Killing King

by Stuart Wexler

  It seems unlikely that Bowers would welcome a complete stranger like Tarrants into his midst without an excessive amount of caution. Tarrants himself described Bowers’s unease at their first meetings. They met, again, after extensive countersurveillance measures, exchanging notes on paper rather than in conversation, burning the “correspondence” as they went.

  While Tarrants successfully bombed a number of targets in Mississippi for Bowers, such behavior was not unknown among FBI informants. In Alabama, for instance, Gary Rowe participated in various acts of racial violence while informing for the FBI, something exposed to the world—and interested parties like Bowers—in 1965.23 What may have bothered Bowers was that no one died in any of the numerous bombings. Yes, many civil rights–era church bombings often aimed to scare and terrorize would-be protestors and activists without killing anyone—but the wave of bombings Bowers ordered in 1967 were directed at Jews and had little to do with deterring activism. One way to make sure that Tarrants was up to snuff would be to see if he would kill someone for the White Knights. The trip to Collins, Mississippi, likely would have resulted in just such a test, with the drive-by shooting of McLaurin’s residence. Bowers never got the chance to implement this test, however, as Collins policemen, suspicious of the out-of-state Alabama license plates, approached the men when they pulled into a gas station. The car proved to be stolen, and the men were arrested.

  Bowers then made another interesting move. According to the police report, Bowers told officers he was cold, and asked them to fetch his sweater from the car, the stolen vehicle. Upon removing the sweater, they found an illegal firearm. Between the interstate transportation of a stolen car and national firearms laws, Tarrants should have faced serious federal charges. Now Bowers had another kind of test: would the federal government bring charges against Tarrants?

  If this was Bowers’s intention, the answer likely intensified any suspicion he had of Tarrants. The government charged Bowers with illegal firearm possession, but he was quickly acquitted. Tarrants was not arraigned on those charges nearly as quickly. It appears as if the system simply went slower for Tarrants, who faced indictment that coming March in Mobile. But the source of the delay is less important than what it meant for Bowers’s perception of Tarrants as a potential informant. Bowers needed far less than this to become suspicious of people he had known for years. The entire episode cries out for an explanation, as it dumbfounded even those who knew Bowers best. If this was a test, the implications are not without relevance for the King murder. For it appears likely that Tarrants was set up as the original patsy for the King murder, and may have been marked for death later to tie up loose ends.

  9

  in waiting

  Tommy Tarrants found himself in law enforcement’s cross-hairs for the first time since 1965. No one knew of his terrorist bombings and shootings in Mississippi, but his arrest with Sam Bowers meant that for the second time he was now facing charges of carrying an illegal firearm. On his attorney’s advice, Tarrants returned to his family in Mobile and registered for classes at a community college, ostensibly to clean up his image in anticipation of a court date. But records show that Tarrants was not much of a student.1 His mind was still dedicated to fighting the Jewish-Communist conspiracy against white America. According to his autobiography, the recent federal charges only amplified his antagonism toward the government and minority groups.2 Bowers escaped conviction for the firearms charges in mid-January. While the Justice Department convicted other White Knights for their roles in the 1966 Dahmer murder, Bowers was acquitted on a mistrial. But in January of 1968, Bowers’s luck with the law had nonetheless already run out. He was free but on appeal bond for his conviction for the MIBURN murders. Arrangements were already being made to transfer power as Grand Wizard to L. E. Matthews once Bowers finally went to prison, since his appeal was expected to fail.3

  By early 1968, almost every major player in the White Knights faced or would face criminal charges. Many, including Bowers, temporarily kept a low profile. Increasingly, they worked through their front organization, the Americans for the Preservation of the White Race, to raise money for legal costs. Through that same group, senior Mississippi White Knights continued to actively promote J. B. Stoner’s National States Rights Party and its outreach in Meridian and Jackson, mailing out his radical newspaper, The Thunderbolt.4 Such low-level activity was simply window dressing. Behind the scenes, Bowers continued to plot more violence, with tactics in a wider strategy. Since 1964, a key component of his grand vision of a race war involved pushing law enforcement into a showdown in Mississippi. The strategy also included targeting key civil rights leaders for assassination, using strike teams.5 In Bowers’s scenario, leftist, black radicals would then retaliate, encouraging further retaliation not just from the “rednecks” Bowers manipulated, but “everyday” whites in Mississippi. Bowers never clarified how he hoped this would spread throughout the country, but he told Delmar Dennis that the White Knights were simply part of an even larger strategy to stoke a race war.

  The lull in Mississippi Klan violence came to end on February 20, 1968, when the White Knights burned down the grocery store belonging to Wallace Miller, a one-time member who became an FBI informant and testified in the MIBURN prosecution. Two weeks later, the White Knights bombed the Blackwell Realty Company in Jackson for selling homes to blacks in white neighborhoods.

  Having endured months of bombings, local and federal law enforcement fought back in unprecedented ways. Unable to secure convictions in local cases, Meridian police formed a special squad under Sergeant Lester Joyner. According to historian Michael Netwon, “Joyner’s guerrillas,” as they were known, “fired into Klansmen’s homes and detonated explosives on their lawns.”6 The Jackson field office of the FBI was already experienced with fighting dirty against the local Klan. Research done by federal judge Chet Dillard strongly suggests that the FBI brought in an out-of-state mobster to beat and intimidate a Klansman into providing information in the Mississippi Burning murders.7

  It is easy to question the legality of this law enforcement response, but it is important to remember that the White Knights were unique in their willingness to directly oppose policemen and special agents. Recall that, following the September 1967 bombing of Perry Nussbaum’s home, a group of Klansmen, including Danny Joe Hawkins, stopped a group of FBI agents who were tailing them in a car, pulled weapons on the men, and struck one of the agents. Law enforcement found a hit list the Klan prepared with the names of FBI and local police officials.8 The record now shows that in March of 1968, Bowers was asking members to assassinate legendary Mississippi FBI chief Roy Moore.9 Bowers’s underground hit squad’s recent attacks on Jewish targets only put more pressure on law enforcement to unleash a serious counterattack on the White Knights. White Mississippians who turned the other way when the Klan destroyed black targets were upset by the attacks on Jewish targets. But the investigation was not generating any leads. As Newton noted, Jim Ingram, who was a senior FBI agent in Jackson at the time, referred to the Klan as “animals,” and told his men to “just go out and pound them until you get some results.”10

  For Bowers, all the violence was simply a grand diversion for both local and federal law enforcement. The Neshoba investigation brought a large federal intervention by the FBI into the state, with polls favoring military intervention if the situation worsened. Four years later, by 1968, with membership rolls depleted, the White Knights were alienating outside supporters. Yet Bowers might have been banking on Southern history to overcome those disadvantages. Few things could inflame an apathetic, white Southerner more than the outside interference of the federal government. Cultural animosity to federal intrusion informed Bowers’s thinking in 1964, when he spoke of a race war on the heels of the Neshoba murders. By 1968, Bowers could also point to another development that might make his strategy even more effective: the growing number of black militants willing to use violence to retaliate agai
nst racism.

  Stokely Carmichael famously claimed that “every courthouse in Mississippi ought to be burned down tomorrow, to get rid of the dirt and the mess.”11 This too was part of Bowers’s original strategy—the racial polarization Tommy Tarrants described that would foment their dreamed-of race war. Only now, in the tense racial climate of 1968, it must have appeared as if the right spark could nationalize such a conflict.

  in 1967, dr. King, maintaining his stance of totally nonviolent protest, was losing influence with both the young blacks and middle-class whites who once formed the backbone of his civil rights coalition. In continuing to insist that nonviolence was not simply a tactic but a moral philosophy, he lost his youth appeal to groups like the Black Panthers, who brandished shotguns to oppose police brutality, often for show, but sometimes on the street. Increasingly, firebrands like Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown attacked not only the political establishment, but also the strategy of nonviolence itself and Dr. King by implication. As Carmichael wrote, the idea “that a black minority could bow its head and get whipped into a meaningful position of power [was] absurd.”12 King’s popularity with important political figures had also suffered, first for his speaking out against the Vietnam War and then for his focus on the issue of poverty, one that Washington—involved in a full-scale war in Southeast Asia—was not at all prepared to address.

  His reliance on nonviolence, his opposition to Vietnam, and his new focus on poverty were all obstacles to King as he shifted his focus to his next major project: the Poor People’s Campaign. The SCLC wanted thousands of Americans to march to and camp out in the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to call for what scholar Gerald McKnight described as a “fundamental reorganization of the American economy.”13 Dr. King hoped to align and unite, arguably for the first time in American history, the economic interests of poor blacks and poor whites. But King found it increasingly difficult to mobilize yet another peaceful march when so many young activists were drawn to Black Nationalism. Nor did the campaign, with its economic message, appeal to mainstream, middle-class whites. By arguing that the conflict in Vietnam was diverting resources from LBJ’s other war, “the war on poverty,” King did nothing to regain support from the White House. And J. Edgar Hoover, already paranoid about King’s supposed communist affinities, resorted to an unprecedented rumor campaign against King through surrogates in the media.

  With this context in mind, King delivered his famous “Drum Major” sermon on February 5, 1968. It is often remembered for King calling himself “a drum major for justice.” But for most of the sermon, the term drum major represented something else. Perhaps with his outspoken Black Nationalist counterparts in mind, King spoke against the “drum majors” who led movements for their own ambition, without careful consideration of their tactics and the implications for their followers. These people drew “joiners” who followed a movement without understanding the actual cause. King contrasted this with another “rabble rouser,” a supposed “agitator” who led by example by ministering to the poor in a small region in Palestine. Former friends turned against Jesus too, King reminded the audience, but he still became the most influential person in history. He did so, King asserted, by emphasizing love over hate. In the tradition of prophets bringing the flock back to their better impulses, King was reminding the audience of the power of nonviolence, not simply as a tactic but as a principle.14

  In doing so, King was also validating himself as an ideal target for the sort of violence Sam Bowers had in mind. Killing Dr. King would reveal the ultimate truth—there could be no nonviolent solution. The only answer would be full-scale black-on-white warfare.

  james earl ray returned from New Orleans to Los Angeles in late December 1967 and waited. No one would have contracted Ray, with his history of nonviolent crimes, as a murderer for hire—not when professional killers were available. In any plot, Ray would be a peripheral figure, someone who could be used if circumstances required.

  After returning from New Orleans with Charlie Stein and his two little nieces, Ray didn’t get any of the legitimate jobs he was seeking, but his spending continued, suggesting that he may have obtained some narcotics to sell for profit while in the Big Easy. In fact, January 1968 was extremely busy for Ray. He continued his dance lessons and his locksmithing correspondence course. He also started a series of lessons at the International Bartending School. And Ray seems to have restarted his quest for female film subjects. He joined a swingers club and ran an advertisement in the Los Angeles Free Press, seeking “female for mutual enjoyment and/or female for swing session,” getting the addresses of several interested parties and sending photos of himself. In support of these efforts, he ordered more sex manuals from Futura Press and a set of chrome handcuffs from a police equipment company in Los Angeles.

  Ray also subscribed to a mail-forwarding service, only for the month of February 1968, and used that address for the responses to both his Free Press advertisement and swingers letters. Ray explained that he didn’t want such letters coming to his apartment, but of course the use of an alternate address could also have been useful for other types of confidential correspondence as well. Such mail forwarding would have protected Ray’s true location if any letters to or from him intercepted. And that would have been a very logical precaution if Ray had started any communication with people he might have suspected as being under FBI surveillance or mail monitoring.

  And Ray wrote to the Orange County, California, chapter of the Friends of Rhodesia, first with questions and then with a thank-you letter stating that he anticipated leaving for Rhodesia in November 1969. The letter requested a subscription to the Rhodesian Commentary. Ray’s consistent and ongoing interest in the racist regimes of South Africa and Rhodesia seems to undermine Ray’s own statements that he held no racist views. Yet these were also countries that were commonly described as ideal destinations for criminals wanting to avoid extradition. In any event, it seems clear that Ray still had an overriding interest in leaving the United States for good. He was still a fugitive from the law, and by January 1968, he had been on the run for the better part of a year. Given Ray’s conservative nature, he must have begun to wonder how long he could continue eluding law enforcement.

  An objective look at Ray’s activities in January 1968 shows a continuation of the same sorts of undertakings that he was pursuing for most of 1967, going all the way back to his stay in Canada. He wanted to get out of the United States and preferably off the continent. “White” Africa was obviously a preferred destination. He wanted to learn portable skills (bartending, locksmithing), he was not averse to picking up money from the sale of drugs when the opportunity presented, and he certainly seems focused on pornographic films as a moneymaking option. There is no indication of any major change in his behavior, no sign he was tied into a King conspiracy or practicing any more than his routine security precautions. Sending his photo to a number of women argues against his being involved in anything new or particularly risky. But that was all in January.

  Things appear to have changed mightily for Ray in February 1968. With no obvious way to pay for it, James Earl Ray suddenly scheduled plastic surgery that would not begin until March 5. He stopped his scheduled dance lessons, forfeiting some of his deposit—anathema to the money-conscious Ray. He declined a bartending job offered to him after his class graduation, though it was exactly the sort of job he had been seeking for the previous two months. At his bartending school graduation, he was heard to remark that he would soon be leaving for Birmingham, Alabama, to visit his brother. He traded his console television to Marie Martin for her portable set, telling her he was returning to the South. And on March 17, he completed a change-of-address form forwarding all his mail to general delivery, Atlanta, Georgia. Notably, he indicated that address would only be good through April 25.

  After his capture, Ray stated that the planned plastic surgery was because he feared that he might show up on the FBI’s Ten Most
Wanted Fugitives list and he needed to change his appearance.15 Of course he eventually did make that list, but that would require a much more dramatic crime than any found in Ray’s decades-long history of robbery, theft, and fraud. To explain himself, he claimed that he thought his appearance on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list would have resulted from his prison escape in 1967—but surely no career criminal would ever really imagine that a minor prison escape could earn that level of attention from the FBI.

  Various authors have written about these “Top Ten” remarks with amusement, picturing Ray as out of touch with reality and possibly not all that bright.16 Of course that view fails to acknowledge that Ray was absolutely correct; he would indeed be on the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list within a matter of months. Authors, like William Bradford Huie, in search of a motive—but not conspiracy—use Ray’s statement to define a point at which his ego overcame his caution and he decided to make himself world famous. Others, like Gerald Frank in his book An American Death, point to this as a sign of Ray’s buried racial extremism, “coming out of the very atmosphere in which Ray grew up and lived.” Frank argues that Ray’s willingness to pursue King despite an expectation that he might become the most wanted man in America shows that he was not only willing to act on his racial animus, but that he did not expect to be caught, much less convicted, for the murder. A most-wanted listing would ensure that somewhere in the country someone or some group would take good care of Ray if he rid the world of the black civil rights leader.

  With the information now available, we propose that views on Ray’s motive such as the Ten-Most-Wanted-Fugitives-list motive Huie describes and I’ll-kill-King-and-become-a-Southern-hero motive Frank suggests are simply incorrect. They do not accurately reflect either Ray’s caution, his actions, his desire for money, or, for that matter, the sophistication and reach of those who had been trying to eliminate Dr. King since before 1964. Rather, our view is that Ray’s change in behavior in February demonstrates that he was responding to what he thought was finally a truly concrete bounty offer on Dr. King’s life.