements. All quotations are taken directly from the FBI Investigative Report: Shelby County Register of Deeds. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassination Investigation, http://register.shelby.tn .us/media/mlk/index.php?album=FBI+Investigative+Repor

  Police audio dispatches. All quotes are taken verbatim from the audio record. Audio File: http://register.shelby.tn.us/media/mlk /index.php?album=Audio+Files.

  Ray’s escape from Memphis. The most comprehensive treatment can be found in Sides, Hellhound on His Trail.

  AFTERMATH AT THE MOTEL AND ACROSS THE NATION

  LBJ’s initial response. Sides’s Hellhound on His Trail provides a detailed account of Johnson’s activities.

  The riots throughout the country. See Clay Risen, A Nation on Fire: America in the Wake of the King Assassination (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, 2009); and Ben W. Gilbert and the staff of the Washington Post, Ten Blocks from the White House: Anatomy of the Washington Riots of 1968 (New York: F. A. Praeger, 1968).

  RFK’s Indianapolis address. The text of the entire speech can be found on the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum website at http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready -Reference/RFK-Speeches/Statement-on-the-Assassination-of-Martin -Luther-King.aspx. For the complete audio and video, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoKzCff8Zbs. See also Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), 873–875.

  Hoover’s views on King and FBI activities. In addition to Garrow’s The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr., see also Gerald McKnight, The Last Crusade: Martin Luther King Jr., the FBI, and the Poor People’s Campaign (Boulder: Westview Press, 1998); Michael Friedly and David Gallen, Martin Luther King., Jr.: The FBI File (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1993); and Kenneth O’Reilly, Black Americans: The FBI Files (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1994). See also U.S. Senate, Supplemental Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, 94th Congress, 2nd Session, Senate Report 94–755 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, April 23, 1976), Book III (“the Church Committee”). (This volume specifically related to FBI, COINTELPRO, and Martin Luther King, Jr.). http://www.aarclibrary .org/publib/church/reports/book3/html/ChurchB3_0001a.htm. An examination of the FBI activities concerning the surveillance of King was published in January 1977, U.S. Department of Justice, Report of the Department of Justice Task Force to Review the FBI Martin Luther King, Jr. Security and Assassination Investigation (Washington, DC: The Task Force, 1977), https://vault.fbi.gov/Martin%20Luther %20King%2C%20Jr./Martin%20Luther%20King%2C%20Jr. %20Part%201%20of%202/view

  FBI INVESTIGATION

  The most comprehensive treatment of the FBI investigation can be found in the House Select Committee on Assassination’s Final Report and appendixes volumes. A good summary appears in several chapters in the Sides book.

  FAREWELL TO A KING

  King’s funeral. For the most complete account of the funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr., see Rebecca Burns, Burial for a King: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Funeral and the Week That Transformed Atlanta and Rocked the Nation (New York: Scribner, 2011). The funeral was widely reported by the mass market magazines at the time, with full-page front covers of first King and then his wife in grief, Life 64 and 65, no. 15 and 16 (April 12 and 19, 1968). One weekly magazine had a most graphic photograph of King in repose in an open casket with a mourner weeping, Newsweek 71, no. 16 (April 16, 1968); and the two major African American publications also had front-page stories: JET XXXXIV, no. 2 (April 18, 1968) and Ebony 23, no. 7 (May 1968).

  The reinternment of King. South-View Cemetery was not Martin Luther King Jr.’s final resting place. A few years after his death, Coretta Scott King exhumed his remains. A new tomb/sarcophagus consisting of Georgia marble was placed in a lot cleared adjacent to the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. This second gravesite and the “historic district” evolved over time. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change was built on this land with a plaza surrounded by arch-covered walkways. In time, a reflecting pool was added with the grave on a middle island of brick and concrete with a raised sarcophagus. In addition, across from the tomb, an eternal flame was installed. The third and final internment consisted of a larger sarcophagus when Coretta was laid to rest next to him in 2006, after her body was temporarily stored in a mausoleum at South-View Cemetery. See https://www.nps.gov/malu/planyourvisit /the_king_center.htm and https://cemeterytravel.com/2012/01/11 /cemetery-of-the-week-46-the-martin-luther-king-jr-grave-site/

  Souvenirs, magazine tributes. Similar to the aftermath of the JFK and RFK assassinations, many souvenir items were produced—even more so when the assassination of Robert Kennedy occurred a few months later.

  Single-issue magazines flooded the newsstands in 1968, such as Three Mothers, Their Life Stories: How Tragedy Made Them Sisters; Mrs. Robert Kennedy, Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mrs. John F. Kennedy (New York: Macfadden-Bartell, 1968); Memorial Martin Luther King, Collectors Edition (New York: Country Wide Publications, 1968); Martin Luther King, Jr., Journey of a Martyr (New York: Award Books, 1968); Martin Luther King, Jr., His Life, His Death (Fort Worth, TX: SEPIA Publishing, 1968); Martin Luther King, Jr.: His Dream Marches On (New York: KMR Publications, 1968); and United in Grief, Three Widows Share Their Sorrow: A Photographic Report of the Aftermath of Three Assassinations, Collectors Edition (Washington, DC: Metro Publishers Representatives, 1968).

  Phonograph records. Several long-play 33-1/3 RPM tribute, memorial, and funeral phonographic records were also released, such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Funeral Services Ebenezer Baptist Church, April 9, 1968—Plus Last Great Speeches, Brotherhood Records, 1969 (LP Stereo 2001); Free at Last: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Gordy Records, 1968 (929); I Have a Dream: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929–1968, 20th Century Fox, 1968 (TFS-3201 Stereo); and The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: In Search of Freedom, Mercury Records, 1968 (SR-61170). Scores of additional tributes, memorials, and famous
speeches would be issued in the decades to follow.

  Hand fans. Many variant church and funeral chapel cardboard hand fans were mass produced with the pictures of the three martyrs—RFK, JFK, and King—on the front side (“These Americans died for Freedom”), or King and his mother after her death (“Together Again”) and/or his parents, or King by himself. On the back side appeared the name of the individual church or funeral parlor.

  Pin-back buttons and pennants. A few were immediately made after King’s death, such as the WE MOURN OUR LOSS and the I HAVE A DREAM; LET FREEDOM RING pin-backs. And over the years, hundreds of commemorative buttons have been manufactured to celebrate various anniversaries.

  Tapestries. Also, especially after the assassination of RFK, tapestries were produced with images of JFK, RFK, and King.

  APRIL 16–20, 1968: THE ASSASSIN IDENTIFIED

  Frank, Huie, Posner, and Sides are the best sources.

  JUNE 4–8, 1968: ANOTHER ASSASSINATION AND AN ARREST

  The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Many works were published on the death of Robert F. Kennedy, but perhaps the best place to start is Robert Blair Kaiser, “R.F.K. Must Die!”: A History of the Robert Kennedy Assassination and Its Aftermath (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1970); and Robert A. Houghton and Theodore Taylor, Special Unit Senator: The Investigation of the Assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy (New York: Random House, 1970).