When Martin Luther King was shot dead on April 4, 1968, I was a junior in college. A year later, when a guy named James Earl Ray was convicted of that assassination, I didn’t pay any particular attention. Did you? Even in recent years, when I realized that the FBI both persecuted MLK and helped plot his death, it did not occur to me to rethink the person known as James Earl Ray. Who was he? I didn’t care. Anyway, he died in prison in 1998. Continue reading →
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James Earl Ray, the non-assassin of Martin Luther King
Posted on May 2, 2011 by Mary W. Maxwell, PhD
When Martin Luther King was shot dead on April 4, 1968, I was a junior in college. A year later, when a guy named James Earl Ray was convicted of that assassination, I didn’t pay any particular attention. Did you? Even in recent years, when I realized that the FBI both persecuted MLK and helped plot his death, it did not occur to me to rethink the person known as James Earl Ray. Who was he? I didn’t care. Anyway, he died in prison in 1998. Continue reading →