The old saying about truth being more remarkable than fiction is proven once again in this 2010 book by Hampton Sides that follows James Earl Ray as he stalked and killed Martin Luther King in 1968, and then went on the lam for over 50 days before he was finally captured in London, England.
I remember the assassination of Martin Luther King, but I had forgotten the trauma that was unleashed upon the nation in the aftermath of the killing, and I had no recollection of the merry chase that Ray led the forces of the FBI and other international law enforcement agencies until he was brought to justice. Author Sides paints the picture of life in 1968 America, and his paralleling the movements of both King and Ray leading up to the fateful night at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968 is true edge-of-your-seat stuff that very few fictional books, movies, or TV shows can match.
Other "characters" that come alive once again include President Lyndon Johnson, George Wallace, Robert Kennedy, a much younger Jesse Jackson, Attorney General Ramsey Clark, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Speaking of Hoover, we are reminded once again that for all he did in establishing the FBI as the top notch organization it is, Hoover truly was one of the more loathsome and evil guys in our history.
As with most crimes of this nature, conspiracy theories abounded at the time of King's death, and still do, but I was struck by this quote from Ramsey Clark in an interview with the author:
"Some Americans don't want to believe that one miserable person can bring such tragedy on our country and impact so powerfully on the destiny of us all."
My thanks go out to my neighbor Tom Frankart for introducing me to and lending me this terrific book.
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