Today in History: Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated

Most of the time my historical remembrances involve something fun that happened and there is nothing fun about one of the most crucial figures in civil rights history getting gunned down at a motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

The Year was 1968

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MLK had been receiving death threats for nearly 20 years at this point and it only became more and more common as his achievements in the civil rights movement in the United States gained more and more attention and therefore started becoming instrumental in actual changes to policy.

King had traveled to Memphis in order to participate in a strike over workers in the sanitation industry (garbage removal) being paid substantially less and having far different working conditions if they were black. He actually arrived in Memphis late because his flight had to be delayed due to a bomb threat.

After some events, he went to the balcony of his motel room and was struck in the head by a single bullet fired from a high-powered rifle from across the street.

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Witnesses saw a man fleeing the scene across the street and later police discovered all the items used in the murder, conveniently laid out for anyone to easily find and were covered in James Earl Ray's fingerprints. A nationwide and later world-wide manhunt began for Ray shortly thereafter. He was apprehended in London of all places and was brought back to stand trial which he pleaded guilty to.

Ray would get sentenced to 99 years in prison without a trial. He would later claim innocence in prison and that he had been set up and coerced into a guilty plea. He later changed his mind but the judge in charge of the case died shortly thereafter of a heart attack. I'm certain if he had pleaded not guilty, and it was a deep state scapegoat type situation, he still would have languished away in prison, or been assassinated himself.

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The thing that gets to me and many other people who will at least bend an ear to conspiracy theories is that a great deal of the materials gathered in the FBI investigation are "classified" and will remain as such until 2027.

King's own family has fought to help James Earl Ray get a retrial because there is a great deal of belief out there that James Earl Ray was set up and that the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. was actually perpetrated by high level government operatives and organized crime syndicates.

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_{MLK's son Dexter meets with James Earl Ray in prison}

Dexter King is on record stating

"Well, as awkward as this may seem, I want you to know that I believe you and my family believes you; and we are going to do everything in our power to try and make sure that justice will prevail.”

The King family continued to lobby on Ray's behalf for a trial, but it was all in vain and James Earl Ray died in prison in 1998 at the age of 70.

This of course remains a theory but if somewhere around 2026 the area that is storing these classified documents conveniently catches fire or is collateral damage in a terrorist attack... I honestly wouldn't be surprised.

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King's funeral was attended by more than 30,000 people including Richard Nixon, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy - who was himself assassinated just 2 months later.

It was a sad day for America, but if the goal of whoever it was that did this was to shut down the civil rights movement, that notion failed badly. It actually had the opposite effect... and it all happened today, 52 years ago.