Socialist Action /January 2000
Why Was King Murdered?
By ROLAND SHEPPARD
On Dec. 8, a jury awarded Corretta Scott King and her family $100 in
damages resulting from the conspiracy to murder her late husband, Martin
Luther King. The trial was initiated by the admission of Lloyd Jowers on
national TV in 1993 that he had hired King's assassin as a favor to an underworld
figure who was a friend.
After the trial, Dexter King, Dr. King's son, said, "After today,
we don't want questions like, 'Do you believe James Earl Ray killed your
father?' I've been hearing that all my life. No, I don't, and this is the
end of it. This was the most incredible cover-up of the century, and now
it has been exposed. Now we can finally move on with our lives."
 The King family, along with their attorney, William
Pepper, plan to lobby historians and elected officials to get the official
record of the assassination changed.
There have always been many unanswered questions about the assassination
of Martin Luther King. From the beginning it has been clear that the FBI
was involved to one degree or another. The FBI "leaked" the information
to the Memphis, Tenn., press that King was going to be staying at the Lorraine
Motel a couple of days prior to his arrival in the city. This gave time
to anyone who wanted King dead to plan an assassination and made it more
difficult for the FBI to be accused of the crime.
To confirm the official account that James Earl Ray acted alone in the
assassination, The House Select Committee on Assassinations, did an "investigation"
in 1979. Immediately after it released the report-affirming that Ray was
the lone assassin-the committee sealed all of the evidence it had in its
possession for 50 years (until 2029). Thus, we were left with nothing but
the "integrity" of the Senators to justify their findings.
We are also well aware of the Cointelpro disruption operations of the
government against the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, and
radicals and socialists during that period.
The question remains: Why would the government be part of the conspiracy
against King? Why would they want him dead?
Martin Luther King had a different political perspective at the time
of his death than when he made his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech.
His final speeches and actions reveal that he had begun to view the struggle
for equality as an economic struggle and the capitalist economic system
as the problem.
In one of his last speeches, given at Stanford University in February
1997 and titled the "Two Americas," King addressed the problem
of the rich and the poor in this country. Instead of his "dream,"
he talked about the nightmare of the economic condition of Blacks. He talked
about "work-starved men searching for jobs that did not exist";
about the Black population living on a "lonely island of poverty surrounded
by an ocean of material prosperity"; and about living in a "triple
ghetto of race, poverty, and human misery."
He explained that after World War II, the unemployment rate between Blacks
and whites was equal and that in the years between then and 1967, Black
unemployment had become double the rate for white workers. He also spoke
about how Black workers made half the wages of white workers.
From his experience when he started his campaign for equality in Chicago
and elsewhere in the North, King concluded in this speech that to deal with
this problem of the "Two Americas" was "much more difficult
than to get rid of legal segregation." He pointed out that the northern
liberals, who had given moral and financial support to the struggle against
Jim Crow, would not give such support to the efforts to end economic segregation.
He also polemicized against the concept that "people should pick
themselves up by their own bootstraps." In the course of explaining
the obstacles that Blacks faced coming into this country that Europeans
did not have, he stated: "It is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man
to pick himself up by his own bootstraps." Black people, he said, were
"impoverished aliens in their own land."
This was the first speech in which King opposed the war in Vietnam. He
criticized the government for spending hundreds of millions of dollars for
war and not for equality. He stated his goal "to organize and mobilize
forces to fight for economic equality."
Two days later, in New York City, in his major speech against the war,
King also stated the course that he was planning to take in the fight for
economic equality: "There is nothing but a lack of social vision to
prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether
he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid, or day laborer.
"There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing
an annual minimum-and livable-income for every American family. There is
nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities....
"The coalition of an energized section of labor, Negroes, unemployed,
and welfare recipients may be the source of power that reshapes economic
relationships and ushers in a breakthrough to a new level of social reform.
"The total elimination of poverty, now a practical responsibility,
the reality of equality in race relations and other profound structural
changes in society may well begin here."
These words have even more meaning in today's world. At that time, the
stock market was below 1000 points. Today it above 11,000 points (11 times
higher!) and yet conditions for Blacks are still lower than after World
War II!
King was assassinated in Memphis. He was in Memphis to build "the
coalition of an energized section of labor, Negroes, unemployed, and welfare
recipients" in support of municipal garbage workers on strike.
The capitalist class is fundamentally opposed to such a coalition getting
off the ground. If such a force had been launched, the whole power of the
antiwar and civil rights movement could have transformed the labor movement
and become "the source of power that reshapes economic relationships
and ushers in a breakthrough to a new level of social reform." That
is why Martin Luther King was assassinated.
Such a coalition, as King envisioned it 33 years ago, is still needed
today. The best tribute to Martin Luther King would be to begin again to
build the movement that was also assassinated in Memphis in 1968.
Socialist Action /January 2000 |