MLK

how do you feel mr james earl ray

when you recall that april day

do you laugh, or cry
(or feel anything)

at the waste
the loss
the death
 of martin luther king?

anon

There's still some debate as to whether James Earl Ray actually pulled the trigger. He was never tried. He pleaded guilty before trial and was sentenced to 99 years (this was increased to 100 years when Ray escaped from prison and was recaptured). He recanted his confession, said his lawyer badly advised him and fought for the right to stand trial. Later he took - and failed - a polygraph test. A televised 'mock' trial led King's family to conclude that there was a conspiracy and that Ray was innocent. A civil case awarded damages to the King family against someone other than Ray. In 2000 the US Department of Justice investigated the claims and concluded that there was no evidence to support the 'conspiracy argument'.

Ray died in prison of liver failure. This was the result of Hepatitis C contracted following a blood transfusion that he needed after being stabbed in prison.

Martin Luther King was assassinated at 6.01pm on the balcony of room 306 on the second floor of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

James Earl Ray was arrested two months later at Heathrow Airport. He was travelling on a false Canadian passport. Ray was trying to get to white-ruled Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). It is not disputed that Ray was an extreme racist, nor that he owned a gun identical to the one that was used to kill MLK. Ballistics testing on the gun and the bullet was 'inconclusive'.

Paraphrasing or selectively quoting Martin Luther King is always a dangerous thing. His words tend to call for more than the increasingly modern trend towards 'sound-biting'. But as this is a blog and time and the attention spans of both bloggers and bloggees are notoriously short, I'll give it a go. In a speech earlier in 1968 MLK, eerily talking about his own funeral and how he might want people to remember him, said:

'I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity'.

I don't think there's any doubt about that.

When I think of those people who have been assassinated who did so much but were likely to have done so much more, I think mainly of John F Kennedy, John Lennon and, of course, MLK.

Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, aged just 35.

Martin Luther King. Died on April 4th 1968. He was 39.