It was on this day in history, forty-eight years ago today, that; father, son, senior pastor and infamous civil rights leader the Rev. Dr. Michael Luther King, aka Martin Luther King, Jr. M.E. & PhD. was reportedly put down by a lone assassin’s bullet while he stayed at the Lorraine Motel (now the site for The National Civil Rights Museum for the United States of America) in Memphis, TN. USA on the evening of Thursday, 04 April 1968.
History records that Dr. King and representatives from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as well as the Poor People’s Campaign had come to Memphis to stand in arm in arm solidarity with the Memphis African-American (and some White and Hispanic) Sanitation Workers, who were on strike then for; better wages, safety standards and conditions. As well as fairer treatment by City Officials, including then Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb, in terms of the sanitation workers wishing to join the Labor Union known as A.F.S.C.M.E.U or the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Union.
During the last two weeks of his life Dr. King was under continued and constant threat, and his very words on the subject of his eventual demise were these:
“This is what is going to happen to me also. I keep telling you, this is a sick society.” – speaking to his wife, Dr. Coreta Scott-King, PhD. & Ed.U. about the assassination of then U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
“And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats… or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?” – excerpt from “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” Speech, Masonic Temple at Church of God in Christ headquarters on 03 April 1968 (A Wikipedia Page on the Speech)
And even though history records both truth and fiction, strangely intertwined, in ‘amongst them’ that knew him best. That such a monumental undertaking – the putting down of the American dream – was the work of one lone man and one lone man only, James Earl Ray.
That no one from the Mafia, much less some “two-man hit team on the rooftop of a firehouse just across the street from the motel where Dr. King stayed at in 1968,” did this.
That to believe in conspiracy and ‘bogeyman theory’ or to make straw man arguments that it was any one or any thing other than James Earl Ray that did the deed on that fateful day forty-eight years ago, is to do the world a disservice. And to just go on and accept the fact that a two-bit thief and drifter from Ewing, MO. USA by way of Alton, IL. USA, “killed the dream”.
And so it goes…
But here’s the thing:
And the truth is, is that the Government of the United States of America conspired, plotted, and planned “the death of the Dream,” and that the Family of Dr. King proved it in open court and were able to bring suit (the only ones ever to do so by the way) against the government for his death, c. 1999.
And no [Chief Justice Earl] Warren Commission or a United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations in the United States of America is going to tell me otherwise.
No! Only God Himself, History and the man for whom this posting is written about will be able to tell me otherwise.
Rest in Peace Dr. King, though [y]Our Dream is not yet fulfilled…
–Rhett.
Say What News?! 