![]() Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."ĭid Martin Luther King Jr. He concluded in a crescendo: "And so I'm happy tonight. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. "Well, I don't know what will happen now. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?" King said to. ![]() And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. He died in 1998.And then I got into Memphis. According to his family and friends, he was an outspoken racist who informed them of his intent to kill Dr. In addition to the mountain of evidence against him-such as his fingerprints on the murder weapon and his admitted presence at the rooming house on April 4-Ray had a definite motive in assassinating King: hatred. The House committee acknowledged that a low-level conspiracy might have existed, involving one or more accomplices to Ray, but uncovered no evidence to definitively prove this theory. The investigations all ended with the same conclusion: James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King. Over the years, the assassination has been reexamined by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the Shelby County, Tennessee, district attorney’s office, and three times by the U.S. Furthermore, by calling for radical economic reforms in 1968, including guaranteed annual incomes for all, King was making few new friends in the Cold War-era U.S. military intelligence, which may have been asked to watch King after he publicly denounced the Vietnam War in 1967. For the last six years of his life, King underwent constant wiretapping and harassment by the FBI. Edgar Hoover obsessed over King, who he thought was under communist influence. authorities were, in conspiracists’ minds, implicated circumstantially. spoke publicly in support of Ray and his claims, calling him innocent and speculating about an assassination conspiracy involving the U.S. Ray’s motion was denied, as were his dozens of other requests for a trial during the next 29 years.ĭuring the 1990s, the widow and children of Martin Luther King Jr. On April 4, 1968, he said, he realized that he was to be the fall guy for the King assassination and fled to Canada. ![]() He claimed that in 1967, a mysterious man named “Raoul” had approached him and recruited him into a gunrunning enterprise. Three days later, he attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming he was innocent of King’s assassination and had been set up as a patsy in a larger conspiracy. Extradited to the United States, Ray stood before a Memphis judge in March 1969 and pleaded guilty to King’s murder in order to avoid the electric chair. Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, was at the time ruled by an oppressive and internationally condemned white minority government. He was trying to fly to Belgium, with the eventual goal, he later admitted, of reaching Rhodesia. On June 8, Scotland Yard investigators arrested Ray at a London airport. The FBI eventually determined that he had obtained a Canadian passport under a false identity, which at the time was relatively easy. In May 1968, a massive manhunt for Ray began. A two-bit criminal, Ray escaped a Missouri prison in April 1967 while serving a sentence for a holdup. During the next several weeks, the rifle, eyewitness reports, and fingerprints on the weapon all implicated a single suspect: escaped convict James Earl Ray. 30-06 hunting rifle was found on the sidewalk beside a rooming house one block from the Lorraine Motel. The evening of King’s murder, a Remington. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to pay tribute to King’s casket as it passed by in a wooden farm cart drawn by two mules. ![]() On April 9, King was laid to rest in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. As word of the assassination spread, riots broke out in cities all across the United States and National Guard troops were deployed in Memphis and Washington, D.C. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.” And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the Promised Land. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop … And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. On April 3, back in Memphis, King gave his last sermon, saying, “We’ve got some difficult days ahead. ![]()
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