Friday, April 04, 2008

Seeking answers on King's killer

I am not, but if you are then have a look at the following. Just don't expect much from a MSM story.

"Civil rights leader Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, 40 years ago on 4 April 1968.

A year later, James Earl Ray admitted to being the assassin. Because of that guilty plea there was no full trial. But Ray changed his story almost at once and until his death in prison in 1998 insisted he did not murder Dr King. So was he the killer? And if so, did he work alone?

To many, 40 years after his death, Martin Luther King has become a sort of secular saint.

In 1968, many whites in Tennessee saw things differently. He was a rabble-rouser, an agitator, possibly a Communist.

In a society built on open racial divisions, his arrival in Memphis in support of striking black sanitation workers was a source of white anger and resentment.

In that very different America, not everyone was saddened by his death.

Dr King died of a bullet wound to the throat just after 6pm on 4 April. He had been standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, talking to colleagues in the motel parking lot about dinner plans.

Among them, aged 26, was Jesse Jackson - later a candidate for the presidency. At this distance, he can smile with affection recalling Dr King's last words.

"I was coming across the parking lot and he said 'Jesse - you don't have on a tie'. I said the prerequisite for eating was an appetite, not a tie! He said I was crazy and laughed.

"Then he looked at the guy who was with me, (the musician) Ben Branch, and he said 'Ben be sure to play my favourite song tonight - Precious Lord'. And then the bullet hit him in the neck and he was killed instantly."

Not being a conspiracy nutcase like Jesse Jackson, I do not believe the government had anything to do with King's death, but for all of his life Jackson has been blaming white people in particular and America in general for pretty much everything up to and including the last super nova in the Andromeda galaxy.

Which is why he and those like him will never be afforded anything close to a measure of respectability. Crazy agitators is all they are and its a shame because black folk do need smart people of good will on their side.

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