American Experience

(siren wailing) (crowd clamoring)

At 3

48, Shelby County Sheriff's Department received into its custody James Earl Ray, the accused slayer of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

DAN RATHER

The second before his arrest, James Earl Ray was the most wanted man in the United States, one of if not the most wanted suspects in the world.

JOHN CAMPBELL

This was like assassinating a president in some ways. King, by '68, was the face of the civil rights movement. He was an international figure.

GERALD POSNER

When a public official the magnitude of King gets killed in the prime of their life, we can't quite imagine that. You've got this young, charismatic preacher pulling together a movement with so much potential for the future. On the other hand, you have a four-time loser, James Earl Ray, pulling off the assassination; it doesn't make sense. Do you have anything you'd like to say right now at this time?

HARRIS WOFFORD

The greatest single blow to my spirit was the assassination of Martin Luther King. A shudder went through the American people.

JOE SWEAT

I think it made America wake up. You had people saying, "Golly, is this... "is this division we have with the blacks, has it come to this, do we actually shoot people down?"

SAMUEL KYLES

Martin Luther King was so convinced that the only way we could win the battle was nonviolently. And he had made up his mind with all of the risk involved. He wouldn't turn around. He wouldn't give up.

ROGER WILKINS

There were black people who were saying that the magic was gone. They were saying, "Well, he's always talking "about this peace stuff. "That's not... that's not how the cracker is. "The cracker's got guns and he's going to kill us and we got to have guns."

RATHER

The assassination speaks to what a dangerous time it was for the country, particularly for those who tried to give voice to our difficulties and the hope for a better day. When James Earl Ray was arrested, the questions just flowed. Is he really the slayer? If he is the killer, what motivated him? Why did he do it?

POSNER

In 1967 James Earl Ray is sitting inside Missouri State Penitentiary, what's called Jeff City. He's a career criminal. He has committed dozens of crimes-- robberies of grocery stores, robberies of paycheck stores, taxicabs, office buildings, whatever else that he gets away with. Finally he gets caught in robbing a grocery store with a gun and he gets sent to Jeff City. He's done time already at two other prisons that aren't easy. But Jeff City is different for him. He tried to plan to escape from his second year in there. Ray wanted out.

RADIO REPORTER

Civil disobedience drive in Washington. Dr. King said Congress has dragged its heels in efforts to uplift the economic levels of the poor.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. (radio)

Now, this has brought about a great deal of bitterness, anger.

HAMPTON SIDES

There's rumors swirling around Jeff City about a bounty for the head of Martin Luther King. Some said it was $50,000, some said it was $100,000.

POSNER

A lot of the white inmates of Jeff City had straight racist views. There was in fact an operating equivalent of a Klan operation inside. So, if you were a white inmate who hated blacks in Jeff City, you might sit around and say, "Too bad we're in here. "There's over 50,000 for somebody who can put a bullet in that preacher out there."

SIDES

It was early in the morning, and Ray was working in the bakery. This was the morning that he was going to escape. He went down to a loading dock area where the bread from the bakery was being cooled and got into one of these boxes that the bread was going out on and had a false bottom placed on top of him. The box is placed inside a truck and the truck is waved on and goes out of the prison. When the truck comes to a stop, he just jumps off the truck and takes off down the railroad tracks. It's important to understand this was a maximum-security prison. This is not an easy place to spring from. It shows something about Ray's personality that he's very patient, he plans months ahead.

RATHER

He had a lot of street smarts, a lot of jail and prison smarts. A cunning mind. No one would call him brilliant, but it would be a mistake to think that he was dumb.

SIDES

When he escapes, he doesn't have very much on his person, but one particular artifact that he will have with him for the next year is his prison radio, a transistor radio. (indistinct radio chatter) Ray was a news junkie. He was fascinated by the news.

RADIO ANNOUNCER

Partly cloudy, chance of showers late this afternoon...

CAMPBELL

I think he thought that he was a much bigger fish than he was. He thought when he escaped from prison that he was going to be all over the news, that J. Edgar Hoover would be on TV saying, you know, "James Earl Ray's escaped. We need your help to find him," kind of thing.

SIDES

Ray hoped to be on the F.B.I.'s Most Wanted list, and lo and behold, he didn't make it.

WAYNE FLYNT

Instead of being elated at escaping, he's actually disappointed, because what he wanted more than the anonymity of escape was the notoriety of publicity, of recognition.

SIDES

After Ray escapes, he goes to Chicago and has a rendezvous with his brothers, Jerry and John. The Rays were pretty tight. They all were involved in petty crimes of one sort or another and they trusted each other. They talk about what they're going to do. They talk about the porn business. Ray's kind of interested in-in porno. He thinks there's money to be made there. They also talk about kidnapping as a possible way to make some money and various other lowlife schemes. But then, finally, the subject of Martin Luther King comes up. For Ray, yeah, he doesn't like King, but the main thing is there's money to be made. He feels confident that he can connect with the right individuals and that this is a way that he can, as a free man, finally make a living. The brothers were a little bit taken aback by that. Too big an operation, too ambitious, too dangerous, too risky, but it was in keeping with Ray's personality. In the family lore, in the family mythology, James was the smart one, he was the ambitious one. He was the one that was going to do big things. Well, now, you have certainly, by your acts, knowingly and consciously exposed yourself to the constant danger of assassination by doing and expressing the things that you believe in. But I would willingly give my life for that which I think is right, and I am convinced that when one does this honestly, death can become redemptive. (onlookers shouting)

WOFFORD

Martin Luther King saw nonviolence and politics as drama. (explosion) You first stir a crisis in the minds of the people you're trying to reach. You sort of awaken their minds by a little shock treatment. When you peacefully turn the other cheek, you're using virtue against them, you know that you are going to stir hatred. But he thought there had to be times when you deliberately almost invite death.

ANDREW YOUNG

From the time Martin was 25 years old, he almost never knew a week when his life wasn't threatened. His house was bombed, he was stabbed. It gave him a sense of the inevitability of death. There was a kind of fearlessness.

REPORTER

In Montgomery, a mob held 1,500 Negroes in a church for hours. Finally, Reverend Martin King told them help was on the way.

POSNER

The seven years that James Earl Ray is sitting inside Jeff City is Martin Luther King's ascent. I accept this award on behalf of the civil rights movement.

CAMPBELL

King in the '60s was legitimate as opposed to being a rabble-rouser, as opposed to being some troublemaker that you deal with. (applause) He won the Nobel Prize. He had a tremendous following. This nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed.

POSNER

The country was going through this spasm of democracy. People were getting civil rights acts passed, they were marching on Washington. Many whites viewed this as a threat to the America they knew. And it was a threat to the America they knew. (crowd singing)

WOFFORD

Everything King did was threatening. White America had reason to wonder what King was going to do next. (car passes)

SIDES

After Ray escapes, there's something very restless about him. He's always wanting to move on to the next place. He can't stay in any one place very long.

POSNER

After Chicago, he goes to Canada for a month. He hangs out in Montreal. Then he goes to Birmingham and he buys a 1966 Mustang. Then he spends a little bit of time in Mexico. Hanging out in Puerto Vallarta, he's with the prostitutes, he's having a great time.

SIDES

He's got a little bit of money he's saved up from selling contraband in prison and he probably pulled off some robberies along the way, though he never gets caught.

CAMPBELL

Ray, he looks very ordinary, doesn't draw attention to himself, and he's great at staying in the background.

SIDES

Part of this is just his personality, and part of it is the fact that he's a fugitive and he needs to move on.

POSNER

James Earl Ray comes into L.A. in November 1967, and he has an unusual time, to say the least, for an assassin. (gunshots on television) James Earl Ray is not the typical assassin. There is no diary that says, "I must kill MLK, I must kill MLK, I must kill MLK." It may have been in the back of his mind, may have been something he thought about, but he wasn't acting on it.

TELEVISION ANNOUNCER

New Ban spray stops odor... Almond Joy Bars... (cheering)

CROWD (on TV)

We want Wallace, we want Wallace!

TV REPORTER

Our guest today on "Meet the Press" is the former Governor of Alabama, George C. Wallace. Governor, do you think a man can be elected president of the United States today who has a widespread reputation as a racist? Well, of course, a racist is someone who dislikes people because of color. And, of course, I do not dislike any of the handiwork of God. I might point out that the best...

SIDES

Ray has never been a joiner. He'd never really thrown in his lot with any particular political party or political movement. But Wallace really captivated him, and I think he really believed that Wallace could be the next president. (applause)

MAN

The next president of the United States, the honorable George C. Wallace. (cheering)

WILKINS

Wallace was essentially a racist. I said, "Yes, our necks are red from working in the sun." But he became a national figure. He was famous, and he was famous for being staunch about black people. I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever. (applause)

CROWD

We want Wallace! We want Wallace!

SIDES

Wallace succeeded beyond the wildest imaginations of the political pundits. This movement becomes the most influential, the most powerful independent movement in American politics since Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party.

WOFFORD

He stood for the whole country as somebody who stood up to this Martin Luther King and to this civil rights movement and said no, never.

RATHER

He was speaking for the poorest in the white community who feel if you give blacks even a little bit of freedom, "They're going to be competing with me for jobs. "You turn these people loose and they're going to take everything I have."

CAMPBELL

If you look at George Wallace, he was like the last hurrah of the old order. And Ray hooked his wagon up to it.

SIDES

It's strange that Ray was the ultimate loner, but he volunteers for the Wallace campaign and collects signatures to get him on the ballot in California.

REPORTER

Wallace for president-- what is your reaction to that? Well, I'm very sorry that Mr. Wallace will be a candidate because I think his candidacy will only strengthen the forces of reaction in the country and excite bigotry, hatred, and even violence. And I think it will arouse many evil forces in our nation.

SIDES

Ray had TV in his room, and he had written on the back of this TV, "Martin Luther Coon." He was clearly outraged by Martin Luther King. Here's a man who scored all his greatest triumphs in the state of Alabama. Birmingham, Selma, Montgomery-- Ray, he viewed these victories for King as an insult to Wallace's good name. I think in his own mind, he was beginning to have this kind of a duality. He was setting these two personalities off of each other in his own mind.

FLYNT

Ray probably didn't consider himself a racist. He probably considered himself just a good observer of the reality of life. He grows up in a poor white dysfunctional family in a period of economic collapse.

SIDES

The Ray family is so poor that at one point they start essentially cannibalizing their own house for firewood, piece by piece, just kind of ripping it apart to-to get through the winter.

POSNER

Even among the poor working-class whites that James Earl Ray grew up with, he was at the lowest end of that. He couldn't afford the nickel for lunch. His teachers actually put in his school records that they found him "repulsive." They found him aggressive. He failed the first grade. You're talking about somebody who was an outcast even among his peers.

FLYNT

Ray and his brothers want to find somebody who's responsible for their circumstance in life. And there were always likely victims for that scapegoating. Southern part of Missouri where he grows up was very much like the hill country of the South. White, poor, working class, bitterly anti-black.

POSNER

It was called Little Dixie, actually. Blacks were just people who were even lower than you. They were the people you pushed down in your view of the world.

ARTHUR HANES

In those days, white men had pride in their race because frequently that's the only thing they could have pride in. The Rays may have had absolutely nothing, but in those days and times, at least they could say they were white.

POSNER

On March 22, Ray is driving from Los Angeles to Atlanta-- King's hometown, where King should show up. So he's on the trail. He's following King. Ray goes to Atlanta and checks into one of his typical flophouses in a kind of a slightly decrepit hippie district off Peachtree Street, and he begins to plan. He buys a map of Atlanta and he circles the map-- King's church, where King's house is.

CAMPBELL

And he plots out where King's world is, where he stays, where he works. Obviously he's focused now on King.

POSNER

Assassins turn out to be often people in their early 20s-- they're 22, 23; they're Oswald's age, 24. They're imbued with the idea that they have found the right answer to the world and they can change the world with a gun and a bullet. Very seldom are assassins Ray's age, 40. People at Ray's age have lost the fervor. So it's a very unusual thing. I think you could say that the idea of killing King was a solution to all of his problems. It gave him focus, it gave him something to plan and to plot for. It fit in with his own resentments and ideas about the direction America was heading in. And I think, finally, he began to see this as his opportunity to do something huge.

REPORTER

Today in Memphis, a 3,000-man protest march led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in support of a seven-week-old city sanitation workers strike. The strike has turned into a major racial issue in Memphis.

NICKLEBERRY

So when he came to Memphis, you seen people lining up, they was lining up. "Dr. King coming! Dr. King coming!" They're shouting, "Dr. King coming! Dr. King coming!" That's all they heard, real nice.

LESLIE MOORE

Ain't gonna let nobody turn me 'round Turn me around, turn me around Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around Keep on a-walkin', keep on a-talkin' Walkin' up to freedom land.

SINGERS (archival)

Ain't gonna let nobody turn me 'round Turn me around, turn me 'round Ain't gonna let nobody turn me 'round Keep on a-walkin', yeah, yeah, keep on a-talkin' Marchin' up to freedom land.

MOORE

We felt brave, and we felt like felt like God had sent somebody to... brought us out of the land of Egypt into the promised land.

YOUNG

When he got there, the crowd had been gathering there for a long time and were restless.

KYLES

I was around at the back of the march because I always wanted to give some leadership in the back. And I could hear on the policeman's... I heard this noise and the police radio kept saying, "Permission to break up the march, permission to break up the march." (shouting, glass breaking)

HOOKS

A group of wild young men broke some glass windows and when they exploded, the police exploded on them. (clamoring)

KYLES

"Permission to break up the march. "The niggras are rioting. The niggras are rioting." And finally I heard on his radio, "Permission granted." And that's when they just waded into the crowd. (clamoring) Move it! Move! Them police was whooping, dogs barking. I was... hit me all side of my head. It was just like a war zone. People started running in all directions. And, uh... police were macing people. Cops came from everywhere, beating heads, swinging their clubs. The police department had gone crazy and we knew immediately we had to get Martin out of that. (shouting)

WOFFORD

He was being ridiculed for leaving, and he decided he had to go back and resume the struggle. Memphis became a great test of whether nonviolence could work in a situation where violence was prevailing.

WILKINS

I talked to him after the march dissolved into violence. And then everybody started talking about, "King is past it, he's lost it, he doesn't have... blah, blah, blah." I said, "I wouldn't go there again if I were you. I just wouldn't do it." And he said, "I'm going to do it." And I said, "Why are you going to do it? Why are you going to do it?" He said, "Because I promised them. Because I promised them."

SEN. ROBERT BYRD (on TV)

If anybody is to be hurt or killed in the disorder which follows in the wake of his highly publicized marches and demonstrations, he apparently is going to be sure that it will be someone other than Martin Luther King. What happened yesterday in Memphis was totally uncalled for, just as Martin Luther King's proposed march on Washington is uncalled for and unnecessary. And I hope that well-meaning Negro leaders and individuals in the Negro community in Washington will now take a new look at this man who gets other people into trouble and then takes off like a scared rabbit.

KING

Those who got out of hand the other day have now been talked with sufficiently to guarantee that nothing will take place in terms of violence, and I feel that we can still have a nonviolent demonstration and that we will have a nonviolent demonstration here in Memphis. The important thing...

SIDES

Ray is very aware what's going on in King's life. He is very aware King is embroiled in a battle in Memphis. They announced the specific date that King would be returning to Memphis, and it gave Ray a little bit of time to react. So Ray goes to Birmingham and buys a rifle under the name Harvey Lowmeyer.

POSNER

Ray was in the Army. He joins at 17. He's not a natural soldier by any means. He chafes at any kind of authority. He's drunk, he's AWOL. But the Army does teach him how to shoot well.

CAMPBELL

He buys a Remington Gamemaster.30-06 rifle with a scope..30-06 was the standard military round. Every time you fired it, you pumped the fore end and the shell would eject and another shell would load. And it had a little clip that fit into the bottom and held about five shots. (fires)

POSNER

It's a great killing rifle. It's much better than the rifle, the cheap rifle that Oswald used to kill Kennedy. It's a good killing machine..30-06 is a good slug, and I don't mean that in a cavalier way. It was a good assassin's weapon.

SIDES

This is the first time that his idea of killing King has gone from the abstract to something very, very tangible. He's holding this rifle and he's realizing that he's probably going to... he's going to go through with this.

KYLES

Martin flew back into Memphis April 3, and he had been so depressed over the weekend, it really did something to him to... to see that march break up like that. But that didn't make him stop. He kept... he kept doing what he knew.

COTTON

I flew with him to Memphis, and when we got on the plane, the pilot said, "I'm sorry, we'll have to disembark, "because Dr. Martin Luther King is on the plane and we have to get off and check the plane" for explosives or whatever. They brought dogs, I think, and they checked and they found no bomb. But why was the word out that Dr. King was going to be on that flight that morning?

YOUNG

Martin kind of laughed about that. He had grown accustomed to living under the threat of death. And he said, "Nobody can decide "when and how they are going to die. "They can decide, though, to keep themselves in a position so that they die for something worthwhile."

HOOKS

He didn't think it made any sense to be scared all the time, and he wasn't. He would not let any of his staff that traveled with him carry a pistol or a rifle or blackjack. He did not want anybody to have any weapon of force or retaliation because it violated his principle of nonviolence. That was his way of life. Not a theory, but a way of life. (thunderclap) It rained and stormed so hard that night, and Dr. King was the featured speaker at the Temple, and he had decided that there would not be many people there; he simply would not go. And he sent Abernathy to speak for him.

KYLES

We got to the church. It was nearly full, in spite of the weather. Abernathy walked in, I walked in, Jesse Jackson walked in, and the people started clapping. And Abernathy's preacher's sense say, "These people ain't clapping for us, they think Martin coming in behind us." So he went to the phone, called Martin at the motel. He said, "Man, you should get over here. These people have come in the weather to hear you." And Martin said, "If you think I need to come, I'll come." So he came.

HOOKS

Wind was blowing, rain was hitting that roof, pitter-patter-patter, lightning flashing ominously, thunder... I was frightened, to tell you the truth about it. I was sitting there shaking. The shutters in the back of the church kept banging, the wind was so high. And every time they would bang, Martin would jump like that. And they would bang and he would jump. Bang! And I noticed that it was really disturbing him. He was simply waiting to be introduced. And when Martin got up, he just started speaking from his heart. (applause)

KING

The question is not, "If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me? The question is, "If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?" That's the question. He talked about the time he was autographing books in New York. A demented black woman, she reached over the table and plunged a letter opener into his chest. And when he was recovering, he said he got greetings from a teenage girl who wrote, "Dear Dr. King, I read about your misfortune. "The New York Times said the blade of the letter opener "was so close to your aorta that if you had sneezed, you would have drowned in your own blood." And she put at the bottom, "I'm so glad you didn't sneeze." And he picked up on that and did a whole litany, "And I'm glad I didn't sneeze." If I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been here in 1963. Black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation. He just went on about what he would have missed had he sneezed.

MOORE

I was there the night that he made that speech. He was most powerful that night. He'd been powerful all the time, but there was an unusual power that he had. He really spoke so deep down out of his heart, looked like he poured everything out of his heart.

KING

And then I got into Memphis, and some began to talk about the threats that were out or 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 really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. (audience shouts) And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land! (shouts and applause) So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord! (applause and cheering)

KYLES

After that speech, he was like a kid. I mean, it was like, "I'm laying this heavy burden down. "I'm just laying it down. Wherever it leads me, that's where I'm going."

POSNER

On the morning of the 4th, Ray found King in Memphis through public information. All he had to do was open up the newspaper. King was front-page news.

SIDES

The newspapers in Memphis and the television shows in Memphis showed that he was staying at the Lorraine Motel,

and they even showed the room number

306. Ray goes downtown and starts scoping out the Lorraine area, and he finds a rooming house that backs up to the Lorraine Motel. He checks into this rooming house as John Willard.

POSNER

He rents the room 5B. He goes to a local hardware store and buys a pair of binoculars. So he clearly is looking at monitoring King. He can lean out the window a little bit. Not very comfortable to take a shot, but with the binoculars he can keep track on the hotel. But if he goes to the bathroom, he has a direct view where King's room is. Ray has no idea whether he'll get a shot at King, but he's got his rifle with him. If King comes onto the balcony and spends any time there, what Ray knows he has to do is grab that rifle, go into the bathroom and hope no one's there, lock that door and try to take the shot.

KYLES

That night, dinner was to be served at my home. And so I went to the motel to get him about a quarter of six. I said, "Guys, we got to go." So Martin and I walked on the balcony. He stood here, and I stood here.

SIDES

Ray gets these binoculars. He starts looking towards the Lorraine, and there's Martin Luther King, right there, on the balcony.

POSNER

He has the chance right there. He's only bought the gun five days earlier. He doesn't have to stalk him for the next month. This could be it. Now he has to take that rifle, get into the bathroom down the hallway, have nobody see him, get into the tub, which he has to do, and set up to take the shot and hope that when he does that, King hasn't left.

KYLES

He was greeting people down in the courtyard. Saw Jesse Jackson. Said, "Jesse, you're not dressed for dinner." Jesse said, "I don't need a shirt and tie, Doc, "I got a appetite. That's all I need." He said, "Oh man, you... you crazy."

POSNER

Ray goes down the hallway, nobody sees him. He gets into the tub, King is still there. Ray sets up his.30-06 and the window ledge becomes the brace that gives him the sturdiness that he needs on a rifle. He doesn't have to hold this up in the air. So I turned to go to the stairs to go down, and Martin was leaning over the balcony on the railing, talking to Jesse and Ben. Ray looks through the 7 power scope, and King becomes large. Most of the scope would be taken up with King's face at that point. You couldn't get a better shot. A deadly shot. (gunshot)

YOUNG

It never occurred to me that it was a bullet until I looked up and didn't see him, and I ran up the stairs and there saw him laying down in a pool of blood. And I knew then immediately it was all over.

KYLES

There was so much blood. Blood was everywhere. He never spoke a word. (sirens wailing)

MAN (on police radio)

We have information King has been shot at the Lorraine. We have information that King has been shot at the Lorraine.

POSNER

After the shot was fired, Ray knew that he would have to make a fast getaway.

So he had made a bundle that he'd take with him

the rifle, his binoculars, everything else. The adrenaline has to be absolutely pounding, because now it's time to escape. Ray would have to get to his car with nobody seeing him. And he gets outside and he turned left to go to his car. Half a block away are two police cars. And Ray couldn't tell if somebody is in the police car, or if the cars are empty. Ray has to make an immediate decision. If he is caught with the murder weapon, game's over, that's it, might as well give it up-- he's the assassin. If he's caught without the weapon, he might be able to talk himself out of the reason that he's there. He decides to dump it. He dumps it into the recessed doorway next door to the flophouse, then goes to the Mustang and drives away.

REPORTER (on radio)

This is Ray Sherman, United Press International in Memphis. Memphis police report they have just confirmed that Reverend Martin Luther King has been shot.

JESSE JACKSON

The pathology and the sickness and the neurosis of a Memphis and of this racist society in which we live is that that really pulled the trigger. To some extent, Dr. King has been a buffer the last few years between the black community and white community. The white people do not know it, but the white people's best friend is dead. (shouting)

POSNER

King's assassination is like striking a match and it hits the gasoline, and in cities from Detroit to Newark, in Watts, in Los Angeles, in major black neighborhoods across the country, there are riots, dozens dead, thousands wounded, thousands arrested. Late today the president declared a state of emergency and regular Army troops moved into the nation's capital to protect strategic locations from the violence spreading...

RATHER

He's hearing on the radio, "Dr. Martin Luther King has been shot, Dr. Martin Luther King has been killed," and that the police are fanning out trying to find suspects. I think it begins to dawn on him the magnitude of what he's done, that he's not going to be celebrated by the powers that be and that he's a wanted criminal. So he knew he had to stay just ahead of this amazing sort of... turmoil that was coming out of Memphis and he just, sort of just got out in the nick of time.

POSNER

He's smart enough to drive not on freeways, he goes on back roads. Goes to Atlanta, parks his Mustang. He wipes it clean of prints and he abandons it. He takes a bus up to Detroit, takes a taxi and crosses into the Canadian border. While everybody's looking for the assassin in America, he's up there trying to get a Canadian passport.

CAMPBELL

He wanted to go to Rhodesia. He wanted to go to a place that he felt like he would be embraced as a hero.

SIDES

Rhodesia was a white supremacist, segregated country that I think he viewed as a place of refuge.

RATHER

Once he became convinced that his immediate getaway was successful, I think he had to be thinking, "There are a lot of big money, powerful people "who wanted this to happen and I made it happen. "And I'll get my just rewards for that, if I can just stay on the lam long enough."

SIDES

He must be ecstatic, because he knows that he has done something that's sent out these shockwaves. Back in America, people are talking about him. At the same time, it must have been terrifying, because he recognized that they were on to him. He knew his time was short in Canada, that he had to get out of there as quickly as possible. (airplane engine roaring)

HUGHES

Not only did he get a passport out of Canada, but he bought an airplane ticket and flew to London, then down to Portugal. He was looking to be a mercenary in Africa, and he had heard that you could make contacts in Portugal.

POSNER

He tries to get a ship that's going down to Rhodesia, but he misses it by two days. So he's got enough money to go back to London, where he sits for the next month and he starts to run out of money. He robs a jewelry store at one point to keep going. Finally, on June 8, Ray goes to Heathrow. He's trying to get over to white Africa. So he's traveling under an alias, Ramon Sneyd. And that happens to be on the watch list.

HUGHES

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police went through, one by one, every passport that had been issued following the assassination until they made a match on the bartending school photograph and a passport photograph out of Canada.

SIDES

So Ray goes to the desk and this agent, he looks down at a little list that had been prepared for him and saw the name, Ramon Sneyd. This is one of the people that are supposed to be detained.

CAMPBELL

And it didn't take long to figure out that this is the person everybody in the world's been looking for.

TV REPORTER

The Justice Department has announced that James Earl Ray, the accused assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King, has been arrested in London, England. According to F.B.I. director...

SIDES

He's flown from England to Memphis in the dead of night on a Air Force jet with F.B.I. agents surrounding him.

HANES

He was wearing a... a belted straitjacket, leg shackles. Nobody knew who he was, whether he was part of an international conspiracy, whether he was leading a vast revolutionary army. He was a mystery man.

RATHER

I think that Ray felt, "Now I'm a big man, I'm no longer a loser. "I did something, I did something big. "I made the F.B.I.'s top ten. "I gave them a good, long chase. "And I come back to Memphis, "yeah, I come back in a straitjacket, "but, you know, forevermore, I'm somebody. I slew the dreamer."

WOFFORD

I think all kinds of people thought that Ray was probably part of some kind of group, a plot. There's rational reason to think that there was motive in thousands, thousands of people to kill King. There was hatred of a degree that you can't say anything other than it was an invitation to violence. Therefore, it's not irrational to try to see if there was a conspiracy. There is no shortage of other suspected plotters and planners of the assassination. First, unnamed money interests. Why? To prevent Dr. King from leading his scheduled Poor People's March on Washington. Two, white racists. Their motive for wanting to get rid of Dr. King was obvious. Three, black militants. Why?

SIDES

The problem with the conspiracies that do exist out there, they are so convoluted and so complicated. They end up involving the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. and the Memphis Police Department and the Memphis Fire Department and the mayor's office and the Boy Scouts of America. I mean, everyone killed King at some point. It becomes ludicrous.

CAMPBELL

I have no doubt in my mind that Ray did it. All the circumstantial evidence that we have points to him, all the physical evidence that we have that points to him. We're stuck with... James Earl Ray did it.

POSNER

He was an agent of larger forces in American life, an agent of all those forces of hate that kept building up a drumbeat against Martin Luther King, that made him into a villain, that allowed a racist like Ray feel as though he could kill a civil rights leader and get away with it and be a hero someplace else.

SIDES

King himself envisioned that he would be killed. He talked about sick white brothers, that some sick white brother out there would take his life. And so, in a way, I think he anticipated James Earl Ray. If there was ever a sick white brother, it was James Earl Ray.

RATHER

As fate, destiny dictated, Dr. King and Ray will be forever paired. As unfair, as maddening as that can be, say, "James Earl Ray shouldn't be mentioned in the same breath with Dr. Martin Luther King." But so it is.

KYLES

He was a man with an earned Ph.D. degree at 25, a Nobel Peace Prize at 34. All the things he could have been-- university president, UN ambassador, mega-churches with his skills, but here he is dying on a balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, helping garbage workers.

SIDES

After the assassination, Coretta Scott King comes to Memphis and leads the march that King was unable to lead, the peaceful march that he had really staked his reputation on.

REPORTER

Why did you take part in this demonstration today? Well, I took part in this march today because of Martin Luther... Martin Luther King and what he stood for, because this march is what he died for, and I think if he died for it, I could carry out what he started. Do you know what he stood for? Yes, he stood for nonviolence and peace for all men of all kind.

YOUNG

We always said we were not concerned with who killed Martin Luther King. We were concerned with what killed Martin Luther King. And what killed Martin Luther King was a reactionary attitude that was afraid of change for the better in America. It was trying to hold America, keep America still, when America was crying out to continue the evolution of freedom. I learned from Martin Luther King that you have to do what you think is right and accept the consequences as they come. You can't do things to... to stay safe. "American

Experience

Roads to Memphis"