MLK, RIP

by Cliopatria

It should be noted that as I write this, it is almost exactly 36 years since the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Independent of what I have written elsewhere about how we sometimes warp the movement by overemphasizing King's place within it, let there be no doubt that King was one of the great Americans of his or any era. By the time of his death his message had mutated from one of the"Beloved Community" to a more radical critique of capitalism and of American foreign policy, particularly with regard to Vietnam. This has led many, including Mark Lane, who spoke at UVA a couple of weeks ago, and many in the King family to pose the idea that there was a greater conspiracy to murder King that involved forces of the United States government. These theories have gained greater currency in recent years even as the evidence for them has appeared more shoddy, circumstantial, dubious, and, well, conspiratorial than substantial.

I thought Lane's presentation (what I saw of it -- I missed the first part) was pretty shoddy, based on innuendo, a healthy dose of ignoring rudimentary history (Senator Byrd -- he was incapable of differentiating between Harry Flood and Robert, by the way -- in 1968 gave"the most racist speech in the history of the US Senate," for example -- utter nonsense for even an undergraduate familiar with, say, Theodore Bilbo), and a heavy dose of ad hominems -- his sole argument against one of his critics was"she works for the US government." Well, that sets things straight.

My friend and fellow Cliopatriat (Cliopatriot?) Ralph Luker is far better versed in the conspiracists than am I, and I look forward to his feedback, but my initial response is that while there may be more to the assassination than we know, I am skeptical of those who argue with scant and shoddy evidence that the US government was responsible for King's death simply because some would wish it to be so.

In any case, here is the New York Times' front page and main article on the King assassination from 1968. Conspiracies aside, the impact of King's life was profound, as was news of his death, which led to riots in dozens of American cities and to an almost instant de facto canonization of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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Derek Charles Catsam - 4/5/2004

Ralph --
Of course that is why I posted those three books. They are worthless, but they are also the three biggest conspiracy related books.
Lane certainly played fast and loose with the facts (I am relying on the first rule of being a lawyer, proferred by Steve Dallas of Bloom County during that strip's 1980s heyday, for my protection -- never, ever, ever sue a poor person)and as I said, I was unimpressed. Actually, I was a bit outraged -- I did not have enough facts in front of me to challenge him, and it seemed inappropriate anyway, but this guy was able to get up and weave his web in front of students who left believing that his case was true, that army intelligence, the CIA, the FBI and hint, hint, wink, wink, other government officials were undoubtedly responsibly for King's death, and that poor Ray was just a victim. Ugh.
dc

Ralph E. Luker - 4/5/2004

It's odd, Derek, that you should be at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and posting this from there, because, as Paul Harvey can tell you, when we were at VFH two or three years ago, I was in the midst of a bizarre experience. Can you imagine fearing a law suit because of a positive book review you'd published? I had just reviewed Gerald Posner's _Killing the Dream_ for the _JAH_ and the Three Stooges of Conspiracy Theory came after me in repeated letters to the editor in the JAH. One of them had been one of James Earl Ray's attorneys. How do you tell a lawyer that he's lying without provoking a suit? As it turned out, they didn't sue me -- because they were lying, among other things. But the JAH seemed to feel obliged to keep publishing their letters, even if they were lying.
Anyway, I agree with Posner that there may have been a conspiracy to kill Dr. King, but if there was James Earl Ray was at the heart of it. The conspiracy books to which you link are hardly worth looking at and Mark Lane's performance, as you suggest, hardly worth attending. He's long been more of a performance artist than an attorney. I suspect that he was brought to Charlottesville for the lecture largely because his sister, Ann Lane, is a senior person in Women's Studies at UVa. Run her name through HNN's archives. Do you see why I worry about law suits?