Yes, the U.S. Government did Conspire to have Martin Luther King Killed

America knowledge of U.S. Government was found guilty of murdering MLK Jr. in a 1999 civil trial.

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was struck down by an assassin’s bullet as he stood on the balcony of his hotel room in Memphis, Tennessee, killing him instantly. King, a longtime civil rights advocate who marched for equal rights on behalf of blacks in America, had manage to make quite a few enemies in the process, namely certain divisions of the United States government.

In the days after King’s death, law enforcement worked frantically to find someone to blame for the incident, and ultimately settled on an escaped convict named James Earl Ray. Ray, a former U.S. Army Veteran who served in Germany at the close of WWII, had a history of criminal offenses, mostly for theft and robbery, which eventually landed him a twenty year prison sentence. In 1967, James Earl Ray escaped prison and found himself traveling to Memphis at the exact same time that King was assassinated.

Shortly after King’s death, James Earl Ray’s fingerprints were discovered on a rifle that was left on a sidewalk, just outside of a store near the scene of the shooting. The FBI, who had dogged Martin Luther King during his time as a civil rights leader by unlawfully tapping his phones, and sending him letters insisting that he kill himself, began an investigation into King’s death, and ultimately concluded that Ray had in fact killed King even though ballistics tests of the rifle recovered with Ray’s fingerprints came back inconclusive.


Never the less, an all-points bulletin was put out for James Earl Ray, who was apprehended two months later in London, and upon his extradition to the United States, was quickly forced into a plea agreement under threat that if he tried to take his case to trial, he would face the electric chair. James Earl Ray was then sentenced to 99 years in prison as a result, and although he would try 12 times over the course of his life to retract his guilty plea, none of his attempts were successful.

Over time, Ray managed to gain the support of those who felt as though he was used as a scapegoat to cover a governmental plot to finally get rid of King, namely Martin Luther King’s own children. Suspecting that King was the victim of governmental foul play, in 1997 Martin Luther King’s son Dexter met with Ray, and fully supported Ray’s attempts for retrial. Unfortunately, the next year, James Earl Ray died in prison at the age of 70.

However, determined to finally have the government held responsible for their father’s murder, Martin Luther King’s family pressed a lawsuit for damages through the Tennessee courts, and in 1999 a Memphis jury ruled that based on evidence presented by King’s family attorneys, a restaurant owner, as well as other governmental agencies, had in fact conspired to have Martin Luther King killed, and that James Earl Ray had not. Ultimately, concluding that an innocent man rotted to death in jail because of a governmental conspiracy to do away with a man who refused to tolerate being mistreated.

SOURCES & RESOURCES

Martin Luther King Assassinated:

http://history1900s.about.com/cs/martinlutherking/a/mlkassass.htm

Memphis Jury Sees Conspiracy in Martin Luther King’s Killing:

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/09/us/memphis-jury-sees-conspiracy-in-martin-luther-king-s-killing.html

Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations or the U.S. House of Representatives: