Martin Luther King, Jr. Murdered
King and his entourage arrived in Memphis for the third time on
April 3.
R.S.
Lewis, director of the most significant black funeral home in Memphis
at the time, was idly sitting at a red light when a car pulled up
next to him driven by James Lawson, who was his pastor at Centenary
Methodist.
“Robert,”
Lawson yelled. “I want you to meet Dr. King.”
Lewis
agree to provide a driver and a new Cadillac to get King around
Memphis during his stay. King arrived at the Lorraine Motel with the
intention to rest. The march had been planned for April 8, but the
mayor had won an injunction to stop it, because he feared that it
would again turn violent.
King was set to deliver a speech at Mason Temple that night but
begged off. He was tired. A storm was coming and tornado sirens were
blaring throughout downtown Memphis.
King
thought the weather would keep people away, and “he said I don’t
feel like talking,” [Jesse] Jackson said. Jackson and
Abernathy were sent to speak instead, but the crowd didn’t want
them. They wanted King.
Once
King arrived, Abernathy gave a long enough introduction to allow him
to collect his thoughts. Photos from that night show Jackson
“debriefing” King on the pulpit as they waited for Abernathy to
finish.
When
he stepped to the pulpit, King began his 45 minute extemporaneous
speech by calling Abernathy “the best friend that I have in the
world.”
Scholars
who have studied King said with all of the pressures on him in the
last year of his life, the possibility that he would be assassinated
weighed heavily on him. On several occasions during his ministry King
spoke of death and how it should not be feared.
“He
was in my house in Birmingham a few weeks before Memphis,” said the
Rev. Joseph Lowery. “He said to me on more than one occasion that
he wouldn’t live to be 40. I told him that he would be around until
his beard was on the ground. But it never caused him to detour from
his road toward liberation and the struggle.
That
night in Memphis, his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech
seems in retrospect both fatalistic and prophetic. He spoke of his
own mortality and how he was at peace with dying.
“I
don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days
ahead,” King said.
At
that point, King pauses briefly as a pained look blankets his face.
“But
it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the
mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a
long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about
that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go
up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the
Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know
tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so
I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not
fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the
Lord!”
Drenched,
emotionally and spiritually drained, King turns around and collapses
in Abernathy’s arms (Suggs 11-12).
Andrew
Young, King's executive assistant, says the references to death did
not surprise him or King's other associates. "Most of it we'd
heard before," Young says. In a way, King was reassuring himself
by talking openly about the threats against him (that morning, King's
plane from Atlanta had been delayed by a bomb threat; no explosive
was found). "He preached himself through his nervousness,"
Young says. "Preaching was the way he affirmed his faith"
(King’s 6).
In
the days before King stepped out on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel
at 406 Mulberry Street, he had been tired and quick to anger.
In
fact, the SCLC staff had noticed that over the last three months, he
had been prone to lose his temper more. The night before, he had
delivered what some would call his greatest speech, “I’ve Been to
the Mountaintop.”
…
King
had been at odds with the staff and some members of the SCLC board,
who saw Memphis as an unneeded distraction from their next big thing
— the Poor People’s Campaign. Earlier that day he fought with
Hosea Williams, after the hard-charging aide suggested they hire a
field worker who did not fully subscribe to non-violence.
Now
it was time for Andrew Young, the yin to Williams’ yang, to feel
the wrath.
Young
had been in court all day trying to get an injunction overturned so
that they would have permission to march on April 8. Young hadn’t
called in all day and when he finally arrived at the Lorraine, King
pounced on him.
“Where
have you been? Why didn’t you call and let me know what’s going
on? I am the leader of this movement! You have to keep me informed,”
Young said, recalling the encounter with King. “We’re sitting
here all day long waiting for you and you didn’t call.”
Young,
in retelling the story, said he was taken aback until he noticed a
slight smile on King’s face.
King
picked up a pillow and threw it at Young.
Young
threw it back.
“The
next thing I knew everybody was grabbing pillows. A group of 30 and
40 year old men having a pillow fight,” Young said. “Which ended
up with me down between the two beds with all the pillows and
everybody piling on top of me.”
When
they composed themselves, they each rushed to their rooms to dress
for dinner at Billy Kyles’ home.
Abernathy
was still in the room when King walked out on the balcony and looked
down on the men who had so faithfully followed him. There was no hint
of animosity.
Just
a bunch of black men laughing and playing the dozens. Andy Young and
James Orange slap boxed and King told Young not to hurt the massively
imposing but gentle Orange. In a nod to his generation, Jesse Jackson
was wearing a turtleneck, when King playfully yelled at him to put on
a tie.
Solomon
Jones, a driver from the local funeral home who would chauffeur King
in a white Cadillac, told King the Memphis night would get chilly and
urged him to get a coat.
Before
King could respond, a shot rang out (Suggs 3-4).
James
Earl Ray was born in 1928 and grew up outside St. Louis. His
chosen profession was theft and armed robbery, and after his third
felony conviction in 1959, he was sentenced to 20 years in the
Missouri State Penitentiary. He escaped from the prison in April
1967, and some believe he had help from prison authorities, as part
of the opening stanza of the conspiracy.
Ray
moved around while on the lam, staying in Chicago, Los Angeles,
Mexico and Canada over the next year. He has claimed that while in
Montreal he met a man named Raul, of varying physical descriptions
over the years, who enlisted him in several small gunrunning schemes,
and instructed him to buy a rifle in Birmingham, Ala.
On
the afternoon of April 4, Ray checked into a boardinghouse in
Memphis, with a bar called Jim’s Grill on the first floor. He paid
$8.50 for a week’s stay. The rear of the boardinghouse faced the
Lorraine Motel across Mulberry Street.
King
was standing on the balcony of the Lorraine outside room 306 when a
single rifle bullet was fired into his lower jaw at 6:01 p.m. He died
an hour later at St. Joseph’s Hospital. The rifle Ray had purchased
in Birmingham was found near the front of the boardinghouse with
Ray’s fingerprints on it. Those are about the only facts that
aren’t in dispute.
According
to the criminal justice system of the state of Tennessee, James Earl
Ray fired the shot from the second-floor bathroom of the
boardinghouse. He then grabbed some belongings in a blanket, stashed
the rifle in it, left the building and dropped the bundle in the
doorway of a nearby building.
He
drove away in a white Ford Mustang before the area was barricaded,
went to Atlanta and then to Canada and England before being arrested
in July 1968.
Ray
pleaded guilty to the murder of King on March 10, 1969. He signed a
detailed stipulation of facts to the shooting, having had weeks to
review it, asking only that a reference to his activities for
[ex-Governor George] Wallace be deleted.
In
court, Ray answered the standard series of questions about whether he
was knowingly and voluntarily admitting he committed murder. In
exchange for his plea, prosecutors did not seek the death penalty and
Ray was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Officially: Case closed
(Jackman 7-8).
By
the time they realized what happened, it was bedlam at the Lorraine
Motel.
“The
next few minutes, it was difficult,” Jackson said. “I am looking
on the balcony and his leg on the railing. It is trauma. You can’t
replicate that, you can’t plan it.”
King’s
younger brother, A.D. King, was inconsolable, crying, “They got my
brother.”
The
hotel operator, Lorraine Bailey, had a heart attack upon seeing King
and later died.
And
there is the famous Joseph Louw photo from Life Magazine of Young,
Abernathy and Jackson pointing to where they think the bullet came
from while a mortally wounded King lay at their feet. A towel was
draped across the right side of King’s face.
Abernathy
cradled his best friend’s head while he cried for an ambulance.
The
assassin’s bullet had “hit the tip of his chin and just took half
of his neck off,” Young said.
The
shot blew the knot of King’s necktie, which he had delicately
placed moments earlier, completely off.
“I
don’t even think he heard the shot or felt any pain,” Young said.
“It was obvious to me that he was gone.”
Jackson
called King’s wife, Coretta and told her to “take the next thing
smokin’.”
Abernathy
watched doctors work on King in the emergency room and when he died,
identified the body.
R.S.
Lewis, who had met King for the first time the day before, and who
had offered his fleet of Cadillacs and drivers to King, drove a white
1966 Cadillac Superior Royale Coach hearse with a black top to St.
Joseph’s Hospital to pick up King’s body to take to his funeral
home.
King’s
body was to be prepared in Memphis before returning home to Atlanta.
His face was so mangled that there was a discussion that his funeral
would have to be closed casket. But Robert Stevenson Lewis, who had
but one arm, said no. He and his brother Clarence E. Lewis worked on
King’s body for 13 hours, bought him a suit and placed him in an
open casket. They never presented a bill to anyone.
While
Memphis was preparing King’s body, Atlanta was preparing for a
funeral.
Bernice
King, who had just celebrated her 5th birthday with her father, had
never heard the word “casket” before. When she and her family
arrived at the Atlanta airport to retrieve King’s body, she asked
her mother where her daddy was.
“He’s
in his casket in the back of the plane. Sleep,” Coretta Scott King
said.
Bernice
was confused. She said she heard her father in the back breathing. Or
snoring. It was the hum of the plane.
“I
think she was trying to prepare me. She didn’t want me to be in
shock when I am asking where is my daddy and the next thing I see is
him in a casket,” Bernice King said. Later, she would ask, “How
is daddy going to eat?”
“God
is going to take care of that,” Coretta King said. “Mommy loves
you.”
It
rained on the day that King’s body was ready for viewing in
Atlanta. Xernona Clayton, the loyal family friend, had helped Coretta
Scott King shop for a funeral outfit and now they were getting the
program together and for the first time, viewing the body.
A
large crowd had already gathered outside of Spelman College’s
Sister Chapel. Coretta Scott King wanted to let the crowd in, but
Clayton urged her to wait.
“No,”
Clayton told King. “You should see him first.”
When
they got here, they were joined by several family members and Harry
Belafonte and his wife. Clayton stood back, as King walked up to her
husband’s body.
“He
looked awful. There was a big blob on his right cheek,” Clayton
said. “Red as the red clay of Georgia. I felt so pained by the way
he looked.”
Clayton
borrowed the facial powder of King’s mother, who was dark skinned
and Belafonte’s wife, who was white, and mixed them up to make a
bronze.
“Belafonte
placed his handkerchief around [King’s] neck and I toned him down
with the powder that I had mixed up,” Clayton said. “It made such
a difference and Coretta smiled.”
President
Johnson designated Sunday, April 7, as a national day of mourning
(Suggs 13-15).
For
the King family and others in the civil rights movement, the FBI’s
obsession with King in the years leading up to his slaying in Memphis
on April 4, 1968 — pervasive surveillance, a malicious
disinformation campaign and open denunciations by FBI director J.
Edgar Hoover — laid the groundwork for their belief that he was the
target of a plot.
“It
pains my heart,” said Bernice King, 55, the youngest of Martin
Luther King’s four children and the executive director of the King
Center in Atlanta, “that James Earl Ray had to spend his life in
prison paying for things he didn’t do.”
Until
her own death in 2006, Coretta Scott King, who endured the FBI’s
campaign to discredit her husband, was open in her belief that a
conspiracy led to the assassination. Her family filed a civil suit in
1999 to force more information into the public eye, and a Memphis
jury ruled that the local, state and federal governments were liable
for King’s death. …
“There
is abundant evidence,” Coretta King said after the verdict, “of a
major, high-level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband.”
The jury found the mafia and various government agencies “were
deeply involved in the assassination. … Mr. Ray was set up to take
the blame.”
But
nothing changed afterward. No vast sums of money were awarded (the
Kings sought only $100), and Ray was not exonerated.
King’s
two other surviving children, Dexter, 57, and Martin III, 60, fully
agree that Ray was innocent. And their view of the case is shared by
other respected black leaders.
“I
think there was a major conspiracy to remove Doctor King from the
American scene,” said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a 78-year-old civil
rights icon. …
Andrew
Young, the former U.N. ambassador and Atlanta mayor who was at the
Lorraine Motel with King when he was shot there, agrees. “I would
not accept the fact that James Earl Ray pulled the trigger, and
that’s all that matters,” said Young, who noted that King’s
death came after the killings of John F. Kennedy and Malcolm X and
just months before the slaying of Robert F. Kennedy.
…
Even
those who believe that Ray, who died in prison in 1998, killed King
tend to think that he received assistance from someone, whether it
was his two brothers or the FBI or the mafia.
…
Astride
all this controversy for the last 40 years has been William Pepper, a
New York lawyer and civil rights activist who knew and worked with
King. …
…
In
recent years, Pepper has tracked down witnesses in Memphis who
support his theory of the case: that J. Edgar Hoover used his
longtime assistant, Clyde Tolson, to deliver cash to members of the
Memphis underworld, that those shadowy figures then hired a
sharpshooting Memphis police officer, and that officer — not Ray —
fired the fatal shot.
…
“I
believe that’s exactly what happened,” said Martin King III.
“Hoover was so angry, he had hate in his heart. Certainly he hated
Dad. He had a vehement hatred of folks of color.”
Not
everyone in the Kings’ circle agrees with the full extent of
Pepper’s investigation, but they agree that Ray was framed.
“It’s
still a mystery to me,” Bernice King said. “I don’t believe
James Earl Ray killed my father. It’s hard to know exactly who. I’m
certainly clear that there has been a conspiracy, from the government
down to the mafia … there had to be more than one person involved
in all of this. I think it was all planned.” (Jackman 1-3;
10-11).
Works
cited:
Jackman,
Tom. “Who Killed Martin Luther King Jr.? His
Family Believes James Earl Ray Was Framed.” The
Washington Post. March 30, 2018. Web.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/03/30/who-killed-martin-luther-king-jr-his-family-believes-james-earl-ray-was-framed/
Suggs,
Ernie. “Honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” AJC: The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution. Web. http://honoringmlk.com/
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