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Killing King

Racial Terrorists, James Earl Ray, and the Plot to Assassinate Martin Luther King Jr.

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
Published in time for the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, Killing King uncovers previously unknown FBI files and sources, as well as new forensics to convincingly make the case that King was assassinated by a long–simmering conspiracy orchestrated by the racial terrorists who were responsible for the Mississippi Burning murders.
This explosive book details the long–simmering effort by a group of the nation’s most violent racial terrorists to kill Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Killing King convincingly makes the case that while James Earl Ray was part of the assassination plot to kill King, the preponderance of evidence also demonstrates a clear and well–orchestrated conspiracy.
Thoroughly researched and impeccably documented, the book reveals a network of racist militants led by Sam Bowers, head of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi, who were dedicated to the cause of killing King. The White Knights were formed in the cauldron of anti–integrationist resistance that was Mississippi in the early 1960s and were responsible for more than three hundred separate acts of violence, including the infamous Mississippi Burning murders. The authors have located previously unknown FBI files and sources that detail a White Knight bounty offer, information from an individual who carried money for the assassination, and forensics information regarding unmatched fingerprints and an audio recording of an admission that a key suspect obtained a weapon to be used in killing King.
For years, Americans have debated issues with this crime. With Killing King, we are ever closer to an accurate understanding of how and why Dr. King was killed.
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    • Kirkus

      February 15, 2018
      A labyrinthine investigation into conspirators linked to James Earl Ray, convicted assassin of Martin Luther King Jr.Investigative researchers Wexler and Hancock (co-authors: Shadow Warfare: The History of America's Undeclared Wars, 2014, etc.) dive deeply into an unsavory American underground in which the determination to destroy King ran deeper than commonly remembered. "The solution to King's murder is simple," they write. "The same kind of racists who had been trying to kill King for years had finally succeeded that April 4." Regarding Ray, they note "his role is only one strand in the overall web." Assembling a chronological narrative, the authors examine an alliance between the violent White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and wealthy businessmen, which offered a bounty on King's life dating to at least 1964; word spread in Southern prisons, where Ray would learn of it. Ray is portrayed as a money-hungry career criminal, leading to speculation that he pre-empted a larger conspiracy or overstepped his role. Wexler and Hancock suggest that this racist network, reeling from the passage of civil rights legislation, saw King's death as key to starting a full-scale race war, inspired by the ascendance of Christian Identity, a religion combining anti-black racism with anti-Semitism, and by violent fringe political groups such as the National States' Rights Party. The authors claim these factors have been underexamined, arguing that adherents "viewed King as an agent of the Satanic-Jewish conspiracy." While Klansmen ramped up a campaign of violence around 1967, King "shifted his priorities to issues of social and economic justice," lessening his support among mainstream Americans and black radicals questioning nonviolence. As for Ray, the authors meticulously reconstruct his wanderings before King's murder, showing a hapless fugitive rather than a committed terrorist: "Events in Memphis do not suggest a well-planned conspiracy, certainly not if Ray was the designated shooter." Their account is clear, though reliant on supposition and a dizzying cast of unsavory characters.A fascinating and disturbing look at complexities underlying a shameful historical epoch.

      COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from March 5, 2018
      Researchers Wexler (America’s Secret Jihad) and Hancock (Shadow Warfare) bolster their contention that the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. was the product of a conspiracy, in agreement with the 1979 findings of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The authors conclude there were at least nine such attempts over a decade, and the “solution to King’s murder is simple the same kind of racists who had been trying to kill King for years had finally succeeded.” Their evidence comes in part from extensive interviews with Donald Nissen, an ex-con who, in 1967, reported to the FBI that he had been approached by a fellow prisoner at Leavenworth Prison about sharing a bounty of $100,000 for helping to kill King. The authors also link King’s murder to the 1964 murder of civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner; they believe both were orchestrated by the Ku Klux Klan. While it may be overly optimistic to hope, as the authors do, for a reopening of the case by federal authorities 50 years after the assassination, they credibly argue that the many unanswered questions remaining would warrant such a step. This book provides an eye-opening, well-researched new perspective on King’s murder.

    • Booklist

      March 1, 2018
      History has recorded that James Earl Ray assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. What isn't as well documented is the serpentine conspiracy that led to that murder. At its height, it was a nationwide network of planners and sponsors, a cabal of right-wing activists, Ku Klux Klan kingpins, and Dixie Mafia bigwigs. It involved criminals on parole and convicts behind bars, terrorists hiding beneath the veneer of respectable businessmen and suburban housewives. All were motivated by bigotry and greed, for there was a bounty on Dr. King's head, enough to lure Ray, who was less racial ideologue than two-bit grifter. In this intricately woven, impressively researched, and painstakingly delineated analysis, investigative researchers Wexler and Hancock place King's assassination and its investigation by a sometimes woefully inept FBI within the racial and cultural mores of the time. Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Dr. King's death, this elaborately documented examination of one of the defining crimes of the twentieth century brings new light to a dark period in the nation's history.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

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