Gerald Posner’s Killing the Dream begins with a detailed description of Martin Luther King Jr. ‘s final days and the detailed movements of his killer. The author arranges his book into three pivotal sections: The Assassination, The Assassin, and the Search for the Truth. He begins the book with a detailed account of the events that caused King to even be in Memphis, the chaos surrounding the Memphis Sanitation Strike. The Memphis Sanitation strike began on February 12, 1968, because of poor treatment, dangerous working conditions, and the deaths of Echol Cole and Robert Walker, 1300 black sanitation workers walked off the job.
At the time of Cole and Walker’s deaths, city rules forbade black employees from seeking shelter anywhere else but the back of the garbage compressor trucks, where the two men were crushed in a truck malfunction. Henry Loeb, Memphis Mayor declared the strike illegal and refused to meet with leaders of the strike. On February 23, conflict between police and protestors was increasing, and many black leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. were starting to pay attention to the media coverage of the strike. On April 3, 1968, King returned to Memphis to give a speech at the Mason Temple.
His flight was delayed due to a bomb threat, but the threat against his life did not deter him from making his planned speech. King delivered his last and most powerful speech, known as the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, towards the end of his address he brought up the bomb threat, “What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the Mountaintop”.
On Thursday, April 4, Dr. King was staying in room 306 at the Lorraine Hotel. Reverend Ralph David Abernathy, a close friend of King told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that because he and King had stayed in the room so often it was known as the “King-Abernathy Suite”. King stood on the balcony outside his room when he was hit at 6:01 pm, by a single bullet fired from a Remington Model 760. The bullet entered King’s right cheek, breaking his jaw, traveling down his spinal cord and severing his jugular vein, before lodging in his shoulder.
The force of the bullet tore King’s tie and he fell backward onto the balcony. Minutes after the shot, witnesses saw a man they believed to be Ray leaving the rooming house directly across the street form the Motel, where Ray had been renting a room. Police found a rifle and binoculars near the motel with Ray’s fingerprints. The rifle was purchased six days earlier under one of Ray’s many aliases. Abernathy heard the shot while inside the room and found King bleeding on the balcony, Andrew Young a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) found a pulse.
King was brought to St. Joseph’s Hospital where he had a pulmonary resuscitation. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was pronounced dead at 7:05 pm. Posner seems to believe that in order to give an accurate account of an assassination details about the assassin should be included as well. Some books about high-profile murders will not include a lot of information about the murderer, but tend to focus on the victim or victims and the crime itself. The alleged assassin was born in 1928 in Alton, Illinois, to a poor family with a long history of criminal activity.
Posner recounts Ray’s attempts to deal with the environment he lived in and details the first of many petty crimes, Ray committed at the age of fifteen. The author details Ray’s friendship with a co-worker in Illinois, who was a Nazi sympathizer. After listing Germany as his choice for Foreign Service while in the army, soon after he was given a general discharge and began travelling around the U. S. eventually ending up in Los Angeles, where he was arrested for the first time for burglary. After he was released, Ray returned ome to start a good life, but couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble and ended up serving 22 months in Joliet prison. He was later sent to Leavenworth for stealing postal money orders, he refused to be sent to an honor farm because they had integrated housing. After this Ray was sent to Missouri State Penitentiary, where evidence suggest that Ray was involved in a prison drug ring and may have had discussions regarding the murder of a certain Civil Rights Leader.
Posner also offers up the theory that at while serving time in Missouri State, Ray learned of an offer made by a racist lawyer to kill Dr. King for fifty thousand dollars. On April 2, 1967, Ray escaped from prison by hiding in a breadbox and was carried out of the prison. His oneyear journey following his escape certainly added an interesting aspect to the book as a whole. Ray tried to live life on the straight and narrow but could not seem to comply, pulling off one of the biggest crimes in his career by robbing a bank in Alton, Illinois. After traveling to Canada and Birmingham, Ray travelled through Los Angeles and wound up in New Orleans, where a lot of theorists believe a conspiracy plot could have been formed.
Posner even introduces the idea that maybe Ray and his brothers met to come up with a plan to collect the bounty on King’s head. The author does an excellent job of destroying the alibi Ray claimed to have during the assassination. After finding the fingerprints and tracing the gun back to Ray, a massive manhunt was launched, two months after the shooting, Ray was arrested trying to leave Heathrow Airport on a false Canadian passport. Ray was extradited to Tennessee and charged for the murder of Dr. King.
He confessed to the murder on March 10, 1969, and pled guilty to avoid a trial conviction and potentially facing the death penalty. Ray was sentenced to a 99year prison term, but 3 days after his conviction he recanted his confession. As is common with most high profile murders, there has been a lot of speculation surrounding the crime. For many years after the shooting, Ray claimed to be merely a pawn in a much larger assassination conspiracy. The author offers a comprehensive interpretation of the many details surrounding the conspiracies of the shooting.
Many of the theories surrounding the murder include an FBI or CIA cover up, a mysterious man named “Raoul” that supposedly pulled the trigger, and the idea that Ray was a scapegoat for a larger plot to kill King. Ray claimed that although he did not “personally shoot King”, he might have been “partially responsible without knowing it. ” Posner answers many of the questions that have been asked over the years. He examines many theories in detail, but by the end of the book, the only logical theory is what happened, that James Earl Ray shot and killed Martin Luther King Jr.
The third section of the book begins with the line of lawyers that defended Ray ending with William Pepper. Posner offers the reader a full chapter on the misinformation provided about “Raoul” that led to problems for an innocent man and his family. The author ultimately sets his eyes on the theory that Pepper made in his book Orders to Kill, that there were Green Beret Snipers from the 20th Special Forces Group in Memphis at the time of the shooting. Posner closes the book with an outline of Ray’s supposed movements on the day of the assassination.
He believed that if there was a conspiracy in order to kill King, that most likely the Ray brothers were involved and that there was no huge government cover-up occurring. Posner has done a remarkable job offering the motive, means and opportunity for James Earl Ray to kill King. He was able to find new information and sources to shed new light on a huge event in our history. Throughout the book, Posner depicts the circus of lawyers, fame-seeking journalists and crazy courtroom procedures that helped to support the idea that there was something bigger occurring in Memphis on that solemn day in April.
Including one reporter named William Bradford Hue, who wrote an article in a magazine that he stated why he believed that James Earl Ray was not the shooter, but had been drawn into the plot by a man named “Raoul”. The fact that the presiding judge over the case W. Preston Battle refused to question Ray about his conspiracy accusations lead to further theories coming into play. Posner wrote, “King had numerous enemies, any of whom might have sponsored a trigger man, Ray’s capture only fueled the speculation.
Questions of how a career thief was suddenly transformed into a competent assassin were not answered by the Memphis plea agreement. And Ray’s 65 day odyssey after the killing, involving travel to three countries and the use se of foreign passports, seemed far beyond the capability of the poor, uneducated hillbilly charged with the crime. ” Posner makes two very important arguments, 1. ) Ray has declared his innocence multiple times with unsubstantiated stories to go along with it, and 2. ) Ray is a career criminal that even when caught could only offer ridiculous stories to get him out of trouble. Ray, is excellent at incorporating bits of information he learns from one source and developing them into a cohesive story he spins to somebody else. ” But even with claims to support Ray’s claim Posner is extremely well versed in dissecting the many stories that Ray has told and laid out the various inconsistencies. The main theme of Killing the Dream is the idea that there is a lot of power to be had by conspiracy theories, because an argument can be made by anyone regarding any event.
Gerald Posner has done a remarkable job answering the many questions that have surrounded the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. When writing a book about an event like this, more questions can be brought up, but Posner is able to answer all questions without bringing up more. He allows the reader to learn about other theories while also discrediting them. His ability to dive in to the different aspects of the assassination, giving a detailed history of James Earl Ray, all the while presenting the information as it pertains to the assassination. The author shows Ray’s childhood through the eyes of those who knew him best, neighbors, police officers, fellow criminals, and his family.
Posner gives the entire life story of a troubled man that became a part of history when he shot Martin Luther King. In Posner’s Final Analysis, he states that although the government did wage a war against King in the early 1960s, and many officials would have supported Ray, he believes that the government as a whole was not in support of Ray. A quote that sums up the main theme of the book as a whole is ” While it may not have pulled the trigger, the government did however, by such outrageous conduct, create an atmosphere where racists thought it was safe to shoot a black leader in the South and think they could get away with it.
To that extant, the government bears moral responsibility for the death of Dr. King. But the ultimate responsibility – for the sake of justice and history- must be placed squarely on the man with blood on his hands, James Earl Ray. To say otherwise, in light of the overwhelming evidence of his guilt, is to let Ray have the final laugh, and to mock the great memory of Dr. King. “
