The books about Ray homed in on two questions: Why did he kill King? Did he conspire with others in a plot to assassinate him? Exhaustive investigations by the FBI, a task force of the Justice Department, the US House Select Committee on Assassinations, and authors such as George McMillan and Gerald Posner were never able to nail down a definite motive. Why Ray killed King probably will always remain a mystery. He was a virulent racist. Perhaps that was motive enough. The House panel relied on circumstantial evidence to conclude, vaguely, that there likely was a conspiracy. It pointed to Ray’s brothers, John and Jerry, as possible coconspirators. But no clear-cut proof of a conspiracy has ever emerged.
The published accounts dealing with Memphis followed a broad story line. They told how, by April 1968, King was pursuing perhaps the most ambitious undertaking of his life, the Poor People’s Campaign. No longer was he seeking only an end to racial segregation and discrimination, the cause that had consumed him for more than a decade. He was striving to end poverty in America, once and for all. He was mobilizing thousands of poor people to set up a shantytown in Washington, DC. He was vowing to lead his army of poor people for weeks, if not months, of civil disobedience in the streets and offices of federal lawmakers until they adopted a costly, sweeping antipoverty program.
When the biographies of King reached the chapters about Memphis, the story line centered on four consequential days: March 18 and 28 and April 3 and 4. He was in Memphis on March 18 to speak at a rally in support of a garbage workers’ strike. On March 28 he was back in Memphis leading a pro-strike march, which turned into a riot. On April 3 he flew back, having resolved to organize a peaceful march. If he could stage a second march without another riot, he thought he could prove that his brand of nonviolent protest remained under his control. Unless he reasserted his leadership in that way, his plan to recruit a legion of poor people to protest nonviolently in the nation’s capital was in jeopardy. Or so he reasoned. On April 4 he was murdered, snuffing out his plans for a redemptive march and the Poor People’s Campaign.
I did not see any point in looking into the much-investigated question of whether Ray had conspired with others to kill King. I sensed that there was more to say about how events in Memphis might have conspired to obstruct King’s plans as he returned to the city in 1968.
During a ten-year stint as a staff reporter for Frontline, the investigative documentary series on PBS, I developed a reflexive skepticism toward any supposed final word about a major public figure or event. Often the digging at Frontline uncovered new layers of revelation and understanding about stories that others had already put to bed. On that hunch I resolved to delve further into the Memphis story.
I had grown up relatively close, in Jackson, Tennessee. On visits to my family, I took the opportunity to stop by Memphis and continue my inquiry into King’s last hours. I interviewed more than two dozen people who were either close to King or the events surrounding him in March and April 1968. Of course, I reviewed the vast trove of King-related files from sources such as the FBI and congressional investigators, as well as memoirs from King aides and confidants. Some of the material, surprisingly, was published or released as recently as 2012, such as the documents at the Woodruff Library at the Atlanta University Center and at Emory University.
A more complete picture of what happened to King in Memphis did indeed come into focus, along with some startling insights. It seems likely that Memphis and the Poor People’s Campaign were linked in a way not previously revealed. King may have dramatized the garbage workers’ strike in Memphis, at least in part, to drum up support for the Poor People’s Campaign. By April 1968 the antipoverty operation was in great disarray, starved for funds and volunteers. A number of King’s close aides strongly objected to his intervening in the Memphis strike. King may well have disregarded their advice not only because the strikers’ cause was dear to him but also because of the urgency he felt to put the Poor People’s Campaign back on track.
Venturing into Memphis not once or twice but three times was enormously risky. He knew little of the city’s political and racial environment, yet he somehow reckoned that he could organize a peaceful march within a week in a strike-bound, riot-torn city on a razor’s edge. He faced an implacable, sophisticated foe in Memphis mayor Henry Loeb. Most of all, King was raising his visibility as a highly controversial figure at a time when his opposition to the Vietnam War and promise of massive protest in the nation’s capital already had made him a marked man in his own eyes.
It required extraordinary courage to return to Memphis and push ahead with the antipoverty campaign. It also reflected his growing impatience with capitalism and embrace of radical ideology in response to the urgent social and economic problems he perceived. That shift leftward seemed to seize him with greater passion by April 1968, an abrupt change in tone not fully documented in other accounts.
King was under enormous pressure from all sides in Memphis. He was exhausted from brutal days on the road proselytizing the Poor People’s Campaign. He was contending with dissension within his staff and the broader civil rights movement and marital tensions at home. He had to confront a nettlesome Black Power faction in Memphis and an expected federal injunction barring him and seven members of his SCLC staff from leading another march
