A friend of mine told me today that the King family had sued the government and there was enough evidence of conspiracy that they won the law suit. Baffled, I started rattling out this post and investigating.
America took quite a few hits in the sixties, but blacks were hit especially hard. The road in America was always strewn with rubble by the gracious whites who warmly invited them to this continent, we would remove a few pebbles in remorse, only to dump boulders on the weary pilgrim seeking freedom. Dr. King was only one among many voices, but somehow he struck a chord with both sides. He delivered the message of suffering, but with a pastor’s regard for the sinner. His message was redemptive of white’s, not accusatory. He asked simply for justice, not for overthrowing society. And he was rewarded for his patience with a bullet to his face.
“King had arrived in Tennessee on Wednesday, 3 April, to prepare for a march the following Monday…. As he prepared to leave the Lorraine Motel for a dinner at the home of Memphis minister Samuel “Billy” Kyles, King stepped out onto the balcony of room 306 to speak with Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) colleagues standing in the parking area below. An assassin fired a single shot that caused severe wounds to the lower right side of his face. SCLC aides rushed to him, and Ralph Abernathy cradled King’s head. Others on the balcony pointed across the street toward the rear of a boarding house on South Main Street where the shot seemed to have originated. An ambulance rushed King to St. Joseph’s Hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead at 7:05 P.M.”
Information quoted from the King Institute website:
https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/assassination-martin-luther-king-jr
So far, I am sharing things that I already knew, and likely that most of us know. But I had not known the rest of the story. Like most mediocre students, all I really knew was the basic story of the tragedy from a few text books and news coverage long after the fact, as all of this happened before I was born. Until my friend from work shared that the topic interested him, I had no idea about the law suit. So the research began.
Being rushed for time, I turn to Wikipedia first. This is what I found there:
“The jury that heard the case took only one hour of deliberations to reach a unanimous verdict: that King was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.[5] They found Jowers responsible, and also found that “governmental agencies” were among the conspirators.[6] The King family was granted the $100 they requested in damages, and they saw it as vindication. King’s son, Dexter, said: “This is the period at the end of the sentence. So please, after today, we don’t want questions like, ‘Do you believe James Earl Ray killed your father?’ I’ve been hearing that all my life. No, I don’t, and this is the end of it.”“
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyd_Jowers_trial
This being the first thing I’ve ever read on the subject, I’m baffled. I know my efforts to follow the news have been spotty, but how is it possible this wasn’t splashed across a hundred headlines? Where was CNN, Fox News, ABC?
The next thing I turned to was the Wikipedia page about the assassin himself, one James Earl Ray. His page reads like a baffling novel about….honestly, I don’t know what the hell this character would fit in. But it’s a wild read. He left school at age 12. Joined the army and served in Germany. He is kicked out of the army, becomes a petty criminal with a rap sheet that reminds me of a Gotham City minion “Sure Ms. Mooney! I’ll be glad to rob a grocery store.” He gets incarcerated and escapes. Starts a new life in Mexico as a porno film directer, returns to the US, and becomes a volunteer for the George Wallace campaign.
Then the story starts to get weird.
He decides to assassinate Martin Luther King Jr. He has facial reconstruction, evidently to hide his identity. This is where I pause. Where did a low grade street thug have the money to get plastic surgery? Did he steal it? Or did he have someone helping him? Maybe even someone giving him orders? His plan was to assassinate King and emigrate to Rhodesia. Again I pause….why is a racist wanting to move to Africa?
Ok folks….this is getting wordy, and there is so much more to find out and explore. I’m going to do a part two, hopefully I can publish it Friday or Saturday. Stay tuned…..
Tired Midnight Blogger (What Blogs at Midnight) 
Many things beg the question of further investigation. In my own opinion I echo the very common Libertarian sentiment of distrust towards the government, I think there is a great amout of evidence for the US Government taking actions that harm its own people, however, contrary to the belief held by this same opinion group, most of those actions were not directed towards White Libertarians, as they so wish to believe. The majority of these actions taken by the government were taken against people of color, most oftentime blacks, especially in times when those groups were asking for recuperance for the manner in which they had been treated before.
I find some contention in what you say, that he desired justice, not the overthrowing of society. I would agree with this, but only the words, knowing that our same words imply different opinions. What I, and what M.L.K. and other leaders desired was something I do consider justice, but to do would be interpretated by most as an overthrow of society, or its function, which is the same. In this speech: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/02/martin-luther-king-hungry-club-forum/552533/, more specifically in the section of the speech found in the first seconds of this video https://twitter.com/nnubonnie/status/981612687007232000?lang=en, M.L.K. makes reference to a redistribution of wealth needed. This is not palatable to the American mind, which fetishizes the idea that the position each of us are in is due to our own self-determination, or that of our ancestors; thus we say that that which would affect our current financial status is a morally incorrect blow from our government to our own financial position, which we identify as our dignity. To see this, only think of the anger directed solely at the concept of Equal Opportunity Employment, (independent from the seperate discussion as to whether it has been successful in its purpose.)
As to the concept of political redemption for American whites, I think Malcolm X’s comments suffice very well for the subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlfjmZw72bo
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Guess what? WordPress put you in the spam folder! Once I found you I drug you out. I’m going to give this a good read, I don’t want to respond to something so cogently argued with something flippant, I’m going to read your points, figure out a half assed response, and depending on what all I find out I’ll either respond here or write a post. Now I know where your comment is, I didn’t want you to think I was just ignoring you. I sure appreciate it!
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I appreciate the comment! It can be like pulling teeth to get dialogue going. While I don’t want repeats of McCarthyism, I absolutely think there needs to be more investigation into the things the CIA, FBI, and Homeland Security have done. I don’t doubt at all that white Libertarians have been victims of nefarious schemes, though perhaps non WASPs are more prone to be targeted.
You are correct; I would have spoken more truly had I said MLK did not wish the “violent” overthrow of society. Honestly, if you read the words of Christ and some of the Saints, the true aim of Christianity for the last two thousand years has been to overthrow the sin, greed, wickedness, and violence in society. I concur with the Christian world view on some points, one of them being that there will be no true justice in the world till the current world order is overthrown. I will leave my article unedited though, leaving my mistake since I made it, and so that anyone who reads your comment will understand the context.
The videos you posted in the comments were most salient. I had watched the latter in my research of my original mlk day post, but (if memory serves) chose not to use it for some reason I’ve since forgotten.
Responding to Malcolm X comments I find a bit trickier. On one hand he is right, I stab someone, and merely being forgiven may salve my conscious, but you still have a bleeding victim that needs to be taken care of. But we have to remember (and for whites it is all too easy to think of this, likely it is harder for blacks who are still suffering the injustice), if we just make the blanket statement that we can’t heal till whites stop doing wrong….white will never stop doing wrong. Nor will blacks. Or Asians. Or Hispanics. By saying that I won’t heal till the abuser stops, I run the risk of empowering the abuser to determine when I heal. Likely I am being overly simplistic here, the subject is delicate, and in some ways complicated. While it is simple for Curtis or Wyatt to treat blacks as equals, it is a different matter to alter society. Likely my answer is not great, and it is far from satisfying or definitive. But I hope between our two points, there is room for positive dialogue on different side.
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