In the context of one of the greatest injustices of the twentieth century, it is this that festers: that while so many good and innocent men and women have gone, the corruption, the corrupt, and the shadowy ruling forces remain—seemingly stronger and more entrenched than ever.
My work, which began nine years after the assassination and has continued to the present, has resulted in two books—in 1995 and 2003—and now culminates with this final work. This book pulls all of the previous work together, leading up to a revelation of the most devastatingly depressive final act in the life of this much-loved man.
Due to the absence of any courage by the mainstream/corporate media, the disinformers have largely been successful in keeping the truth buried.
Even today, they persist.
Tavis Smiley authored and published a book in 2014 entitled Death of a King: The Real Story of Martin Luther King’s Jr.’s Final Year.
While ignoring the now-extensively known facts surrounding the assassination, the television personality and host, Smiley, brings the reader up to the actual event, which is noted in the most cursory manner.
There is no mention of James Earl Ray. Neither is my name or work mentioned in the text, the sources, bibliographies, or the index. Neither was I one of the people chosen to be interviewed. When asked about this omission by a colleague of my friend Jim Douglas (who has had a long-time interest in my work on this case) at a Birmingham, Alabama, book gathering, Smiley’s comment was that he had his limits. And so he did, resulting in yet another instance of dis-informing the world about the loss of this great man.
It is as though my (by then) thirty-seven-year effort to bring clarity and truth to this historic event, set out in two prior books, published in 1995 and 2003; a 1989 BBC documentary; a 1993 Thames Television/HBO Trial; and a thirty-day civil trial in 1999 where I represented the King family, had never occurred.
Is it conceivable that Smiley was unfamiliar with this work and these presentations? I think not and therein lies the insult, not only to me but to the King family, the memory of Dr. King, and to the truth and justice as well.
Coincidentally, I only knew Dr. King during the last year of his life. As David Garrow acknowledges in his book Bearing the Cross, it was my Ramparts magazine article from January 1967, “The Children of Vietnam,” and the photographs it contained compiled during my time as a journalist in Vietnam in 1966 (see Appendix B) that caused Dr. King to weep in my presence when I opened the file. For him, from that time forward there was no turning away from a commitment to oppose the war.
Smiley fails to mention that at Dr. King’s suggestion, before introducing him to a mass crowd in front of the United Nations on April 15, 1976, it was agreed that I would put forward the idea of the King/Spock independent presidential ticket to oppose the Johnson-war presidency in 1968. Smiley’s selective historical account also fails to mention that with Dr. King’s approval, I became the executive director of the National Conference for New Politics (NCNP)—an entity that focused on developing this ticket. As a part of this effort we mounted a large independent convention with over five thousand delegates from all over the country representing every peace and freedom organization of the day, convening at the Palmer House in Chicago, over Labor Day weekend in 1967.
Smiley did not seem to be aware (in fairness, it was only many years later that we learned the facts) that the Black Caucus that disrupted and subverted the convention was organized by the Chicago Blackstone Rangers gang (among others) who were paid and sponsored by the Johnson administration and working with Mayor Richard Daley’s organization.
The Johnson administration was terrified about the possibility of a King/Spock ticket and mounted a heavy anti-Israeli campaign, forcing through resolutions that alienated our liberal Jewish supporters such as Martin Peretz, thus depriving the efforts of necessary funds.
The administration was successful and we did not have a clue—only learning years later what had happened. These were turbulent times. It is important to remember that some one hundred cities burned that year. This was the social/political and cultural context that dominated the atmosphere of the convention.
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I introduced Martin Luther King Jr. as the keynote speaker. As he was speaking, a note was passed over my shoulder: Get him out of here as soon as he is finished or we will take him hostage and embarrass him before the world.
We had no choice. Dr. King was a unifier; without him the convention fell apart. Bill Coffin (the chaplain of Yale and eventually pastor of Riverside Church—a long-time social activist) and I wept. As for his final minutes in Memphis, Memphis Police Department surveillance notes recorded Billy Kyles knocking on Dr. King’s hotel room door at 5:50 p.m. The door opened briefly and closed. Kyles walked to the balcony and stood with his hands on the railing about sixty feet away from the door of the room from which Dr. King exited. Kyles did not go down to get a car. Neither did he approach Dr. King, who was standing alone on the balcony. For years this uncharacteristic action by Kyles puzzled me. That is no longer the case.
Dr. King came out from the room around 6:00 p.m. Ralph Abernathy was still inside. Dr. King was shot about four minutes later.
Tavis Smiley is the latest in the long list of authors and publishers to recount the time of the assassination itself. He, among others, have produced books and articles that have served to provide credibility to the official, or establishment, account of this seminal American, historical event. For a complete summary analysis, see the epilogue.
It matters little that Smiley’s latest work not only ignores the event itself but that his work is critically characterized by significant omissions.
It is incredibly revealing that Smiley never reached out to interview me, but I suppose that the reason is obvious. He had his limits. They might have been breached.
At this writing, I understand that the Discovery Channel will be airing a documentary; I have not been interviewed recently for this production.
We will see if they also had their “limits.”
INTRODUCTION
For What Purpose?
Is it all in vain, this torturous quest?
As misery ever deepens for mankind,
I feel more like an unwelcome guest,
Earthly trapped—an inescapable bind.
But nothing else, this time around,
The Mission controls, the Mission rules
Allowing no escape from the Mission bound
Till the soul escapes these earthly pools.
So, all it is for this solitary soul,
The struggle, pain, success, and glory,
For such a one, no other role
From start to finish a continuing story.
The Historical Summary
My relationship with Dr. King during the last year of his life may have hastened his demise by my pressing him to openly and forcefully oppose the war in Vietnam. This good man wept in my presence when he viewed the photographs I had taken of maimed and slaughtered Vietnamese children. My collaborative work with him and others in the movement precipitated my appointment as executive director of the National Conference for New Politics (NCNP) whose design proposed a King/Spock independent presidential ticket to oppose Lyndon Johnson and the war in 1968.
Dr. Benjamin Spock and I became close friends living during the period of the development of NCNP. His book Baby and Child Care was, at one time, second only to the Bible in sales. A leader of the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), he became a leading antiwar advocate and was active in the movement, writing a supporting introduction for my article, “The Children of Vietnam.” A powerful antiwar activist, he was convicted (overturned on appeal) and was prepared to run with Dr. King on a third-party presidential ticket, which, as NCNP’s executive director, it was my role to advance.
In early 1967, I opened my files on the Vietnam War to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize three years earlier. As a freelance journalist who witness
ed firsthand the atrocities of the Vietnam War, I discussed the effects of the war on the civilian population and the ancient village road culture of the Vietnamese people with Dr. King, who was already inclined to formally announce his position on the war. He had previously voiced his growing concern about his country’s ever-greater role in what appeared to be an internal struggle for control of the nation by a nationalist movement seeking to overcome an oligarchic regime in the South, a regime previously beholden to Western economic interests.
It occurs to me that he would likely react in much the same way today. Opposing American involvement in, and support for, its unilateral opposition around the world to nationalist revolutionary movements and regimes hostile to US corporate interests, in a mythical “war on terror,” leaving in its wake chaos, failed states, and human misery and suffering in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Syria. These extraordinarily costly monolithic adventures have created the largest refugee population, with rights under international law (though they continue to be termed “migrants” by mainstream media) since the Second World War.
In the Museum of History in Hanoi, a plaque is displayed with the following words: All men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which the early capitalist fathers changed John Locke’s call for the “pursuit of property.” It was with these words and pro-American spirit, which Ho-Chi Minh said he took from the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, that he proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on September 2, 1945.
It was not then clear to Dr. King that Ho-Chi Minh’s reverence for Jefferson, Lincoln, and American democracy, as he idealized it, made him the legitimate father of a unified Vietnam, but on April 4, 1967, in his speech at Riverside Church in Manhattan, Dr. King declared his formal opposition to the increasing American barbarities in Vietnam. By July 1967, against the disastrous backdrop of the Vietnam War, America began to burn not only through successful enemy attacks in Vietnam but from racial tensions and riots sparked by mounting anger over living conditions at home.
At the Spring Mobilization antiwar demonstrations in New York, on April 15 before 250,000 cheering and chanting citizens and after I had advanced his name as an alternative presidential candidate to Lyndon Johnson, Dr. King called on the government to “stop the bombing.”
He was already emerging as the key figurehead in a powerful coalition of the growing peace and civil rights movements, which were to form the basis of the “new politics.” The National Conference for New Politics (NCNP) was established to catalyze people nationwide. From this platform, Dr. King planned to move into mainstream politics as a potential candidate on a presidential ticket with Dr. Benjamin Spock in order to highlight the antipoverty and antiwar agenda. He called for conscientious objection, political activity, and a revolution in values to shift American society from materialism to humanism. As a result, he came under increasing attack.
Therefore, in very early 1967 I confronted King after he reached out to me, having read the Ramparts article (see Appendix B), which catalogued the devastating effects of napalm and white phosphorus bombing that had been unleashed on the young and old of Vietnam. His prodigious conscience compelled him not only to formally announce his opposition to the war but to actively work and organize against it in every corner of America he visited.
There was great concern in the halls of power in America that this most honored of black Americans had decided to use the full force of his integrity, moral authority, and international prestige to challenge the might and moral bankruptcy of the leadership of the American state, which he freely characterized as the “greatest purveyor of violence on earth.”
His formal announcement of opposition and condemnation of his government generated serious apprehension in the boardrooms of the select list of large American corporations that were receiving enormous profits from the conflict in Vietnam. These, of course, included the range of armament, aircraft, and chemical manufacturers as well as favored construction companies (like Texas and Lyndon Johnson’s own Brown and Root, the forerunner to Halliburton), which had multibillion-dollar contracts, and the oil companies, again including those owned by Texans Johnson and Edgar Hoover’s friends, H. L. Hunt and Clint Murchison. It is hard to imagine oilmen and their industrial corporate comrades becoming more upset about this threat to public policy, which had benefited them since John F. Kennedy’s death and the end of his commitment to end the 27.5 percent oil depletion allowance, and the removal of American advisors for Vietnam beginning in December 1963. This list, of course, should not omit the powerful multinational banks who are the bankers of these corporations that arrange financing so that they themselves greatly profit from the loan syndications and leasing contracts, as well as the large law firms who advise and provide legal services on aspects of every deal, contract, lease, and sale.
When one assesses the awesome array of privately established, non-governmental, institutional power, it is eminently reasonable to consider those in government decision-making positions as being compelled to listen to, protect, and serve the unified interests of this corporate establishment. When business speaks with one voice, as it did in respect to the war or the purported extreme threat of war, at the time when Dr. King set himself up in opposition, the relevant government agencies and their officials became mere foot soldiers for the mighty economic interests. Out in front during war are the armed forces and the intelligence and law enforcement communities. Not far behind are the executive, the legislative, and the judicial legitimizers, who sanction the necessary action. Following in line are the media conglomerates, who as the publicists of government policy, though posing as independent voices of the people, vigorously support and defend the official policy in those serious national security instances of significant concern to the corporate establishment.
Virtually unanimously, and with one voice, the mass media condemned Dr. King’s opposition to the war. In the shadows, of course, were the forces they served.
When one understands this context and those times more than four decades ago, it is understandable that when Dr. King began to crusade against the war, he would cast a long shadow over the ruling economic forces of America. It is little wonder they shuddered at the possibility that his efforts might result in turning off the tap of the free-flowing profits. Should the American people demand an end to the war and should the war end, the losses were not something they could accept.
Perhaps it was for this reason alone that Dr. King had to be stopped.
If this was not reason enough, Dr. King gave these awesomely powerful forces another inducement to eliminate him. He had been wrestling with the problem of economic injustice for some time. It was, he said, in summary, one thing to gain the civil right to eat at a formerly segregated lunchroom counter, but quite another to be able to pay the bill. This was the next goal and, in the world’s dominant capitalist society, an essential component of freedom and equality, and one that was the essence of the movement for social equality and the core of the movement for social justice. The war had made things worse. Not only were a disproportionate number of blacks being sent ten thousand miles from home to serve as cannon fodder, but the cost of the war increasingly required that essential social services and programs in their communities be curtailed. The poor knew better than anyone that President Johnson’s commitment to “guns and butter” could not be fulfilled. In effect there was an undeclared cessation of the “war on poverty.”
For Dr. King, opposition to the war against the people of a poor, non-white, ancient culture was in harmony with, and a natural extension of, the civil rights struggle against oppression and the denial of basic freedoms and essential services at home.
By mid-1967, he began to formulate a strategy to address the widening gap between the rich and the poor. The failure of the success of this effort, at this writing in 2014 and 2015, has resulted in the greatest disparity of wea
lth in the Republic since 1929.
This project gradually took the form not of simply a march but of the extensive Poor People’s Campaign and mobilization to culminate in an encampment in the shadow of the Washington Memorial. The projection was for the establishment of a tent city with five hundred thousand of the nation’s poorest and most alienated citizens. They would remain as long as it took to get action from the Congress.
If the wealthy, powerful interests across the nation would find intolerable Dr. King’s escalating activity against the war, his planned mobilization of half a million poor people with the intention of laying siege to Congress could only engender outrage and fear.
They knew that it was not going to be possible for Congress to satisfy the demands of the multitude of poor, alienated Americans led by Dr. King, and they believed that the growing frustration could well lead to violence. In such a situation with the unavailability of sufficient troops to control the mass of people, the Capitol could be overrun. Similar events in France come to mind, with demonstrations and turbulence in cities throughout the country, but unlike De Gaulle, Lyndon Johnson did not have an Andre Malraux to counsel him—nothing less than a revolution might result. This possibility could not be allowed to materialize, and neither could Dr. King’s crusade against the war and social economic deprivation be permitted to continue.
When the NCNP Convention was held on Labor Day weekend, many of us believed that nothing less than the nation’s rebirth was on the agenda. But a small, aggressive group had urged each arriving black delegate to join an obviously planned Black Caucus that at one point threatened to take Dr. King hostage. This threat was passed over my shoulder (as a note) as he spoke. Dr. King made a spirited speech, calling for unity and action, after which I had to arrange for him to leave quickly under guard for his own safety. Black Caucus delegates voted en bloc. There were walkouts, hostilities, and splits. Though we didn’t admit it at the time, the NCNP died as a political force that weekend. Reverend Bill Coffin (who would officiate at my marriage six years later at Yale) and I wept at that realization. We had not understood the power of the forces against us and their ability to divide the emerging coalition and to infiltrate and manipulate movement organizations.
The Plot to Kill King Page 2
