WEBVTT - The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:04.920 Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:13.680 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's 0:00:13.800 --> 0:00:16.160 Chuck and it's just the two of us today, which 0:00:16.200 --> 0:00:18.880 is fine because we need to keep our nose to 0:00:18.920 --> 0:00:22.919 the grindstone and really focus on a pair of really 0:00:22.960 --> 0:00:26.200 important episodes which we kick off now. 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:29.760 That's right. We haven't done a two parter in a while. 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:33.320 But as we got into the originally one part of 0:00:33.360 --> 0:00:37.000 the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior, you were like, man, 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:39.720 there's a lot more here that we can just kind 0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:42.000 of explode this into a two parter. 0:00:42.360 --> 0:00:44.559 Yeah, that was verbatim what I. 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:46.440 Said, and I said, let's do it. 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:49.440 There was a ton of stuff that I did not 0:00:49.680 --> 0:00:54.560 know about mlk's assassination. Yeah, James lay like, there's a 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:57.680 lot of stuff around it, and it's just a reminder 0:00:57.760 --> 0:01:01.920 that history gets so boiled down to like it's its 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:06.600 bare essence or even like a caricature of itself, and 0:01:06.600 --> 0:01:10.840 when you really dig into like a historical event, you 0:01:10.959 --> 0:01:14.520 just you're just reminded that there's just so many people 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:18.480 affected and involved, and it's not just you know, James 0:01:18.520 --> 0:01:22.760 ear already shot Martin Luther King Junior, and you know, 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:26.080 the world mourned. I mean, right, that was all true, 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:28.560 but there was just so much more to it. So 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:31.000 hopefully we'll kind of get some of that across in. 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:33.840 This Yeah for sure. I mean, you know, we'll talk 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:35.280 about it some. But I went to I've been to 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:37.279 the King Center, I've been in the Civil Rights Museum 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:40.760 in Memphis at the Lorraine Motel, and like I've thought, 0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:42.399 I knew a lot about this stuff, but until we 0:01:42.440 --> 0:01:43.320 do our job. 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:46.840 Like we do, I learned a lot more. So it's 0:01:46.840 --> 0:01:47.320 pretty great. 0:01:47.960 --> 0:01:52.760 So let's talk MLKA because he kind of skyrocketed to 0:01:52.840 --> 0:01:58.520 prominence from just the start. He became involved in the 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:02.680 Montgomery bus boycott, which most people say kicked off the 0:02:02.720 --> 0:02:06.120 Civil rights era in the United States thanks to Rosa Parks, 0:02:07.360 --> 0:02:10.440 who we did an episode on Rosa Parks Agent of Change. 0:02:10.639 --> 0:02:11.359 You remember, that's. 0:02:11.280 --> 0:02:11.959 Right, was gay? 0:02:12.040 --> 0:02:14.520 Yeah for sure, And all this is just you know, 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:17.359 so we're setting the table kind of as a lead 0:02:17.440 --> 0:02:21.600 in to where things were in April of nineteen sixty eight. Yeah, 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:24.679 so like you said, you know, twelve this year's earlier 0:02:25.160 --> 0:02:28.799 is when he really rose to prominence, and so much 0:02:28.880 --> 0:02:32.280 so that in February of fifty seven, he was on 0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:33.760 the cover of Time magazine. 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:35.120 Yeah. 0:02:35.160 --> 0:02:38.480 So in nineteen sixty three he was Times Man of 0:02:38.480 --> 0:02:40.400 the Year after being on the cover just you know, 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:43.200 a handful of years earlier. And in nineteen sixty four 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:45.800 he won the Nobel Peace Prize. So he was one 0:02:45.840 --> 0:02:49.600 of the most famous Americans by the early nineteen sixties. 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:54.040 Yes, But one of the things you don't learn about 0:02:54.080 --> 0:02:57.080 these days as often is that he was at that 0:02:57.240 --> 0:03:04.119 point beginning to become widely criticized, not just by white Americans, 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:07.200 many of whom have been criticizing them all along, but 0:03:07.320 --> 0:03:12.160 by black Americans as well. There was a real division 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:17.880 in the civil rights movement between Martin Luther King's vision 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:22.760 of his doctrine of non violence, which is basically saying like, hey, 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:28.480 we're going to essentially do everything we can to show 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:34.040 white Americans the problems that black Americans face just by 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:37.840 being black in America, and no matter what they do 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:39.920 to us, we're not going to fight back, and we're 0:03:39.920 --> 0:03:44.640 going to make an example of ourselves that we'll hopefully 0:03:44.680 --> 0:03:48.200 set for them. And the ultimate goal was to integrate 0:03:48.680 --> 0:03:52.240 into America, to integrate black Americans into America, so that 0:03:52.280 --> 0:03:55.480 there wasn't Black America in white America, and that ran 0:03:56.440 --> 0:04:00.480 very much contrary to the other rival idea, which was 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:01.680 Malcolm X's idea. 0:04:02.160 --> 0:04:05.520 Yeah, and we haven't done one on Malcolm X yet, 0:04:05.560 --> 0:04:08.560 so maybe we should. We should hit that up as 0:04:08.600 --> 0:04:11.680 a follow up at some points, for sure. But yes, 0:04:11.840 --> 0:04:13.720 this was, you know, sort of the other side of 0:04:13.720 --> 0:04:17.400 the coin. Malcolm X believed in black separatism. He was like, 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:22.279 this non violent approach isn't isn't working, and black people 0:04:22.520 --> 0:04:27.400 cannot integrate into white America. It's a racist society and 0:04:27.440 --> 0:04:33.200 it's just not possible. So we need self determination. Violence, 0:04:33.400 --> 0:04:36.599 you know, by any means necessary, is an acceptable sort 0:04:36.600 --> 0:04:40.440 of avenue to achieve the goals of black determination, and 0:04:40.600 --> 0:04:45.960 especially considering violence is being inflicted upon black people by 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:49.279 white people constantly, so it's time to fight back, like 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:51.679 with fist and clubs and whatever else. 0:04:51.920 --> 0:04:55.120 Yeah, and again that's totally contrary to King's doctrine of 0:04:55.160 --> 0:04:58.279 non violence, which Malcolm X considered criminal, as he put it, 0:04:58.320 --> 0:05:01.479 in the face of just being beaten by whites just 0:05:01.520 --> 0:05:05.760 for marching in the streets peacefully. And a big portion 0:05:05.920 --> 0:05:07.760 of the people who are critical of King and his 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:11.920 nonviolentce doctrine were the younger generations, they tended to lean 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:17.080 more militantly, more in Malcolm X's direction, and then in 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:22.320 White America. With white Americans, he was basically never popular 0:05:22.440 --> 0:05:25.840 during his lifetime, at least with the majority of white Americans. 0:05:26.200 --> 0:05:27.960 Yeah, I mean, and we know this because you know, 0:05:28.000 --> 0:05:30.520 they did polls back then. There were Gallop Poles that 0:05:30.640 --> 0:05:35.200 found in nineteen sixty three through nineteen sixty six. Each 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:37.880 year found that fewer that forty percent of white Americans 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:43.120 viewed Martin Luther King Junior favorably. So one of the 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:46.200 other things that didn't help, besides his work in the 0:05:46.440 --> 0:05:49.440 you know, and civil rights, was his stance. 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:50.839 On Vietnam and the war in Vietnam. 0:05:51.520 --> 0:05:54.960 He was always against it, but really changed his stance 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:58.280 in nineteen sixty seven, started being really really vocal about 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:01.640 it as far as publicly condemning the war, started leading 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:06.000 anti war marches, giving speeches against the war. One very 0:06:06.000 --> 0:06:10.320 famous one was Beyond Vietnam Colon a Time to Break 0:06:10.360 --> 0:06:12.640 the Silence speech he gave in New York City at 0:06:12.760 --> 0:06:17.039 Riverside Church and April actually exactly one year April fourth, 0:06:17.120 --> 0:06:20.560 nineteen sixty seven before his murder. And it was a 0:06:20.640 --> 0:06:24.960 very controversial speech because it was his most adamant anti war, 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:30.080 anti Vietnam speech yet, and he specifically called out America 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:33.800 and the US military by sending a disproportionate number of 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:36.920 you know, kind of poor black American boys to fight 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:37.360 that war. 0:06:37.839 --> 0:06:40.520 Yeah, and so this was it's really hard to oversee 0:06:40.600 --> 0:06:43.440 how controversial this speech was. Like he just stopped mincing 0:06:43.480 --> 0:06:46.240 words and came out and said everything that needed to 0:06:46.240 --> 0:06:50.479 be said. And so his alliance with Lyndon Baine Johnson, 0:06:50.520 --> 0:06:53.680 who was president at the time, was just chattered. Right 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:57.719 then LBJ stepped away from him, publicly broke with him. 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:01.000 I think Laura helps out with this. She found one 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:06.200 hundred and sixty eight newspapers issued editorials denouncing him for 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:10.120 that speech. So that like he was already not super 0:07:10.120 --> 0:07:15.160 popular with white Americans, his popularity was so so with 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:20.000 black Americans, and all Americans were now mad at him 0:07:20.080 --> 0:07:22.360 for his stance on Vietnam, or a ton of them were. 0:07:22.840 --> 0:07:26.360 And then one of the other things that really proved 0:07:26.360 --> 0:07:29.000 to be very difficult for him later in his life. 0:07:29.240 --> 0:07:34.240 Later in his career was he shifted focus from strictly 0:07:34.320 --> 0:07:39.200 civil rights for black Americans to economic justice for poor 0:07:39.240 --> 0:07:44.720 Americans of all races. He created something called the Poor 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:47.840 People's Campaign. He came up with an economic bill of 0:07:47.920 --> 0:07:53.080 rights that is essentially pretty socialists, I mean at its core. 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:57.600 And he also basically said, like, this campaign is also 0:07:57.680 --> 0:08:01.920 going to be a shift not just in focus, in potency, 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:05.040 Like we're not going to be quite as peaceful as 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:07.280 we were before. We're not going to go Malcolm X 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:11.760 full on militant, but we're you can expect, you know, 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:16.800 I think he famously said, fifteen to sixteen percent more militancy. 0:08:16.720 --> 0:08:20.960 Right, Yeah, and you know this ship so he already had, 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:23.560 you know, people coming at him from all sides, and 0:08:23.600 --> 0:08:26.960 now even within his own camp they didn't love it either. 0:08:27.040 --> 0:08:30.280 His advisors and his staff didn't love this change of direction. 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:34.560 So you know, by the time April of nineteen sixty 0:08:34.559 --> 0:08:40.560 eight rolls around, he's exhausted, he's tired, he's got people 0:08:40.559 --> 0:08:43.200 coming at him from every angle, even within his own camp, 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:46.680 and he just wasn't at his peak personally or with 0:08:46.800 --> 0:08:47.320 his career. 0:08:47.559 --> 0:08:50.600 Right. So, Chuck, do you want to take a break now? 0:08:51.320 --> 0:08:54.079 Yeah, we've set the stage with where King was and 0:08:54.120 --> 0:08:57.360 we'll come back and then set the stage with Memphis, 0:08:57.440 --> 0:08:59.400 and where Memphis was, well, it was in Tennessee, but 0:09:00.040 --> 0:09:30.520 how Memphis was in April nineteen sixty eight. 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:36.640 So in the spring of nineteen sixty eight, Memphis, Tennessee, 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:41.360 which had previously prided itself on its white community and 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:44.600 black communities, kind of you know, fairly getting along, especially 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:49.520 compared to some other places, like places in Alabama. It 0:09:49.640 --> 0:09:53.800 was by this time in high tension as a town, 0:09:54.480 --> 0:09:59.000 and it was largely because of the Memphis sanitation workers strike. 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:03.760 Okay became very interested in helping further the goals of 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:07.000 the Memphis sanitation workers in their strike because he basically 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:10.080 saw this as like, this is a perfect bridge between 0:10:10.280 --> 0:10:13.280 this transition from a focus just on civil rights to 0:10:13.360 --> 0:10:18.920 this larger focus on poor people of all colors, because like, 0:10:19.040 --> 0:10:24.679 this was mostly almost exclusively black sanitation workers who were 0:10:24.720 --> 0:10:29.439 struggling for recognition of their work, dignity in their work, 0:10:30.160 --> 0:10:33.319 decent wages. Apparently if you were a full time sanitation 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:37.080 worker in Memphis, you were still eligible for food stamps 0:10:37.160 --> 0:10:41.319 after your full salary. And he was like, this is 0:10:41.600 --> 0:10:44.640 this is exactly the perfect kind of thing that I'm 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:47.840 trying to get across, Like this is important. So he 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:50.480 kind of focused on Memphis in the spring of nineteen 0:10:50.600 --> 0:10:54.000 sixty eight, and like I said, it was in a 0:10:54.040 --> 0:10:58.800 state of high tension because a couple of protests, marches 0:10:58.920 --> 0:11:02.400 essentially to support the word workers had not really gone 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:04.040 really well previously. 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:07.720 Yeah, but before these marches there was you know, there's 0:11:07.720 --> 0:11:09.600 already a strike going on. It just wasn't you know, 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:12.560 full throttle at this point. What would really kick that 0:11:12.600 --> 0:11:16.920 into gear were the very tragic deaths of two sanitation workers, 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:21.000 Echo Cole and Robert Walker. They were crushed to death 0:11:21.040 --> 0:11:23.440 their truck malfunction. They were trying to take shelter from 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:27.280 the rain and were crushed by the truck, and the 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:30.840 city didn't pay any compensation to their families at all. 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:33.839 So this is what really kind of triggered the mass 0:11:33.880 --> 0:11:38.480 walk off the job. Almost all the workers black sanitation 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:42.040 workers went on strike at the time. And King was like, 0:11:42.120 --> 0:11:45.520 all right, I gotta get to Memphis. It's in trouble. 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:48.280 It's an opportunity for me as well, like you said, 0:11:48.320 --> 0:11:52.360 to sort of help me segue into this other movement. 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:55.559 And there were a couple of different marches. On March 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:58.880 twenty eighth, he led a march of five thousand people 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:04.120 through Memphis, and almost right away it turned violent, not 0:12:04.240 --> 0:12:07.040 by his hand, but it was a group called the Invaders. 0:12:07.040 --> 0:12:11.600 It was a militant group of young African Americans who 0:12:11.880 --> 0:12:14.040 were not on board with King. They were not on 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:17.080 board with non violence obviously, and they started looting. They 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:21.800 started breaking windows and stores. Police came in, and we 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:26.319 all know the drill. At this point, people scatter, Police 0:12:26.320 --> 0:12:29.040 are beating people, shooting at people. That was a sixteen 0:12:29.120 --> 0:12:31.560 year old named Larry Payne that was shot and killed 0:12:31.600 --> 0:12:36.280 by a police officer named Leslie Dean Jones. Sixty people injured. 0:12:36.320 --> 0:12:38.520 And then all of a sudden, Memphis is under curfew 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:41.800 and close to four thousand National guardsmen are brought in. 0:12:42.160 --> 0:12:45.520 Yeah, and this was on the heels of another march 0:12:46.040 --> 0:12:51.360 the month before in February where protesters, including some ministers 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:55.480 who were marching were mazed by police. So Memphis just 0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:58.440 like basically almost like throwing a switch, went from like 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:02.000 a generally o case city as far as race relations 0:13:02.000 --> 0:13:05.920 were concerned, to like the National Guard is now here 0:13:06.000 --> 0:13:09.319 keeping order in like a month. That just changed that quickly. 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:16.079 And because he was leading the march on March twenty eighth, 0:13:16.600 --> 0:13:20.120 King became totally, I don't want to say obsessed, but 0:13:20.200 --> 0:13:23.880 he was fully zeroed in on returning to Memphis to 0:13:23.960 --> 0:13:27.959 set things right. Yeah, because that was a huge black 0:13:28.000 --> 0:13:32.520 eye in his against him his career and in particular 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:37.920 his whole doctrine of nonviolence. And again, like the invaders 0:13:37.960 --> 0:13:40.880 were not related to what was going on, they essentially 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:46.839 used this as a chance to mix things up, and 0:13:47.280 --> 0:13:49.720 King just basically wanted to go give it another try 0:13:49.800 --> 0:13:53.280 and hopefully restore his reputation, hopefully restore the reputation of 0:13:53.320 --> 0:13:56.320 the civil rights movement he was leading. And he put 0:13:56.559 --> 0:14:01.160 everything on the line to go back to Memphis and 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:03.720 try it again because it could have gone wrong again 0:14:03.920 --> 0:14:07.160 and that would have really damaged things even further. A 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:10.120 lot of his advisors were like, we don't need to 0:14:10.160 --> 0:14:12.480 go back to Memphis, Like we have a trip to 0:14:12.520 --> 0:14:15.640 Africa scheduled, and like, let's just follow through and we'll 0:14:15.720 --> 0:14:17.800 leave it behind us, and he was like, no, we 0:14:17.920 --> 0:14:20.120 have to go back. So we actually canceled that Africa 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:23.880 trip and brought everyone back to Memphis and he got 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:27.640 back there on April third, and that evening he gave 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:31.600 what's been known today as is. I've been to the 0:14:31.640 --> 0:14:35.200 Mountaintop speech. Yeah, I believe it was his final speech. 0:14:35.560 --> 0:14:38.760 Gave it at the Mason Temple church in Memphis, and 0:14:39.640 --> 0:14:42.840 it was a pretty significant speech, as you can imagine. 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:45.440 I mean, basically everyone's aware of this. But in it 0:14:46.280 --> 0:14:51.320 he recounts in a previous assassination attempt that I had 0:14:51.720 --> 0:14:52.840 never heard of, had. 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:56.880 You, yeah, from visiting the museums. But it's certainly not 0:14:56.960 --> 0:14:58.920 something I don't think this like super widely known. 0:14:59.240 --> 0:15:01.880 Right. Well, So he was signing a book at a 0:15:01.920 --> 0:15:05.200 department store when he was stabbed in a chest by 0:15:05.240 --> 0:15:09.000 a mentally ill woman named Isola Curry. Stabbed in the 0:15:09.080 --> 0:15:12.560 chest but with a seven inch letter opener, and Isola 0:15:12.680 --> 0:15:17.640 Curry was convinced that civil rights organizations like mlk's were 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:20.640 tracking her, had singled her out, and we're tracking her, 0:15:20.920 --> 0:15:24.480 preventing her from getting employment, just generally messing with her life. 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:28.440 And the papers all reported that the surgeon who treated 0:15:28.560 --> 0:15:32.360 MLKA obviously here survived, was that the letter opener came 0:15:32.440 --> 0:15:35.160 so close to his heart that had he sneezed, it 0:15:35.200 --> 0:15:38.640 would have penetrated his aorda and killed him. So he 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:41.800 really lucked out, and he talked about this, and I've 0:15:41.840 --> 0:15:44.680 been to the mountaintop speech. But the thing that most 0:15:44.680 --> 0:15:49.040 people remember about it is that he he in a 0:15:49.080 --> 0:15:52.880 way almost predicted his death the following day in the 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:53.880 At the end of the. 0:15:53.880 --> 0:15:57.040 Speech, yeah, I mean, I'll go ahead and read it. 0:15:57.080 --> 0:16:00.560 He talked about not being around. He said anybody it 0:16:00.560 --> 0:16:03.160 would like to live along life. Longevity has its place, 0:16:03.720 --> 0:16:05.040 but I'm not concerned about that now. 0:16:05.080 --> 0:16:06.280 I just want to do God's will. 0:16:06.640 --> 0:16:08.280 And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain, 0:16:08.320 --> 0:16:10.800 and I've looked over and I've seen the Promised Land. 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:13.080 I may not get there with you, but I want 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:15.400 you to know tonight that we as a people will 0:16:15.440 --> 0:16:19.800 get to the Promised Land. So a definite sort of 0:16:19.840 --> 0:16:22.200 eerie thing to happen the night before his murder. 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:24.560 Yeah, And I've read that some people are like he was. 0:16:25.000 --> 0:16:27.680 He felt like that death was close, that he didn't 0:16:27.680 --> 0:16:31.160 have much time left, So it makes sense that he 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:33.840 would have put that in. I don't think he expected 0:16:33.880 --> 0:16:37.240 to be murdered the next day, but he just I 0:16:37.320 --> 0:16:39.920 read that he sensed that he was not going to 0:16:39.920 --> 0:16:40.920 live much longer. 0:16:41.320 --> 0:16:43.440 Yeah, I mean, he had seen what happened with Kennedy 0:16:44.400 --> 0:16:48.920 obviously what happened with Robert Kennedy afterward. But yeah, it 0:16:48.960 --> 0:16:51.560 was those kind of things, you know, very sadly were 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:52.880 we just much more common back then. 0:16:53.040 --> 0:16:56.360 Yeah, I was thinking about that, and just like living 0:16:56.400 --> 0:17:01.440 in an era of assassinations, like success full assassinations of 0:17:01.640 --> 0:17:04.560 prominent political figures, one of whom was the president at 0:17:04.600 --> 0:17:09.200 the time. That's just nuts that America went through that period. 0:17:09.760 --> 0:17:13.879 Yeah, absolutely, I mean King Malcolm X, the two Kennedy's. Yeah, 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:17.879 it's just a very fraught, fraught time in our history 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:20.560 for sure. So he's back in town to hold a 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:22.879 march to set the previous march right, and one of 0:17:22.920 --> 0:17:25.680 the things he had to do was get the invaders 0:17:25.720 --> 0:17:28.480 on board with not doing this again. So at the 0:17:28.520 --> 0:17:32.040 Lorraine Motel he was actually meeting with them. One of 0:17:32.119 --> 0:17:34.280 the things he did there was meet with them and 0:17:34.520 --> 0:17:37.640 negotiate a deal where like, hey, you guys, don't turn 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:40.399 this thing violent. And they said, okay, we can do that. 0:17:40.640 --> 0:17:42.919 Give us some money, give us some cars, and give 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:45.800 us a little more influence and we'll do that. So 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:49.920 they were negotiating that. The march was actually planned for 0:17:50.119 --> 0:17:53.040 April fourth, and this is one of those sort of 0:17:53.160 --> 0:17:57.560 sliding doors things. It was actually put on hold because 0:17:57.600 --> 0:17:59.919 the city got an injunction to stop it from a 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:04.040 federal court. And if that hadn't happened and he would 0:18:04.040 --> 0:18:08.080 have been marching on April fourth, perhaps James or Ray 0:18:08.119 --> 0:18:11.760 would have continued to sort of pursue King because as 0:18:11.760 --> 0:18:13.560 we'll see, he had been following him around for about 0:18:13.600 --> 0:18:18.160 a month or maybe not. Maybe maybe that assassination never happens. 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:22.080 But because of that injunction, the march was delayed from 0:18:22.080 --> 0:18:22.760 April fourth. 0:18:23.119 --> 0:18:24.320 King stayed in town. 0:18:24.160 --> 0:18:28.199 To go to court to help appeal that injunction, was 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:31.880 in court on April fourth through the day and then 0:18:32.280 --> 0:18:34.600 late that afternoon the judges said, all right, we can 0:18:34.680 --> 0:18:35.359 do this march. 0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:39.240 It'll be next Monday. And King. 0:18:40.520 --> 0:18:43.520 So late that afternoon the judges said, all right, the 0:18:43.520 --> 0:18:45.359 march can go forward, but it's going to go forward 0:18:45.359 --> 0:18:46.040 next Monday. 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:51.000 So that day on April fourth, it was the evening. 0:18:51.440 --> 0:18:54.720 It turns out Bono got it wrong in that song Pride. 0:18:54.760 --> 0:18:59.520 Because he says early, you know they corrected it, did they? Yeah? They? 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:01.480 I never listened to much of it, but they put 0:19:01.480 --> 0:19:05.600 out a reimaginings of a bunch of their songs called 0:19:05.680 --> 0:19:08.840 songs of Surrender. And like you said, it was early 0:19:08.880 --> 0:19:10.879 morning April fourth, shot rings out in the Memphis s 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:12.760 Guy and the song Pride in the Name of Love, 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:15.560 and he changed it to in the evening April fourth. 0:19:15.800 --> 0:19:18.720 Well, yes, that's much more accurate, because that's when it happened. 0:19:19.840 --> 0:19:22.560 King had just been grinding away in Memphis for two 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:25.719 days by then, and he was staying in room three 0:19:25.880 --> 0:19:29.639 h six of the now very famous Lorraine Motel. That 0:19:29.760 --> 0:19:32.159 was the room that he usually took anytime he and 0:19:32.200 --> 0:19:35.720 his people were in Memphis. They stayed at the Lorraine 0:19:35.720 --> 0:19:38.640 Hotel because it was a black owned business and had 0:19:38.680 --> 0:19:41.880 been owned by Walter Bailey and his wife Laurie since 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:45.080 the nineteen forties. It was listed in the Green Book 0:19:45.160 --> 0:19:48.159 even it was just a black owned business, and it 0:19:48.200 --> 0:19:50.600 was a nice hotel to stay in. And by the 0:19:50.680 --> 0:19:55.919 time the late afternoon early evening rolled around, MLK was 0:19:56.080 --> 0:19:59.560 late for a dinner at the Reverend Billy Kyle's house 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:03.920 in Memphis, and they all started to leave to head 0:20:03.960 --> 0:20:07.240 to Billy Kyle's house for dinner, and he stepped outside 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:09.359 of his room and onto the balcony and he was 0:20:09.400 --> 0:20:12.840 speaking down to some other members of his group. I 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:14.880 think he told one of them to start the car 0:20:15.680 --> 0:20:19.439 and a shot did bring out and it hit MLK 0:20:19.760 --> 0:20:20.800 in the face. 0:20:22.040 --> 0:20:25.359 Yeah, sort of in the chin and jaw area and 0:20:25.440 --> 0:20:31.280 the neckline. There were there's that very famous photograph of 0:20:31.320 --> 0:20:34.280 the people, you know, his his group standing on the 0:20:34.359 --> 0:20:36.600 on the balcony off I think like three guys are 0:20:36.640 --> 0:20:41.440 pointing across Mulberry Street, which ran between the Lorraine Motel 0:20:41.680 --> 0:20:44.720 and the what was it, the Bessie What boarding house? 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:46.639 Bessie Brewers boarding House. 0:20:46.600 --> 0:20:48.480 Yeah, Bessie Brewers boarding House, and they were like, that's 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:52.080 where the shot came from. The picture was taken by 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:56.280 a South African photographer named Joseph Lowe l o u 0:20:56.600 --> 0:20:59.840 W became one of the most famous, you know photographs 0:20:59.840 --> 0:21:03.040 in a American history, of course. And the gentleman kneeling 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:07.520 attending to King, trying to do whatever he could, that 0:21:07.720 --> 0:21:12.520 was a guy named Meryll McCullough and he was an 0:21:12.600 --> 0:21:19.120 undercover cop who had infiltrated the invaders. So just by 0:21:19.240 --> 0:21:22.520 chance he was on hand as an undercover cop there 0:21:23.119 --> 0:21:25.720 and he's the one that's that's kneeling kind of trying 0:21:25.760 --> 0:21:29.440 to tend to King again. He was shot at six 0:21:29.560 --> 0:21:35.399 oh one, was alive even at the hospital, barely, but 0:21:35.480 --> 0:21:36.160 he died just. 0:21:36.119 --> 0:21:36.680 An hour later. 0:21:36.760 --> 0:21:38.680 He's pronounced dead at the age of thirty nine at 0:21:38.720 --> 0:21:39.879 seven five pm. 0:21:41.080 --> 0:21:47.000 Yeah, and a doctor named Jerry T. Francisco was the 0:21:47.040 --> 0:21:50.280 medical examiner at Shelby County at the time, and he 0:21:50.320 --> 0:21:54.760 conducted it an autopsy, and he concluded that Martin Luther 0:21:54.880 --> 0:21:57.320 King was killed by a gunshot wound to the chin 0:21:57.880 --> 0:22:01.560 and neck with a total transaction action of the lower 0:22:01.640 --> 0:22:05.800 cervical and upper thoracic spinal cord and other structures of 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:11.320 the neck. I read somewhere that that Martin Luther King 0:22:11.440 --> 0:22:16.080 probably didn't even hear the shot that killed him. It 0:22:16.200 --> 0:22:19.800 just hit him so fast and was shot from a 0:22:19.840 --> 0:22:23.560 high powered rifle at you know, close enough by that 0:22:23.760 --> 0:22:26.080 like it would have he just wouldn't have heard it. 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:29.000 And I was thinking it was possible that he died 0:22:29.320 --> 0:22:33.280 almost instantly. Had you read that he was still alive 0:22:33.320 --> 0:22:35.280 for a period like when he got to the hospital. 0:22:35.840 --> 0:22:39.040 Yeah, he was apparently just hanging on, you know, he 0:22:39.119 --> 0:22:42.560 was alive in the ambulance. He was alive, I think 0:22:42.600 --> 0:22:44.160 shortly after he got to the hospital. 0:22:44.720 --> 0:22:47.600 Well, hopefully he was completely unconscious at the time. So 0:22:48.640 --> 0:22:51.199 I mean, it's my hope that he just had he 0:22:51.359 --> 0:22:54.400 just never knew what hit him or anything hit him. 0:22:55.040 --> 0:22:57.880 I didn't, Yeah, I didn't realize that. Yeah. I thought 0:22:57.880 --> 0:22:59.240 he probably died instantly. 0:23:00.119 --> 0:23:00.320 Yeah. 0:23:00.320 --> 0:23:02.760 But when Francisco, that doctor, he you know, he described 0:23:02.800 --> 0:23:06.360 the gunshot wound, but he didn't fully dissect the path 0:23:06.400 --> 0:23:06.919 of the bullet. 0:23:07.720 --> 0:23:08.119 He didn't. 0:23:08.160 --> 0:23:09.760 He said he did that because he didn't want to 0:23:09.800 --> 0:23:13.480 deform the body any further. But that, of course, you know, 0:23:13.760 --> 0:23:17.880 would help out later with conspiracy theories as far as 0:23:18.119 --> 0:23:20.640 you know, not having a full accounting of the path 0:23:20.680 --> 0:23:23.240 of the bullet, which we'll get into all that, I 0:23:23.280 --> 0:23:27.600 believe in part two. Yeah, but right after the shooting, 0:23:27.720 --> 0:23:30.880 like literally the minutes right afterward, there were two men 0:23:30.920 --> 0:23:33.879