This is a hypertext representation of Jim Douglass' lecture with his original
footnotes as well as some additions. Hyperlinks and additional notes by David
Ratcliffe with the assistance and approval of Jim Douglass.
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In September 2005, James Douglass accepted an invitation from the president
of Princeton Theological Seminary on behalf of the Council on Black Concerns
to deliver their annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture on March 29,
2006. Previous lecturers included James H. Cone, Katie Geneva Cannon, and
Michael Dyson.
The Converging Martyrdom of Malcolm and Martin
--------------------------------------
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture
Princeton Theological Seminary
by James W. Douglass
March 29, 2006
Copyright © 2006, 2013 James W. Douglass
Salaam aleikum.
Shalom.
Peace be with you.
When Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in the spring of 1968, I was
teaching a religion course at the University of Hawaii called "The Theology
of Peace." Several students were moved by King's death and his resistance to
the Vietnam War to burn their draft cards, making them liable to years in
prison. I joined their anti-war group, the Hawaii Resistance. A month later,
we sat in front of a convoy of trucks taking the members of the Hawaii
National Guard to Oahu's Jungle Warfare Training Center, on their way to the
jungles of Vietnam. I went to jail for two weeks -- the beginning of the end
of my academic career. Members of the Hawaii Resistance served from six
months to two years in prison for their draft resistance, or wound up going
into exile in Sweden or Canada.
Martin Luther King's martyrdom was our baptism into nonviolence as a way of
life, a step beyond our classes where we talked hopefully but abstractly
about a theology of peace. King's willingness to give his life inspired us
to choose life. We learned that freedom is not free. The cross is real. A
way of liberation passes through fire.
More than three decades later, while attending the only trial ever held for
Dr. King's murder, in a Memphis courtroom a few blocks from where he was
killed, I heard 70 witnesses describe the fire he passed through. They told
how King was stalked and killed not by the scapegoat James Earl Ray but by
U.S. government agencies using Mafia intermediaries and Memphis police
officers. I learned that Martin Luther King, Jr., after vowing to end the
Vietnam War and systemic poverty in the United States, was set up and
murdered by our national security state. His assassination was carried out
and covered up by the same government that now honors his birthday as a
national holiday.[1]
The revelation of Martin's martyrdom led me to investigate Malcolm's
martyrdom. What I discovered was a similar plot. I learned that Malcolm X,
El-Haj Malik El-Shabazz, while trying to put the U.S. on trial in the United
Nations for human rights violations against African Americans, also became a
government target. He was stalked and killed by U.S. intelligence agencies
using not Mafia but Nation of Islam intermediaries.
Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were both executed by what Dr. King
described, at the height of the Vietnam War, as "the greatest purveyor of
violence in the world today -- my own government."[2] While our government
waged a criminal war in Southeast Asia, in which the poor, largely people of
color, of the United States fought the poor of Vietnam on behalf of a
military-industrial complex, our two greatest prophets resisted that
systemic, racist evil with their whole lives. Malcolm and Martin came to see
the entire Cold War as a scam, in which a corporate, racist power dominated
as much of the world as it could by lying about both itself and its
ideological enemy. Our prophets of change, Malcolm and Martin, were then
spied on and undermined by government agencies in ways that led, step by
step, to their murders.
Let us begin with the story of Malcolm's martyrdom, which will lead us into
the story of Martin's martyrdom.
A New York FBI Director, James Fox, once made a carefully worded denial that
the FBI was involved in Malcolm X's assassination. While granting that the
FBI used a Counterintelligence Program to destroy black activists, Fox said,
"I do, however, reject any suggestion that the FBI was directly involved in
the murder of Malcolm X." (emphasis added)[3] The FBI could not deny having
been at least indirectly involved in killing Malcolm, because in the 1970s
it became public knowledge that the Bureau had successfully developed a
deadly conflict between Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammed and his
disciple, Malcolm X.
The FBI's documented purpose was to develop a factional dispute that would
divorce Malcolm from the Nation of Islam (NOI).[4] The FBI infiltrated "key
persons" into the national staff of the NOI at its Chicago office.[5] The
FBI operatives in Chicago then developed the fatal division between Elijah
Muhammad and Malcolm X, forcing Malcolm to resign from the NOI, just as the
FBI had plotted. The final fruit of the FBI's COINTELPRO and a wider
government conspiracy was Malcolm's assassination.
The most serious conflict between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X occurred
when Malcolm learned of rumors about his mentor's affairs with young women.
The FBI was spreading the rumors, sending fake letters on Elijah's
infidelities to his wife and ministers, foreshadowing what the Bureau would
do to destroy Martin Luther King. At the same time Malcolm was confronting
Elijah, he also spoke out publicly on President Kennedy's assassination in a
shocking way that gave Elijah an excuse for punishing him. Elijah ordered
Malcolm to be silent for 90 days. What Malcolm had done, unlike any other
public figure, was to link JFK's murder with U.S intelligence agencies.
On December 1, 1963, after a speech he gave in New York City, Malcolm was
asked his opinion of the president's murder. His response is repeated in his
autobiography:
Without a second thought, I said what I honestly felt -- that it
was, as I saw it, a case of `the chickens coming home to roost.' I
said that the hate in white men had not stopped with the killing
of defenseless black people, but that hate, allowed to spread
unchecked, finally had struck down this country's Chief of State.
I said it was the same thing as had happened with [civil rights
leader] Medgar Evers, with Patrice Lumumba, with Madame Nhu's
husband.[6]
Of the three examples Malcolm cited for the "chickens coming home to roost"
in Dallas, two involved CIA-instigated killings in Third World countries:
the assassinations of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo and of Ngo Dinh Nhu with
his brother Diem in South Vietnam. Malcolm's statement on the president's
murder anticipated the prophetic insight he would have into the covert
forces behind his own assassination. He would finally realize it was the
U.S. government, not Elijah Muhammad, that was the real power behind the
plot against him. Malcolm, who always had eyes in the back of his head, is
the best analyst of his own murder.
In March 1964, Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam. He then began a campaign
to bring U.S. violations of African-Americans' human rights before the court
of world opinion in the United Nations.
The FBI realized it had made a major miscalculation. Its COINTELPRO that
provoked the divorce between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad liberated Malcolm
for a bigger mission than anything he could do in the Nation of Islam. Yet
the Nation could still be used to silence Malcolm. Malcolm had to be stopped
because his international strategy invoking human rights against the U.S.
government was catching the attention of a potential ally far more powerful
than Elijah Muhammad: Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin and Malcolm met on the steps of the Capitol Building in Washington,
D.C., on March 26, 1964. They had both been listening to the Senate's debate
on civil rights legislation. As they shook hands warmly and were
interviewed, Malcolm grinned and said he was there to remind the white man
of the alternative to Dr. King. King offered a militant alternative of his
own, saying that if the Senate kept on talking and doing nothing, a
"creative direct action program" would start. If the Civil Rights Act were
not passed, he warned, "our nation is in for a dark night of social
disruption."[7]
Although Malcolm and Martin would continue to differ sharply on nonviolence,
their meeting was an epiphany. Malcolm's escalation of civil rights to human
rights and Martin's increasing calls for massive civil disobedience made
their prophetic visions complementary.
In April 1964, the New York Police Department, working closely with the FBI,
infiltrated Malcolm's new Muslim Mosque in Harlem with its elite
intelligence unit, the Bureau of Special Service and Investigation (BOSSI).
BOSSI's commander for the deep cover operation against Malcolm was Tony
Ulasewicz, who would later become infamous as President Richard Nixon's
private detective for covert "dirty tricks" that would then be exposed by
the Senate Watergate Hearings.
Four days after Malcolm left New York for his transforming pilgrimage to
Mecca, Tony Ulasewicz sent a 25-year-old black detective, Gene Roberts, to
an undercover assignment at Malcolm's newly founded Muslim Mosque, where
Roberts soon became one of Malcolm's security guards. Although Gene Roberts
reported daily to the New York Police (and through them, the FBI), he would
before long begin to be won over by Malcolm.[8]
At Mecca, Malcolm was converted to a vision he described as "The
brotherhood! The people of all races, colors, from all over the world coming
together as one!" He said, "It has proved to me the power of the One
God."[9] It also deepened his conviction that "the earth's most explosive
and pernicious evil is racism, the inability of God's creatures to live as
One, especially in the Western world."[10]
In May 1964, the five men who would kill Malcolm X nine months later came
together for the first time, according to the confession of one of them,
Talmadge Hayer. They belonged to the Nation of Islam's Mosque Number 25 in
Newark. Two of the men, Benjamin Thomas and Leon Davis, said "word was out
that Malcolm X should be killed."[11] Ben Thomas, the assistant secretary of
the Newark Mosque, was in the Nation of Islam's direct chain of command
below Elijah Muhammad and the FBI's assets in the Chicago office.
That summer Martin Luther King and Malcolm X tried to meet again. FBI agents
wiretapped a Malcolm phone call in which they learned that Martin's
attorney, Clarence Jones, left a message for Malcolm. Jones said, "Rev. King
would like to meet as soon as possible on the idea of getting a human rights
declaration."[12]
In the 12 days before Malcolm departed on a long trip to Africa, he and King
were unable to meet. However, the FBI knew, through its electronic
surveillance, that Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were hoping to connect
on the human rights issue that could put the U.S. on trial in the United
Nations. While New York Police and FBI agents monitored the Muslim Mosque in
Harlem, CIA agents followed Malcolm abroad, making themselves obvious so as
to intimidate him. Then on July 23, as Malcolm was about to present his UN
human rights appeal to the continent's nationalist leaders at the
Organization of African Unity meeting in Cairo, he was poisoned.
He was having dinner at a hotel with his friend, Milton Henry, he said
later, "when two things happened simultaneously. I felt a pain in my stomach
and, in a flash, I realized that I'd seen the waiter who served me before.
He looked South American, and I'd seen him in New York. The poison bit into
me like teeth. It was strong stuff. They rushed me to the hospital just in
time to pump the stuff out of my stomach. The doctor told Milton that there
was a toxic substance in my food. When the Egyptians who were with me looked
for the waiter who had served me, he had vanished. I know that our [Nation
of Islam] Muslims don't have the resources to finance a worldwide spy
network."[13]
The friend who witnessed his poisoning, Detroit civil rights attorney Milton
Henry, warned Malcolm that his UN campaign could mean his death. Henry later
felt that it did: "In formulating this policy, in hitting the nerve center
of America, he also signed his own death warrant."[14]
For four months, Malcolm traveled around Africa, holding follow-up meetings
with the heads of state who had encouraged him most in Cairo: President
Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, President
Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Prime Minister Milton Obote of Uganda, President
Azikiwe of Nigeria, President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Prime Minister Ahmed
Ben Bella of Algeria, and President Sekou Toure of Guinea.[15] At the height
of the Cold War, Malcolm X had gained access to Africa's most revolutionary
leaders on a politically explosive issue.
On August 13, a New York Times correspondent reported from Washington on the
State and Justice Departments' "interest in Malcolm X's campaign to convince
African states to raise the question of persecution of American Negroes at
the United Nations.... Before leaving for Cairo, Malcolm told friends in New
York that it was his intention to add a new dimension to the civil rights
struggle in the United States. This, he said, could be achieved by
`internationalizing' the Negro question at the United Nations in the manner
that South African apartheid was transferred into an international
problem."[16] According to the Times article, "[Washington] officials said
that if Malcolm succeeded in convincing just one African Government to bring
up the charge at the United Nations, the United States Government would be
faced with a touchy problem."[17]
Washington officials were warning Malcolm publicly to back off. The
unmentioned agency responsible for dealing with such "a touchy problem" was
the CIA. After consulting with President Johnson and FBI Director Hoover,
the State Department told the CIA's director of covert action in a
memorandum that "Malcolm X has, for all practical purposes, renounced his
U.S. citizenship."[18] Malcolm had never renounced his citizenship, but the
State Department was now telling the CIA's director of covert action to deal
with him as if he were a foreign adversary.
After 18 weeks meeting with African leaders, Malcolm flew back to New York
at the end of November 1964. He was soon confronted by an issue of the
Nation of Islam newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, featuring an attack on him by
Minister Louis X (known later as Louis Farrakhan). Louis X wrote: "The die
is set, and Malcolm shall not escape, especially after such evil, foolish
talk about his benefactor ... Such a man as Malcolm is worthy of
death..."[19] Louis Farrakhan has in recent years acknowledged publicly that
his words "were like fuel on a fire" and "helped create the atmosphere" that
moved others to kill Malcolm.[20]
On December 1, Malcolm's close friend, Alex Quaison-Sackey of Ghana, was
elected President of the UN General Assembly. Quaison-Sackey arranged for
Malcolm to have his own office at the UN to organize his human rights
campaign.[21] Malcolm was not about to back off from his UN confrontation
with the U.S. on human rights.
In February 1965, Malcolm X once again almost connected with Martin Luther
King. The place was Selma, Alabama, during a turbulent civil rights
campaign. The date was February 4, 17 days before Malcolm's death.
When Malcolm arrived in Selma after speaking at nearby Tuskegee Institute
the night before, Martin Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership
Conference staff was panicked. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC) activists present wanted Malcolm to speak to the crowd at Brown
Chapel.[22] With Dr. King in jail, his SCLC staff called on Coretta Scott
King to speak after Malcolm to put out his fire. Mrs. King was instead
inspired by Malcolm to see the hope of a transforming convergence between
him and her husband.
Malcolm told the crowd of activists that because civil rights were human
rights, the U.S. government by failing to uphold their rights was in
violation of the United Nations Charter. Coretta was then impressed by the
gentle way in which Malcolm said to her afterwards, "Mrs. King, will you
tell Dr. King that I had planned to visit with him in jail? I won't get a
chance now because I've got to leave to get to New York in time to catch a
plane for London..."[23]
From his speaking engagement in London, Malcolm flew on to Paris. At Orly
Airport in Paris, he was given a clue to his impending assassination. He
found himself barred from entering France. The French police put him on a
flight back to London.
Malcolm was shocked. Why had France, one of Europe's most liberal countries
where he had spoken before without incident, suddenly barred him? The answer
was given later to an investigative journalist, Eric Norden, who probed
Malcolm's death. A highly placed North African diplomat said word had been
passed to his country by French intelligence "that the CIA planned Malcolm's
murder, and France feared he might be liquidated on its soil," thereby
scapegoating France.[24]
The North African diplomat added, "Your CIA is beginning to murder its own
citizens now."[25]
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were prophets who never stopped turning
toward a deeper truth. They kept turning toward the transformation of the
world in Allah/God, regardless of the consequences to themselves. Today we
know about the murder plots against them because participants in those plots
also turned toward the truth. One such person was Talmadge Hayer, a shooter
of Malcolm X, whose confession I have cited. Hayer confessed his crime to
try to exonerate two wrongly convicted co-defendants. Hayer recognized he
had been manipulated by forces beyond his knowledge into committing a
terrible crime. During his three decades in prison, Talmadge Hayer then
turned his life around to become Mujahid Abdul Halim, a devout Muslim, who
led an exemplary life serving his fellow prisoners in the Napanoch, New
York, state prison.[26]
Another witness who turned from his past mistakes, who was then liberated to
speak out on Martin Luther King's assassination, was Myron Billett, a member
of the Mafia. While serving a sentence in the late 1970s for manslaughter,
Myron Billett was visited in the Ohio State Penitentiary by a great
Cincinnati minister and peacemaker, Maurice McCrackin, who became his best
friend.[27] Billett then revealed to McCrackin that in January 1968 he was
present when FBI and CIA agents offered a Mafia leader one million dollars
to kill Martin Luther King.[28]
Myron Billett said that at a meeting he had arranged in Apalachin, New York,
three representatives of the CIA and FBI asked New York Mafia don Carlo
Gambino if he would accept a one-million-dollar contract to assassinate
King. Billett recalled the exact words of Gambino's reply: "In no way would
I or the family get involved with you people again. You messed up the Cuba
deal. You messed up the Kennedy deal."[29] The CIA and FBI men said they
would make "other arrangements" and departed. Three months later, King was
murdered in a government conspiracy that, as revealed in the Memphis trial I
attended, included "other arrangements" with mob intermediaries, namely the
New Orleans and Memphis Mafia.
Why?
Why would Martin Luther King be targeted for assassination by his own
government's intelligence agencies?
Just as Malcolm X, El-Haj Malik El-Shabazz, took the Holy Qur'an seriously,
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took the Holy Bible seriously. For King, the
prophets and Jesus made it imperative that we turn as a people toward
justice and peace or we would be destroyed: Nonviolence or nonexistence. The
continually repeated contingency prophecy of Jesus of Nazareth and Martin
Luther King is an either/or: Either turn toward our God of Justice and Peace
or we as a people will be left with no stone on another (Mark 13:2), just as
the Jerusalem temple was destroyed in 70 and as the World Trade Center was
in 2001, just as one U.S. city after another can be blown up today in
response to our government's pre-emptive war policy. Those who take up the
sword (or the Bomb) will perish by the sword (or the Bomb) (Matthew 26:52).
Nonviolence or nonexistence.
Martin Luther King became a mortal enemy of Washington on April 4, 1967, one
year to the day before his assassination, when he said in his great
Riverside Church Address against the Vietnam War: "I could never again raise
my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having
first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today
-- my own government."[30]
Dr. King saw the Vietnam War as the revelation of a profound systemic evil
that would define the future of America, as in fact it has right up to the
present. He said:
The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within
the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we
will find ourselves organizing Clergy and Laymen Concerned
committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about
Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and
Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South
Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and
attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and
profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts takes
us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as children of the
living god.[31]
However, from the government's standpoint, Martin Luther King had gone
beyond the point of no return. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent a
memorandum to President Lyndon Johnson stating:
Based on King's recent activities and public utterances, it is
clear that he is an instrument in the hands of subversive forces
seeking to undermine our nation.[32]
In the Memphis trial, Rev. James Lawson, King's friend and co-organizer,
testified that hatred and fear of King deepened in response to his plan to
hold the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, D.C. According to King's
vision, an interracial army of poor persons would come together in the
nation's capital in late April 1968. They would then engage in wave after
wave of mass civil disobedience to dislocate the functioning of the city.
King hoped that the waves of poor Americans from around the country would
tie up Washington through nonviolent direct action until Congress passed a
comprehensive anti-poverty bill. The absolute minimum in legislation, King
told reporters in February 1968, was a full-employment commitment, a
guaranteed annual income, and construction funds for at least a half million
units of low-cost housing per year.[33] Policymakers feared King would
succeed in bringing the nation's capital to a halt until they made a
commitment to eliminate poverty in the United States.
The intelligence community also knew, from listening electronically to
King's meetings and phone conversations, that he had an even broader vision
of the Poor People's Campaign. With the Vietnam War at its peak in the
spring of 1968, King told his staff, "After we get [to D.C.], and stay a few
days, [we'll] call the peace movement in, and let them go on the other side
of the Potomac and try to close down the Pentagon, if that can be done."[34]
In his Canadian Broadcasting Corporation lectures at the end of 1967 (later
published as The Trumpet of Conscience), King's vision went beyond even
these concerns. He saw the next step as a global nonviolent movement using
escalating acts of massive civil disobedience to disrupt the entire
international order and block economic and political exploitation across
borders.[35] King saw the Memphis sanitation workers' strike as the
beginning of the Poor People's Campaign, which was in turn a step toward a
global nonviolent revolution.
The power structure knew, perhaps better than we did, the breadth of this
prophet's vision. Memphis was a last chance to stop him before he led the
Poor People's Campaign into Washington.
Martin Luther King's commitment to walk the way of Jesus in our Jerusalem,
by disrupting the temples of the Pentagon and Wall Street, placed him in
absolute conflict with a national security state that had taken over the
U.S. government, making it the most powerful government in history. In the
course of the Cold War, that government sanctioned covert action and
assassinations, just as it does today more publicly. Given what Washington
had become, and who Martin Luther King was becoming, it would be surprising
if King were not to be assassinated by his government.
The assassinations of Malcolm and Martin have close parallels, because they
can be traced to the same sources: our government's covert action agencies.
Both men were set up.
At 2:45 a.m. on Sunday, February 14, 1965, the Queens home in which Malcolm
X and his family were sleeping was firebombed. Malcolm, Betty Shabazz, who
was six months pregnant with twins, and their four daughters barely escaped.
Two days after the firebombing, police detectives told the media that a
whisky bottle containing gasoline had been found "intact and upright on top
of a baby dresser" in the house, implying that Malcolm had left it
there.[36] Both the police and a Nation of Islam spokesman suggested Malcolm
burned down his house for the sake of publicity. The police did not mention
that it was Betty Shabazz who, on returning to the gutted house to salvage
belongings, had found the bottle on her baby's dresser. She had pointed it
out to firefighters. How had it gotten there?
Malcolm had been saying, "My house was bombed by the Black Muslim movement
upon the orders of Elijah Muhammad."[37] When Betty discovered the bottle of
gasoline on the dresser and the police raised it publicly, she and Malcolm
knew, as Betty said later, "Only someone in the uniform of a fireman or a
policeman could have planted the bottle of gasoline on my baby's
dresser."[38] The police had tried to scapegoat them. Malcolm and Betty
suspected they were being set up for something worse.
In the meantime, a dry run of Malcolm's assassination had already happened
at the Audubon Ballroom. It was witnessed by the New York Police
infiltrator, Gene Roberts, who had become Malcolm's security guard. By this
time, Roberts had also become Malcolm's friend and admirer. He was taking
his role as Malcolm's bodyguard more seriously than his mentors wanted.
When Malcolm spoke at the Audubon Ballroom on Monday, February 15, Gene
Roberts saw a preview of what would happen the following Sunday: a fake
disruption in the audience designed to draw everyone's attention, then a
movement elsewhere toward Malcolm, which on Sunday would include three
shooters firing simultaneously.
Roberts said he called his New York Police supervisors when the meeting was
over.
He said, "Listen. I just saw the dry run on Malcolm's life. I feel like it's
going to go down next Sunday."
They said, "Okay, we'll pass it on."[39]
* * *
When Martin Luther King went to Memphis on March 28, 1968, to march with the
sanitation workers, government provocateurs infiltrated the march. The
provocateurs broke windows, disrupted the march, and provoked a police riot.
The violence made it necessary for King to return to Memphis on April 3, to
prepare for a truly nonviolent march that would prove SCLC could carry out a
nonviolent Poor People's Campaign in Washington.[40] By being forced to
return to Memphis, King was being set up for his assassination.
He was also channeled into registering at the Lorraine Motel. On the day
after the disrupted march, an FBI-authored article was passed to news media
that read:
The fine Hotel Lorraine in Memphis is owned and patronized
exclusively by Negroes but King didn't go there from his hasty
exit [from the march]. Instead King decided the plush Holiday Inn
Motel, white owned, operated and almost exclusively white
patronized, was the place to `cool it.' There will be no boycott
of white merchants for King, only for his followers.[41]
Although the Lorraine Motel posed security problems, those making King's
arrangements booked him there beginning April 3, just as the FBI wanted.
The Lorraine's owners, Walter and Lorraine Bailey, initially gave King a
more secure inner court room behind the motel's office. However, Martin's
SCLC staff, like Malcolm's Muslim Mosque, had been infiltrated by the
government.[42] On the night before King's arrival in Memphis, an
unidentified male member of King's staff in Atlanta phoned the Baileys at
the Lorraine. The man insisted that King's room be changed from the (more
secure) inside location to an outside balcony room completely exposed to
public view.[43] The change was made. The scene was set for April 4.
Malcolm's and Martin's assassinations were both characterized by a
withdrawal of police security.
When the New York Police authorities received Gene Roberts' warning from the
dry run he witnessed on Malcolm's life, they responded by stationing their
officers at the Audubon the following Sunday in rooms away from the
ballroom. They ordered their men not to move in the direction of the
ballroom, unless given permission by their superiors on a walkie-talkie.
When the police who had been removed from the scene of Malcolm's murder then
heard shots coming from the ballroom, the walkie-talkie went dead.[44] The
police wound up strolling into the ballroom 15 minutes after Malcolm was
killed, a scene made famous in Spike Lee's film.[45]
* * *
Martin Luther King's ordinary police security in Memphis included a special
unit of black officers commanded by Captain Jerry Williams. However, for
King's April 3 arrival, Williams was disturbed that he was not asked to form
the special black bodyguard.[46]
Moreover, two black firefighters at Fire Station 2, across the street from
the Lorraine Motel, were inexplicably transferred early on April 4 to fire
stations where they were not needed.[47] In addition, a black Memphis Police
Department detective, Ed Redditt, who was watching King's room from a Fire
Station 2 surveillance post, was suddenly removed from his post two hours
before King's murder. The order was given by Memphis Police and Fire
Director Frank Holloman, who had recently retired from 25 years with the
FBI, seven of them as the supervisor of J. Edgar Hoover's office. Holloman
ordered detective Redditt to go home because, Holloman claimed, Redditt's
life had been threatened. Redditt protested, obeyed the order, and arrived
home just as King was shot.[48]
Finally, also on April 4, by order of Frank Holloman's subordinate,
Inspector Sam Evans, the four tactical police units patrolling the Lorraine
Motel area were all pulled back, thereby allowing an assassin to escape more
easily.[49]
Malcolm's and Martin's murders were facilitated by the systematic withdrawal
of all their normal security.
* * *
The assassination of Malcolm X on Sunday, February 21, 1965, at the Audubon
Ballroom in Harlem proceeded like an execution, for that is what it was. A
J. Edgar Hoover memorandum of February 4 shows that Malcolm on his trip to
England and France was monitored by a complete covert action network. It
included the FBI, the CIA Director, the CIA's Deputy Director of Plans
(meaning covert action and assassinations), the Army Assistant Chief of
Staff for Intelligence, the Director of Naval Intelligence, the Chief of the
Air Force Counterintelligence Division, and offices in London and Paris too
sensitive to be identified.[50] These were the chickens Malcolm was talking
about in his comment on JFK's assassination that launched him into
independence from Elijah Muhammad. Now after Malcolm's pilgrimage to Mecca
and revolutionary Africa, as he sought to bring the U.S. to court in the
United Nations, the same chickens were coming home to roost for him.
On the morning of February 21, Malcolm said to his sister, Ella, in a phone
call, "Ask Allah to guide me, because I feel they may have me doomed for
this day."
"Not this day," Ella protested.
"Yes, this day," Malcolm said.[51]
Before walking out on the Audubon Ballroom stage the afternoon of February
21, Malcolm told his staff, as he had told Alex Haley the day before, that
he was going to stop saying it was the Black Muslims who bombed his home: "I
know what they can do. Things have gone beyond that."[52]
His assistant, Benjamin Goodman, introduced Malcolm to the audience of 400
people in the Audubon as "a man who would give his life for you."[53]
After receiving a long, standing ovation, Malcolm greeted everyone,
including the assassins he assumed were present: "As-salaam alaikum."
("Peace be with you.") The response came back: "Wa-laikum salaam." ("And
with you peace.")
Then, as in the dry run on Monday, a man near the back of the ballroom
yelled, "Get your hand out of my pocket, man!" Malcolm responded to the
sounds of a beginning fight by stepping out from behind the podium and
walking to the front of the stage, thus making himself a perfect target. He
said, "Now, now, brothers, break it up. Hold it..." Two men with pistols
stood up in the front row, and a man behind them with a shotgun moved into
the aisle and stepped forward. All three men fired point blank at
Malcolm.[54]
* * *
Martin's assassination was also an execution.
Everything was in place on April 4, 1968. The Mafia's Frank Liberto, a
Memphis produce dealer, had sent a courier to deliver $100,000 to Loyd
Jowers, the owner of Jim's Grill whose back door opened onto the dense
bushes across the street from the Lorraine Motel. Jowers then received a
rifle in a box on April 3 from a man named Raul. It was Raul who also
brought the scapegoat, James Earl Ray, into Memphis on April 4, after Raul
had shepherded Ray in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico since the previous
summer.
We know Loyd Jowers' role in the King assassination because he confessed to
Martin's son, Dexter King, and former UN Ambassador Andrew Young in a fall
1998 meeting that was tape-recorded. The audiotape was played for the jury
at the 1999 trial I attended. In his confession, Jowers said that meetings
to plan the assassination took place at Jim's Grill. The planners included
undercover Memphis Police Department (MPD) Officer Marrell McCollough (who
went on to a career with the CIA), Police Lieutenant Earl Clark, a third
police officer, and two men who Jowers thought were federal agents.
At 6:00 p.m. on April 4, James Earl Ray was several blocks away at a service
station, trying to get a flat spare tire fixed.[55] Unknown to Ray, the fake
evidence to scapegoat him had already been left near the entrance to the
boarding house where he had rented a room, as we learned from the King trial
testimony of Judge Arthur Hanes Jr., Ray's former attorney. At ten minutes
before the assassination, the rifle Ray had bought at Raul's orders was
dropped in the doorway of the Canipe Amusement Company.[56] In the King
trial, witness Judge Joe Brown, who had the planted rifle tested, said that
because its scope had not been sited, "this weapon literally could not have
hit the broad side of a barn."[57]
At 6:00 p.m., the hired shooter was in the thick brush and bushes directly
across from the Lorraine, aiming the real rifle at Martin Luther King, who
was standing on the balcony in front of his room.[58] Early the next
morning, as established by trial testimony, those same bushes were cut down
by order of Police Inspector Sam Evans, thus destroying the crime scene.[59]
* * *
Investigating the assassinations of Martin and Malcolm over the past
decade[60] has been a pilgrimage into martyrdom. From that journey I have
learned, first of all, how naïve I was about systemic evil. While there is
nothing new about prophets being murdered by the system, I was not aware of
how well our own system carries out such murders -- and why.
I believe a key to this untold history is the fact that our government was
the first to develop and use nuclear weapons. The democratic principles we
profess were, from the beginning, in conflict with such weapons and our
reluctance to submit them to international control.
Nuclear weapons and civil liberties don't go together. Nuclear weapons and
life don't go together. The rise of our national security state after World
War Two, as justified by the Cold War that our nuclear weapons created, was
the effective end of democracy in this country. That history of a national
security state replacing a democracy was climaxed by the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy, an event that foreshadows the martyrdom of
Malcolm and Martin.
A nuclear weapons state that maintains the myth of being a democracy
requires what our newspeak language calls "intelligence agencies," which
specialize in covert action, assassinations, and propaganda whose targets
include U.S. citizens. The CIA and its related covert action/propaganda
agencies have evolved into what we today, with more newspeak (and a verbal
surrender to our former World War Two enemies), call "Homeland Security." I
believe the reason why Malcolm's and Martin's assassinations by our own
government can still shock us is that we are in denial of the fact that our
government, by embracing nuclear weapons, became a national security state.
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, each in his own unique way, challenged
that system to be true to its democratic origins, as did John F. Kennedy and
his brother, Robert. The four of them offered a combined witness to a
process of justice, peace, and nuclear disarmament through which the people
of this country could achieve a truly democratic government. Until we turn
in that direction, I believe what Martin said remains true in a more
terrible sense than ever: The greatest purveyor of terrorism in the world
today is my own government.
* * *
As you know well in this community of faith, martyrdom is a witness to a
Reality that can overcome any evil on earth. We are talking here about the
Reality of Allah/God that was at the center of our prophets' willingness to
confront the system with their whole lives, in an effort to change it for
the sake of life itself.
I want to conclude with what Martin and Malcolm said about martyrdom at the
ends of their lives -- seeing their words and spirits united with each other
and with us tonight, to sustain us in the journey ahead.
In the talk Martin gave at Mason Temple in Memphis the night before he died,
with thunder cracking outside and the people rising to his words inside, he
repeated the prophecy of Jesus that is the test of our survival: "It is no
longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in the world; it's
nonviolence or nonexistence."[61]
To choose the nonviolent alternative in that prophecy, rather than our
extinction as a species, Martin said, "Let us develop a kind of dangerous
unselfishness,"[62] on a journey down the Jericho road that the Good
Samaritan traveled when he helped the man in the ditch, a dangerous road
where a person can be easily ambushed. Martin went down that road to help
the sanitation workers in Memphis, and he was ambushed. He felt it coming,
as we know from his final words that night.
God had allowed him, he said, to go up to the mountain, and to look over.
And he'd seen the promised land. Sometimes I think we hear the next part a
little too easily, Martin's certainty that "we, as a people, will get to the
promised land." Well, Martin was speaking to an oppressed people who'd
chosen nonviolence -- the striking sanitation workers of Memphis, who were
marching for justice. They were the people on their way to the promised
land.
Martin wasn't so certain where the rest of us were going. He continued
warning, right up to the end, about where we as a nation were going. Three
hours before his death the next day, Martin phoned his church in Atlanta
with the title of his Sunday sermon that he would never deliver: "Why
America May Go to Hell."[63]
Malcolm, as a deep believer in Islam, in Peace, chose to die as a martyr.
Two days before his death, he spoke with his friend, the photographer Gordon
Parks. Malcolm said, "It's a time for martyrs now. And if I'm to be one, it
will be in the cause of brotherhood. That's the only thing that can save
this country. I've learned it the hard way -- but I've learned it. And
that's the significant thing."[64]
Malcolm also chose not to go into exile to avoid martyrdom. Twelve days
before his death, he had listened patiently in a London hotel room, while a
friend, Guyan writer Jan Carew, summoned every word at his command to
persuade Malcolm not to return to the United States and almost certain
death. Carew even invoked the authority of their ancestral spirit world,
"the ghosts in our blood," to argue against the folly of martyrdom:
Those ancestral spirits whisper warnings, whenever we're about to
do something reckless or foolhardy. Right now they should be
whispering to you that, perhaps, surviving for our cause is more
important than dying for it.[65]
Malcolm answered, "The spirit world's fine but I want our folk to be free in
the world of the living."[66] And the unspoken thought: So for the sake of
the living, I'll live the truth freely and openly all the way, regardless of
the consequences.
In Malcolm's eyes, that was freedom. By living and speaking the truth
freely, Malcolm denied to the system that assassinated him the victory of
taking away his life. He instead gave it freely in the cause of brotherhood
and sisterhood -- or as he put it at Mecca, for a vision of "the people of
all races, colors, from all over the world coming together as one! It has
proved to me the power of the One God."[67]
A "martyr" is literally a witness.
Martin, by going to Memphis, on his way to Washington and the Poor People's
Campaign, was a witness to a vision of transformation ... provided we're
willing to pay the price.
Malcolm, by going to Africa, on his way to the United Nations and an African
American stand for human rights, was a witness to a vision of transformation
... provided we're willing to pay the price.
Malcolm's final action, in stepping forward to reconcile two brothers in a
fight, made him not only a target for murder but also a witness to
brotherhood, sisterhood, and the unity of our one family in one God.
As he said to his assassins and to us all, "As-salaam alaikum."
And as Martin said, "I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any
man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."[68]
Notes
-------------------------
Hyperlinks to most book titles go to WorldCat.org, "the world's largest
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providing access to their resources on the Web, where most people start
their search for information." These links were accessed from the greater
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or ON), Country: (e.g. United States or United Kingdom), or Latitude
Longitude (e.g. 40.266000,-83.219250) to see listings of libraries where you
live. Where possible book title links reference the precise edition cited in
these footnotes. Where such editions could not be found, alternate versions
are linked to. Alternatively to worldcat.org, some titles link to
OpenLibrary.org, an open, editable library catalog, building towards a web
page for every book ever published. Open Library is a project of the
non-profit Internet Archive, and has been funded in part by a grant from the
California State Library and the Kahle/Austin Foundation.
1. See Jim Douglass, "The Martin Luther King Conspiracy Exposed in
Memphis":
I can hardly believe the fact that, apart from the courtroom
participants, only Memphis TV reporter Wendell Stacy and I
attended from beginning to end this historic
three-and-one-half week trial. Because of journalistic
neglect scarcely anyone else in this land of ours even knows
what went on in it. After critical testimony was given in the
trial's second week before an almost empty gallery, Barbara
Reis, U.S. correspondent for the Lisbon daily Publico who was
there several days, turned to me and said, "Everything in the
U.S. is the trial of the century. O.J. Simpson's trial was
the trial of the century. Clinton's trial was the trial of
the century. But this is the trial of the century, and who's
here?"
A hypertext representation of the complete trial transcript is
available at .
2. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Beyond Vietnam," Riverside Church Address,
New York City, April 4, 1967.
3. James Fox's statement on the murder of Malcolm X is included in Brother
Minister: The Assassination of Malcolm X, a 1995 film directed and
produced by Jack Baxter and Jefri Aalmuhammed; screenplay by Jack
Baxter, Jefri Aalmuhammed and Joan Claire Chabriel.
4. "Over the years, considerable thought has been given and action taken
with Bureau's approval, relating to methods through which the NOI could
be discredited in the eyes of the general black populace or through
which factionalism among the leadership could be created.... Factional
disputes have been developed -- the most notable being MALCOLM X
LITTLE." Memorandum from Special Agent in Charge, Chicago, to Director,
FBI, 1/22/69. Reproduced on p. 102 of The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents
from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Domestic Dissent by Ward Churchill
and Jim Vander Wall (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2002).
5. Author's interview with Elijah Muhammad's son, W. D. Mohammed (whose
name was Wallace Muhammed during the life of Malcolm X), August 2,
1999.
6. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley (New York:
Ballantine Books, 1973), p. 301.
7. Karl Evanzz, The Judas Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcolm X (New York:
Thunder's Mouth Press, 1992), pp. 226-27.
8. Author's interview with Gene Roberts, July 7, 2000.
9. Autobiography, p. 338.
10. Ibid.
11. Michael Friedly, Malcolm X: The Assassination (New York: Carroll & Graf
Publishers, 1993), p. 217.
12. The FBI transcript of the June 27, 1964, phone conversation in which
Malcolm X received the message from Martin Luther King on a human
rights declaration is on page 480 of Clayborne Carson's Malcolm X: The
FBI File (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1993).
13. Jan Carew, Ghosts in Our Blood: With Malcolm X in Africa, England, and
the Caribbean (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1994), p. 39.
14. Eric Norden, "The Assassination of Malcolm X: Government and NYPD
Conspiracy?," Hustler (December 1978), p. 98.
15. "There's A Worldwide Revolution Going On," Malcolm X: The Last
Speeches, edited by Bruce Perry (New York: Pathfinder, 1989), p. 116.
Carew, p. 83. There were additional African heads of state Malcolm
talked with, he said, "whose names I can't mention." Carew, ibid.
16. M. S. Handler, "Malcolm X Seeks U.N. Negro Debate; He Asks African
States to Cite U.S. Over Rights," New York Times (August 13, 1964), p.
22.
17. Ibid.
18. The State Department's Benjamin H. Read, an assistant to Secretary of
State Dean Rusk, in effect withdrew Malcolm's U.S. citizenship. Read's
memorandum is cited in an August 11, 1964, CIA memorandum for the
Deputy Director of Plans, titled "ACTIVITIES OF MALCOLM POSSIBLE
INVOLVEMENT OF AFRICAN NATIONS IN U.S. CIVIL DISTURBANCES," cited by
both Evanzz, Judas Factor, p. 254, and Zak A. Kondo, Conspiracys:
Unravelling the Assassination of Malcolm X (Washington: Nubia Press,
1993), pp 49 and 242 endnote 280.
19. Louis X, "Boston Minister Tells of Messenger Muhammad's Biggest
Hypocrite," Muhammad Speaks (December 4, 1964), p. 11. Kondo, p. 159.
Peter Goldman, The Death and Life of Malcolm X (Urbana, Illinois:
University of Illinois Press, second edition, 1979), p. 248.
20. Spike Lee, By Any Means Necessary: The Trials and Tribulations of the
Making of Malcolm X (New York: Hyperion, 1992), p. 56. Louis Farrakhan
made essentially the same carefully worded statement to three other
interviewers: Tony Brown in 1985, Barbara Walters in 1993, and Mike
Wallace in 2000. They were all cited on Tony Brown's Journal, "What Did
Farrakhan Say and When Did He Say It?" (Spring 2000).
21. Karl Evanzz, The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad (New
York: Pantheon Books, 1999), p. 293. Evanzz is drawing on interviews of
Benjamin Karim by Jack Baxter (in outtakes of Brother Minister).
22. Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-1965
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), p. 578.
23. Coretta Scott King, My Life With Martin Luther King, Jr.; revised
edition (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), p. 238.
24. Eric Norden, "The Murder of Malcolm X," The Realist (February 1967), p.
12. (Article starts on page one, continues on page 4 through page 16,
continuing on page 18 up to its end on page 22.)
25. Ibid.
26. Author's conversations with Nuriddin Faiz, former Chaplain of the World
Community of Islam at the Eastern Correctional Facility, Napanoch, New
York, where he visited Mujahid Abdul Halim as his minister.
27. When Myron Billett was released from prison for health reasons, Maurice
McCrackin baptized him. He was his minister for the rest of Billett's
life. McCrackin remembered Myron Billett with deep respect: "There's no
finer person and more caring spirit I've known than Myron. He was very
gentle and always the same. It was just remarkable looking at him and
realizing what he'd been a part of." Author's interview of Maurice
McCrackin, March 11, 1997.
28. In addition to Maurice McCrackin, Myron Billett told the story of the
FBI/CIA offer of a million-dollar contract to kill King to author
William Pepper, to members of the House Select Committee on
Assassinations, and on a 1989 BBC documentary produced shortly before
his death. William F. Pepper, Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the
Murder of Martin Luther King (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1995), pp.
146-48. John Edginton, producer, Who Killed Martin Luther King? (BBC
Television, 1989).
29. Myron Billett, "Deathly Enemies," an unpublished 4-page manuscript by
Myron Billett dated December 29, 1977, p. 1 (punctuation corrected).
The manuscript was included with Maurice McCrackin's collection of his
letters from Myron Billett (given to me by McCrackin ten months before
his death on December 30, 1997).
30. King, "Beyond Vietnam."
31. Ibid.
32. David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference (New York: William Morrow and
Co., 1986), p. 555.
33. Ibid., pp. 595-6. "King emphasized [to reporters] that opinion polls
showed that a majority of Americans supported those initiatives, and
said, `We are counting on a response of the people of the nation.'"
Ibid. p. 596.
34. Ibid., p. 593.
35. Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience (New York: Harper &
Row, 1968), pp. 15, 48-49, 53-64.
36. "Bottle of Gasoline Found on a Dresser in Malcolm X Home," New York
Times (February 17, 1965), p. 34.
37. He said this, for example, on Monday night, February 15, 1965, in his
talk at the Audubon Ballroom, "There's a Worldwide Revolution Going
On." February 1965: Malcolm X, The Final Speeches (New York:
Pathfinder, 1992), p. 124.
38. Norden, "Murder," p. 12. On Wednesday, February 17, following a
speaking engagement in Rochester, Malcolm met an African-American fire
marshal, Vincent Canty, at the Rochester Airport. Canty confirmed to
Malcolm that a fireman had set the bottle of gasoline on the dresser.
Malcolm made Canty's revelation public at a press conference the
following afternoon. Malcolm X, statement to the press, February 18,
1965, "We Are Demanding an Investigation," Final Speeches, p. 179.
39. Gene Roberts told me repeatedly in an interview on July 7, 2000, that,
after he witnessed "what I felt was a dry run on Malcolm's life," he
wrote down his observations and called his police supervisors to alert
them of a coming assassination attempt on Malcolm the following Sunday
afternoon:
"The week before [Malcolm] was assassinated, I was part
of his what we call `the front rostrum guard.' We stood in
front of the stage. If anybody tried to get to him, we'd take
them out or whatever.
"I saw what I felt was a dry run on Malcolm's life.
"I called my supervisors after the meeting was over.
"I says, `Listen. I just saw the dry run on Malcolm's
life.'
"I told them I felt like it was going to happen at the
meeting the following Sunday. I told them, `If it's going to
happen, it's going to go down Sunday.'
"And as their luck would have it, it happened. And it
happened just the way I told them it was going to happen."
I asked Roberts: "What was it you observed in that dry
run?"
He said: "First of all, it was at the Audubon [Ballroom,
where Malcolm held his public meetings and would be
assassinated on February 21, 1965.]
"Secondly, I'm up front on Malcolm's right.
"There's a noise in the middle of the audience.
"There's a young individual walking down the middle of
the aisle. I moved toward him and he sat down.
"Then everything was back to normal.
"Okay. But I'm saying, 'I don't like this.' I just had a
bad gut feeling. I don't like this.
"So when I got back home, I wrote down everything. And I
called [NYPD supervisor Teddy] Theologes the next day, and I
spoke with him. Another day I spoke to Tony U [supervisor
Tony Ulasewicz]. I says, `Listen. I don't like this. This is
what I saw; this is what I feel. And this is what I think is
going to go down.'
"And they said, `Okay, we'll pass it on.'
"And I just left it at that."
What seems to be Malcolm's own reaction to the dry run can be found in
a published transcript of his Monday night talk: "What's up? [Commotion
in audience.] Okay. Y'all sit down and be cool. [Laughter] Just sit
down and be cool." Malcolm X, February 1965: Malcolm X, The Final
Speeches (New York: Pathfinder, 1992), p. 123. From his speech,
"There's a Worldwide Revolution Going On," February 15, 1965, Audubon
Ballroom.
Roberts recounted the assassination run-through to me again, naming a
third police superior to whom he reported it in advance:
"When I saw what I call `the dry run,' I spoke with
Tony. I spoke with Teddy. I spoke with Lieutenant [Barney]
Mulligan.
"And I told them all: `Listen. This is what I saw. And
this is my gut feeling.'
"And they all told me, `Okay. We'll pass that on.'
"And I even wrote it in my report, I think.
"I told them. I says, `Listen. I told you. This is what
I saw. This is what's coming down.'
"Even when I reported the dry run, I had caught those
two, three phone calls. One from Tony. Lieutenant Mulligan.
Even Theologes. They would call me. Says, `Are you sure?' I
said, `This is what I saw. This is when it's going to
happen.'" Roberts interview; July 7, 2000.
According to BOSSI informant Gene Roberts, he was loud, clear, and
persistent in warning his three police superiors that he had witnessed
a preview of Malcolm's assassination. He predicted to them repeatedly
that Malcolm's murder would happen during his next Sunday, February 21,
meeting at the Audubon Ballroom. It did.
It is also a matter of public record, from the murder trial transcript,
that Malcolm's police security was carefully withdrawn that same Sunday
afternoon, February 21, 1965. See description in the text above,
referencing endnote 44.
Gene Roberts also told Newsday reporter Elaine Rivera about witnessing
the dry run and reporting it to his superiors. Elaine Rivera, "Out of
the Shadows: The Man Who Spied on Malcolm X," Newsday (July 23, 1989).
When I interviewed Roberts' former supervisor Teddy Theologes on June
29, 2000, Theologes told me he did not recall Roberts reporting the
trial run on Malcolm's life.
However, if Roberts is accurate in the emphasis he says he placed on
this point to all three of his police superiors, including Tony
Ulasewicz (renowned for his detective work to the point of being hired
as President Richard Nixon's private eye), then the implication is
strong: the NYPD as an institution seems to have used Roberts'
information to prepare for the murder attempt on Malcolm by letting it
happen unhindered.
40. Testimony by James Lawson and Coretta Scott King at the King trial.
Citations from the wrongful death lawsuit of the Martin Luther King Jr.
family versus Loyd Jowers "and other unknown co-conspirators," held in
Memphis, November 15-December 8, 1999, have been drawn from testimony
in the trial transcript, online at .
The author attended the trial from beginning to end.
41. FBI Memorandum from G. C. Moore to W. C. Sullivan, March 29, 1968.
Subject: COUNTERINTELLIGENCE PROGRAM; BLACK NATIONALIST -- HATE GROUPS;
RACIAL INTELLIGENCE (MARTIN LUTHER KING). Identified as MLK Exhibit
F-451C in Investigation of the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Hearings Before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S.
House of Representatives, Vol.VI, p. 308 (caps in original).
(Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979).
42. David J. Garrow, The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Penguin
Books, 1981), pp. 173-203.
43. Testimony in the King trial by Leon Cohen, retired New York City police
officer, on information given to him by Walter Bailey.
44. From testimony by Police Officer Gilbert Henry in the January 21-March
11, 1966, trial of Talmadge Hayer, Norman Butler, and Thomas Johnson
for the murder of Malcolm X. Herman Porter, "The Trial," in The
Assassination of Malcolm X, edited by Malik Miah (New York: Pathfinder
Press, 1988), p. 93. Norden, "Murder," p. 14. William M. Kunstler's
December 19, 1977, deposition in Supreme Court of the State of New
York, County of New York: The People of the State of New York v
Muhammad Abdul Aziz (Norman 3X Butler) and Khalil Islam (Thomas 15X
Johnson), Defendants. Ind. No. 871/65, pp. 6-7.
45. "Thirty cops walk in like it's a spring Sunday stroll in Central Park."
From Spike Lee's script for Malcolm X. In Spike Lee with Ralph Wiley,
By Any Means Necessary: The Trials and Tribulations of the Making of
Malcolm X... (New York: Hyperion, 1992), p. 311.
46. King trial testimony by Memphis Police Department Captain Jerry
Williams.
47. King trial testimony by Memphis firefighters Floyd E. Newsom and
Norville E. Wallace on their removal from Fire Station Number 2.
48. King trial testimony by Memphis Police Department Detective Ed Redditt
on his removal from Fire Station Number 2 late in the afternoon of 4
April 1968.
49. King trial testimony by author Philip Melanson on his investigation
into the April 4, 1968, pullback of four tactical police units.
Melanson's interview with MPD Inspector Sam Evans; cited in Philip H.
Melanson, The Martin Luther King Assassination: New Revelations on the
Conspiracy and Cover-Up, 1968-1991 (New York: Shapolsky Publishers,
1991), p. 73.
50. Kondo, pp. 271-72 endnote 491. Besides the agencies already mentioned,
Hoover's memorandum on Malcolm went to the Chief of the U.S. Secret
Service, the Assistant Attorney General, the Acting Attorney General,
and the Foreign Liaison Unit. Ibid., p. 272.
51. Norden, "Murder," p. 13.
52. Autobiography, p. 433.
53. Ibid., p. 434.
54. Peter Goldman, The Death and Life of Malcolm X, second edition (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1979), pp. 273-74.
55. Deposition of James Earl Ray, taken March 11 and 12, 1995 in the case
of James Earl Ray versus Loyd Jowers and read into the record in the
King trial where Ray describes being several blocks away from the
Lorraine Hotel at a service station, trying to get a flat spare tire
fixed. In the same trial, witness statements to the FBI by Ray Alvis
Hendrix and William Zinny Reed which supported Ray's testimony were
read into the record.
56. King trial testimony by Judge Arthur Haynes, Jr., James Earl Ray's
attorney in 1968.
57. King trial testimony by Judge Joe Brown.
58. Audiotaped confession of Loyd Jowers, played at the King trial.
59. King trial testimony by Maynard Stiles, who in 1968 was a senior
official in the Memphis Sanitation Department.
60. I have deleted the two previous paragraphs from the 2006 text of this
talk. They described an Army Special Forces sniper team deployed as a
contingency force in King's murder. With the eye of a trained diplomat,
Peter Dale Scott has critiqued incisively the documentation presented
for the sniper plan: "I believe ... the sniper team story was
disinformation from high sources designed to discredit Pepper. In
particular, an alleged authorizing cable, citing Operation Garden Plot,
is to a trained reader a self-revealing forgery ...' Peter Dale Scott,
The Road To 9/11, Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America (UC Press,
2007), p. 285, endnote 15, with reference to William F. Pepper, Orders
to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King (New York:
Carroll and Graf, 1995), photo #33 and text page 424. Scott wrote
further, citing the pictured cable: "The time group 301442Z April 1968
begins with 30, which would normally be the date. But April 30 [rather
than April 4, 1968] is clearly wrong." Peter Dale Scott's e-mail to
Dave Ratcliffe, 5/16/12. Even according to CIA operative Jack Terrell's
testimony, the sniper team was put on standby in West Memphis,
Arkansas, and never reached Memphis: "They were headed in to take up
their positions when the mission was cancelled." The 13th Juror, p.
403. It was a contingency plan that was not activated. King was killed
by a shot from the bushes.
61. Martin Luther King, Jr., "I See the Promised Land," in A Testament of
Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by
James M. Washington (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986), p. 280.
A recording and text transcript of Dr. King's April 3, 1968 speech is
available at Say It Plain - Say It Loud, American Radio Works.
62. Ibid., p. 284.
63. Bearing the Cross, p. 622.
64. Gordon Parks, "I Was A Zombie Then -- Like All [Black] Muslims, I Was
Hypnotized," Life (March 5, 1968), p. 28.
65. Carew, p. 57.
66. Ibid.
67. Autobiography, p. 338.
68. "I See the Promised Land," p. 286.
Copyright © 2006, 2013 by James W. Douglass
Reproduced with additional annotations with permission and assistance of the
author.
http://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Unspeakable/ConvMartyrdom.html (hypertext)
http://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Unspeakable/ConvMartyrdom.txt (text only)
http://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Unspeakable/ConvMartyrdom.pdf (print ready)