A racist piece of shit inspired another racist piece of shit to murder a great man. James Earl Ray, who was a convicted felon and escaped fugitive, assassinated civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The motivations for him doing so can be traced to the presidential campaign of Alabama governor George Wallace.
--On This Day in History Shit Went Down: April 4, 1968--
Fucking Alabama. Between 1963 and 1987, Wallace spent 16 years as governor. And make no mistake, he was a garbage human who had gone head-to-head against Dr. King numerous times. Alas, there are plenty of people who dropped out of middle school to pursue a career in competitive cousin-fucking who love to vote for such garbage. Ray was a career criminal eight years into a 20-year sentence at Missouri State Prison when, in 1967, he escaped by hiding in a bakery truck. Ray moved around a lot, and later that year landed in Los Angeles and became enamored with Wallace, who was running a third-party presidential campaign for the 1968 election. Ray, who was racist as fuck and a fan of Hitler, embraced Wallace’s segregationist platform and spent a lot of time volunteering at the candidate’s campaign headquarters. As a third-party candidate Wallace never had a chance, but he did win five southern states and took 46 Electoral College votes.
Seven months before the election Ray traveled to Birmingham, where he bought a hunting rifle. He then went to Memphis and rented a room across from the Lorraine Motel where King was staying during his visit to support a sanitation workers’ strike. On April 4, 1968, Ray fired a single shot, hitting King in the face and killing him. He then fled the scene.
Ray was seen running from the rooming house and his prints were found on the rifle. He made it to England and was arrested at Heathrow Airport the following June while attempting to travel to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), a known haven for white supremacists. Questions were raised about whether there was a greater conspiracy at play in the murder of King.
It was well known the FBI was targeting King to discredit the civil rights movement. After his arrest, Ray’s story changed multiple times. He pleaded guilty, then recanted three days later and kept saying he was innocent. Other times, he said he was part of a larger conspiracy and that “Raoul” told him to do it. The year before Ray’s death, Ray met King’s son Dexter and told him he didn’t do it. The King family believed him and appealed for a new trial. And yet, inquiries into King’s death say otherwise. A third inquiry into the assassination, made a month before Ray died, said “the evidence against [Ray] is overwhelming” and there was no evidence of a larger conspiracy. Some remain unconvinced.
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More like competitive sibling-fucking in that demographic. I do have a question, though -- how did this lowlife get the money to fly to England? My perception could be wrong, but if memory serves international travel wasn't exactly cheap in the 1960's.