January, 2017

As Martin Luther King Day approaches, two thoughts run through my mind:

First is the fact that King's Christian view developed to extend beyond black civil rights to include oppressed people all over the world, particularly America's poor, and Vietnamese being destroyed by American militarism. He accurately described the U.S. as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. Many people forget this, and the media that celebrates him manages to conveniently ignore it.

Second is the fact that he was killed because of this widened scope, but not by the alleged killer, non-racist petty criminal James Earl Ray.

A 1999 Memphis civil trial proved conclusively to a jury that the assassination and subsequent cover-up was the work of a real conspiracy. It was a fascinatingly complex story involving the FBI, organized crime, the U.S. Army, and state and local officials. The trial lasted several weeks and involved 70 witnesses directly or indirectly involved in the murder. And the media chose to ignore it.

What precipitated the eventual April 1968 Memphis shooting was fear on the part of the administration and Army that King's planned Poor People's occupation of DC would overwhelm their Vietnam-depleted stateside forces. But the intent and planning for the murder had been going on for years.

The details of that process were laid out in lawyer Dr. William Pepper's 2008 book "An Act of State" (available in libraries) and his final 2016 book "The Plot to Kill King." Pepper and his investigators spent over 20 years on behalf of the King family unearthing a large number of people involved in the event and assembling a stunningly detailed picture of the story.

King was shot by a police shooter from nearby bushes, while military sniper teams (unaware of this shooter) were poised to strike from several high points in the area. Military photographers documented the event from atop a nearby fire station.

James Earl Ray, like Lee Harvey Oswald, had been set up and managed as a patsy for several years before the event, and, like Oswald, was supposed to have been killed. He escaped by a mere fluke.

Pepper's final book provides transcripts of depositions of key witnesses. These show the long history of J.Edgar Hoover's intimate involvement in both the DC and Memphis ends of the King plot, and clearly suggest who actually fired the shot. More darkly, they show the role of a number of key King aides in facilitating the murder as FBI informants.

Perhaps most strikingly, Pepper reveals that the emergency room head at the hospital where King was taken had previously told others in the plot that if King were still alive after being shot, they should make sure he was sent to that hospital; the doctor guaranteed King would not leave alive. Although King probably would have died from his wound, one of the staff saw this doctor put a pillow over King's face.

King was not just a "black leader." He was murdered because of actions arising from a deep Christian concern for the downtrodden of all races and nationalities. What he was, in fact, was a true Christian martyr.

January, 2016

Every year at this time, it is all around us: "Rev. Martin Luther King = Civil Rights" and "Civil Rights = Black People." Because of this limited view, we misunderstand what Rev. King stood for. And why he died.

The 1957 founding motto of Rev. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference was "To save the soul of America." And by 1967, he had undergone a sea change in his understanding of what that meant -- that it involved not just wrongs to black people in the United States, but of economic inequality of all people, and the maiming and murdering and poisoning of distant innocent people in our testing of modern weapons of warfare.

On April 4, 1967 -- a year to the day before his murder -- he gave a powerful speech at Riverside Church in New York. It was a detailed and explicit call for an end to the immoral Vietnam War. To his former colleagues, who as a result disowned him as "no longer a civil rights leader," he responded, "A time comes when silence is betrayal."

On April 4, 1968, against the advice of some advisors, he was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers' strike, emblematic of the campaign he was a short time away from leading -- a half-million-strong Poor People's Campaign heading to Washington to camp in a tent city and press the government to address income inequality. We now know that the U.S. government was panicked at the thought of a situation they couldn't control in the capital that might spread unrest across the country. The dangerous Rev. King had to go.

The rest of the story we think we know. But the commonly held belief is false, as was revealed during a little-covered month-long civil trial held in Memphis in late 1999. You can read about it in "An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King," a stunning book by William Pepper, the lawyer who gathered evidence over two decades and was hired by the King family to litigate the trial. It's available from the SWH library and from many other libraries via interlibrary loan, and summarized in some detail at http://bit.ly/238YlsD.

At the trial, the jurors heard from nearly 70 witnesses who were among -- or had direct personal knowledge of -- the large number of people involved in Rev. King's execution. After less than an hour of deliberation, the jury found (and the judge agreed) that James Earl Ray, the accused lone gunman, was an unwitting patsy, uninvolved in the murder.

Who did the jury find to have been involved? Supported by a mountain of evidence, they concluded that Rev. King was executed by a conspiracy involving, among others, officials and members of the Memphis Police Department, the State of Tennessee, the mob, the FBI and Justice Department, and the U.S. Army.

The full story of what happened that day is complex and horrifying. And it explains why we are taught by textbooks and mass media that Rev. King was only about black people's civil rights. There are too many skeletons in that closet. The only media person attending the entire trial was a local anchorman who, convinced by the evidence, was threatened and eventually fired. The only coverage consisted of attacks by people who weren't present and heard none of the evidence.

Rev. King wasn't only about black civil rights. He was about the soul of America. And by ignoring that, we may have gone a long way toward losing that soul.

January, 2011

King's Legacy and Death

It is regrettable, though not surprising, that in this season of Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday and Black History Month, so few people are aware of Dr. King's real legacy and the fact that he was not shot by a lone gunman -- not by a long shot.

In his last years, Dr. King moved beyond racial "civil rights" to confront two interrelated malignancies that troubled him as a Christian and threatened our society and the world. One was a spiritual hollowness brought on by a pervasive materialism in our lives. The other was the increasing hold of militarism on our society.

He spoke out strongly against what he saw as the two greatest manifestations of these malignancies in his time -- the Vietnam War, and the economic injustice reflected in the increasing gap between rich and the "invisible" poor of all races. In doing so, he upset many powerful people, both in the civil rights movement and in the halls of power.

He was preparing a Poor People's March on Washington, to bring hundreds of thousand of America's poor to a tent city on the National Mall in summer, 1968, to make them visible to America and to lobby the government for economic justice. But the previous year had seen urban riots in cities all over the country, and 200,000 peace marchers in Washington. The government was faced with the specter of civil unrest, yet all the soldiers that could deal with it were in Vietnam. What to do?

As J. Edgar Hoover told his friend, billionaire H.L. Hunt, the only way to stop the man was to "permanently silence" him. And that single shot on April 4, 1968 proved Hoover right, helping insure that the twin malignancies Dr. King spoke of would continue to metastasize to what we see today.

In 1999, a civil trial was held in Memphis to lay out a mountain of hard evidence on what happened before, on, and after that day -- evidence gleaned from twenty years of painstaking on-the-ground research. Over the course of a month, some 70 witnesses testified under oath to their personal knowledge of, or direct involvement in, the events of that day. It took less than an hour for the half-black, half-white jury to unanimously find that accused "lone gunman" James Earl Ray was an uninvolved patsy, and that Dr. King was killed, and the truth of his killing covered up, by a conspiracy involving, among others, members and officials of the Memphis Police Department, the FBI and Justice Department, the New Orleans and Memphis mob, and the U.S. Army.

Conspiracy "theory?" Hardly. Sworn testimony from and about those involved, with nothing to gain, some with much to lose. The mob figure who earlier that fatal day shouted into a phone "Shoot the son of a bitch on the balcony," and sent, by prior arrangement, $100,000 to the owner of the grill across the street from the death motel. That grill owner, testifying about police planning meetings held in his grill, and of taking delivery that day of the murder weapon from the man who was managing James Earl Ray's money and movements, and handing it to the ultimate shooter (not Ray), then taking the rifle from him, hiding it and later disposing of it.

The two black firemen at the fire station across the street who were sent elsewhere. The black police officer with close community ties taken off surveillance duty and sent home. The fire station captain who honored the request of two photographers with U.S. military credentials to be set up their equipment on the station roof that day.

The fact that Dr. King was transferred from the initially-reserved secluded ground-floor room of the motel to a balcony room that had been heavily bugged, monitored from a van on a nearby street.

The ballistics report that the death bullet was metallurgically distinct from the other uniform bullets found in the alleged murder weapon. The owner of the store where that rifle was dropped, who said it had been left there 10 minutes before the shooting. The suppressed FBI report that that rifle had never been sighted, shooting 4" low and to the left.

Ray's steadfast assertion of innocence, even when offered -- for a confession -- large sums of money, or the chance to get medical treatment for the liver ailment that finally killed him in prison.

This is just the tip of the iceberg -- really. You can learn more from "An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King," by Dr. William Pepper, the lawyer who led the decades-long investigation. It's available from the SWH library and the state's Minerva inter-library loan system.

Surprised you hadn't heard of it? The press declined to attend the trial. The one local anchor who did was fired. Except for the foreign press, the trial was not mentioned, other than in several attacks on it and the King family by writers who knew nothing of the evidence.

Consider these things when you hear, stated or implied, in the coming month, that Dr. King's legacy is simply "civil rights," that he was killed by a lone gunman, or that the press can be counted on to inform us accurately of all things important to us as citizens of a democracy.