Latest / Stuff You Should Know / The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I

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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
0:13
Speaker 2: Chuck and it's just the two of us today, which
0:16
Speaker 2: is fine because we need to keep our nose to
0:18
Speaker 2: the grindstone and really focus on a pair of really
0:22
Speaker 2: important episodes which we kick off now.
0:26
Speaker 3: That's right. We haven't done a two parter in a while.
0:29
Speaker 1: But as we got into the originally one part of
0:33
Speaker 1: the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior, you were like, man,
0:37
Speaker 1: there's a lot more here that we can just kind
0:39
Speaker 1: of explode this into a two parter.
0:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was verbatim what I.
0:44
Speaker 3: Said, and I said, let's do it.
0:47
Speaker 2: There was a ton of stuff that I did not
0:49
Speaker 2: know about mlk's assassination. Yeah, James lay like, there's a
0:54
Speaker 2: lot of stuff around it, and it's just a reminder
0:57
Speaker 2: that history gets so boiled down to like it's its
1:01
Speaker 2: bare essence or even like a caricature of itself, and
1:06
Speaker 2: when you really dig into like a historical event, you
1:10
Speaker 2: just you're just reminded that there's just so many people
1:14
Speaker 2: affected and involved, and it's not just you know, James
1:18
Speaker 2: ear already shot Martin Luther King Junior, and you know,
1:23
Speaker 2: the world mourned. I mean, right, that was all true,
1:26
Speaker 2: but there was just so much more to it. So
1:28
Speaker 2: hopefully we'll kind of get some of that across in.
1:31
Speaker 1: This Yeah for sure. I mean, you know, we'll talk
1:33
Speaker 1: about it some. But I went to I've been to
1:35
Speaker 1: the King Center, I've been in the Civil Rights Museum
1:37
Speaker 1: in Memphis at the Lorraine Motel, and like I've thought,
1:40
Speaker 1: I knew a lot about this stuff, but until we
1:42
Speaker 1: do our job.
1:44
Speaker 3: Like we do, I learned a lot more. So it's
1:46
Speaker 3: pretty great.
1:47
Speaker 2: So let's talk MLKA because he kind of skyrocketed to
1:52
Speaker 2: prominence from just the start. He became involved in the
1:59
Speaker 2: Montgomery bus boycott, which most people say kicked off the
2:02
Speaker 2: Civil rights era in the United States thanks to Rosa Parks,
2:07
Speaker 2: who we did an episode on Rosa Parks Agent of Change.
2:10
Speaker 2: You remember, that's.
2:11
Speaker 3: Right, was gay?
2:12
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure, And all this is just you know,
2:14
Speaker 1: so we're setting the table kind of as a lead
2:17
Speaker 1: in to where things were in April of nineteen sixty eight. Yeah,
2:21
Speaker 1: so like you said, you know, twelve this year's earlier
2:25
Speaker 1: is when he really rose to prominence, and so much
2:28
Speaker 1: so that in February of fifty seven, he was on
2:32
Speaker 1: the cover of Time magazine.
2:34
Speaker 3: Yeah.
2:35
Speaker 1: So in nineteen sixty three he was Times Man of
2:38
Speaker 1: the Year after being on the cover just you know,
2:40
Speaker 1: a handful of years earlier. And in nineteen sixty four
2:43
Speaker 1: he won the Nobel Peace Prize. So he was one
2:45
Speaker 1: of the most famous Americans by the early nineteen sixties.
2:50
Speaker 2: Yes, But one of the things you don't learn about
2:54
Speaker 2: these days as often is that he was at that
2:57
Speaker 2: point beginning to become widely criticized, not just by white Americans,
3:04
Speaker 2: many of whom have been criticizing them all along, but
3:07
Speaker 2: by black Americans as well. There was a real division
3:12
Speaker 2: in the civil rights movement between Martin Luther King's vision
3:18
Speaker 2: of his doctrine of non violence, which is basically saying like, hey,
3:23
Speaker 2: we're going to essentially do everything we can to show
3:28
Speaker 2: white Americans the problems that black Americans face just by
3:34
Speaker 2: being black in America, and no matter what they do
3:37
Speaker 2: to us, we're not going to fight back, and we're
3:39
Speaker 2: going to make an example of ourselves that we'll hopefully
3:44
Speaker 2: set for them. And the ultimate goal was to integrate
3:48
Speaker 2: into America, to integrate black Americans into America, so that
3:52
Speaker 2: there wasn't Black America in white America, and that ran
3:56
Speaker 2: very much contrary to the other rival idea, which was
4:00
Speaker 2: Malcolm X's idea.
4:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we haven't done one on Malcolm X yet,
4:05
Speaker 1: so maybe we should. We should hit that up as
4:08
Speaker 1: a follow up at some points, for sure. But yes,
4:11
Speaker 1: this was, you know, sort of the other side of
4:13
Speaker 1: the coin. Malcolm X believed in black separatism. He was like,
4:17
Speaker 1: this non violent approach isn't isn't working, and black people
4:22
Speaker 1: cannot integrate into white America. It's a racist society and
4:27
Speaker 1: it's just not possible. So we need self determination. Violence,
4:33
Speaker 1: you know, by any means necessary, is an acceptable sort
4:36
Speaker 1: of avenue to achieve the goals of black determination, and
4:40
Speaker 1: especially considering violence is being inflicted upon black people by
4:46
Speaker 1: white people constantly, so it's time to fight back, like
4:49
Speaker 1: with fist and clubs and whatever else.
4:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again that's totally contrary to King's doctrine of
4:55
Speaker 2: non violence, which Malcolm X considered criminal, as he put it,
4:58
Speaker 2: in the face of just being beaten by whites just
5:01
Speaker 2: for marching in the streets peacefully. And a big portion
5:05
Speaker 2: of the people who are critical of King and his
5:07
Speaker 2: nonviolentce doctrine were the younger generations, they tended to lean
5:11
Speaker 2: more militantly, more in Malcolm X's direction, and then in
5:17
Speaker 2: White America. With white Americans, he was basically never popular
5:22
Speaker 2: during his lifetime, at least with the majority of white Americans.
5:26
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and we know this because you know,
5:28
Speaker 1: they did polls back then. There were Gallop Poles that
5:30
Speaker 1: found in nineteen sixty three through nineteen sixty six. Each
5:35
Speaker 1: year found that fewer that forty percent of white Americans
5:38
Speaker 1: viewed Martin Luther King Junior favorably. So one of the
5:43
Speaker 1: other things that didn't help, besides his work in the
5:46
Speaker 1: you know, and civil rights, was his stance.
5:49
Speaker 3: On Vietnam and the war in Vietnam.
5:51
Speaker 1: He was always against it, but really changed his stance
5:55
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty seven, started being really really vocal about
5:58
Speaker 1: it as far as publicly condemning the war, started leading
6:01
Speaker 1: anti war marches, giving speeches against the war. One very
6:06
Speaker 1: famous one was Beyond Vietnam Colon a Time to Break
6:10
Speaker 1: the Silence speech he gave in New York City at
6:12
Speaker 1: Riverside Church and April actually exactly one year April fourth,
6:17
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven before his murder. And it was a
6:20
Speaker 1: very controversial speech because it was his most adamant anti war,
6:25
Speaker 1: anti Vietnam speech yet, and he specifically called out America
6:30
Speaker 1: and the US military by sending a disproportionate number of
6:34
Speaker 1: you know, kind of poor black American boys to fight
6:37
Speaker 1: that war.
6:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so this was it's really hard to oversee
6:40
Speaker 2: how controversial this speech was. Like he just stopped mincing
6:43
Speaker 2: words and came out and said everything that needed to
6:46
Speaker 2: be said. And so his alliance with Lyndon Baine Johnson,
6:50
Speaker 2: who was president at the time, was just chattered. Right
6:53
Speaker 2: then LBJ stepped away from him, publicly broke with him.
6:58
Speaker 2: I think Laura helps out with this. She found one
7:01
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty eight newspapers issued editorials denouncing him for
7:06
Speaker 2: that speech. So that like he was already not super
7:10
Speaker 2: popular with white Americans, his popularity was so so with
7:15
Speaker 2: black Americans, and all Americans were now mad at him
7:20
Speaker 2: for his stance on Vietnam, or a ton of them were.
7:22
Speaker 2: And then one of the other things that really proved
7:26
Speaker 2: to be very difficult for him later in his life.
7:29
Speaker 2: Later in his career was he shifted focus from strictly
7:34
Speaker 2: civil rights for black Americans to economic justice for poor
7:39
Speaker 2: Americans of all races. He created something called the Poor
7:44
Speaker 2: People's Campaign. He came up with an economic bill of
7:47
Speaker 2: rights that is essentially pretty socialists, I mean at its core.
7:54
Speaker 2: And he also basically said, like, this campaign is also
7:57
Speaker 2: going to be a shift not just in focus, in potency,
8:02
Speaker 2: Like we're not going to be quite as peaceful as
8:05
Speaker 2: we were before. We're not going to go Malcolm X
8:08
Speaker 2: full on militant, but we're you can expect, you know,
8:12
Speaker 2: I think he famously said, fifteen to sixteen percent more militancy.
8:16
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, and you know this ship so he already had,
8:21
Speaker 1: you know, people coming at him from all sides, and
8:23
Speaker 1: now even within his own camp they didn't love it either.
8:27
Speaker 1: His advisors and his staff didn't love this change of direction.
8:31
Speaker 1: So you know, by the time April of nineteen sixty
8:34
Speaker 1: eight rolls around, he's exhausted, he's tired, he's got people
8:40
Speaker 1: coming at him from every angle, even within his own camp,
8:43
Speaker 1: and he just wasn't at his peak personally or with
8:46
Speaker 1: his career.
8:47
Speaker 2: Right. So, Chuck, do you want to take a break now?
8:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've set the stage with where King was and
8:54
Speaker 1: we'll come back and then set the stage with Memphis,
8:57
Speaker 1: and where Memphis was, well, it was in Tennessee, but
9:00
Speaker 1: how Memphis was in April nineteen sixty eight.
9:33
Speaker 2: So in the spring of nineteen sixty eight, Memphis, Tennessee,
9:36
Speaker 2: which had previously prided itself on its white community and
9:41
Speaker 2: black communities, kind of you know, fairly getting along, especially
9:44
Speaker 2: compared to some other places, like places in Alabama. It
9:49
Speaker 2: was by this time in high tension as a town,
9:54
Speaker 2: and it was largely because of the Memphis sanitation workers strike.
10:00
Speaker 2: Okay became very interested in helping further the goals of
10:03
Speaker 2: the Memphis sanitation workers in their strike because he basically
10:07
Speaker 2: saw this as like, this is a perfect bridge between
10:10
Speaker 2: this transition from a focus just on civil rights to
10:13
Speaker 2: this larger focus on poor people of all colors, because like,
10:19
Speaker 2: this was mostly almost exclusively black sanitation workers who were
10:24
Speaker 2: struggling for recognition of their work, dignity in their work,
10:30
Speaker 2: decent wages. Apparently if you were a full time sanitation
10:33
Speaker 2: worker in Memphis, you were still eligible for food stamps
10:37
Speaker 2: after your full salary. And he was like, this is
10:41
Speaker 2: this is exactly the perfect kind of thing that I'm
10:44
Speaker 2: trying to get across, Like this is important. So he
10:47
Speaker 2: kind of focused on Memphis in the spring of nineteen
10:50
Speaker 2: sixty eight, and like I said, it was in a
10:54
Speaker 2: state of high tension because a couple of protests, marches
10:58
Speaker 2: essentially to support the word workers had not really gone
11:02
Speaker 2: really well previously.
11:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, but before these marches there was you know, there's
11:07
Speaker 1: already a strike going on. It just wasn't you know,
11:09
Speaker 1: full throttle at this point. What would really kick that
11:12
Speaker 1: into gear were the very tragic deaths of two sanitation workers,
11:17
Speaker 1: Echo Cole and Robert Walker. They were crushed to death
11:21
Speaker 1: their truck malfunction. They were trying to take shelter from
11:23
Speaker 1: the rain and were crushed by the truck, and the
11:27
Speaker 1: city didn't pay any compensation to their families at all.
11:31
Speaker 1: So this is what really kind of triggered the mass
11:33
Speaker 1: walk off the job. Almost all the workers black sanitation
11:38
Speaker 1: workers went on strike at the time. And King was like,
11:42
Speaker 1: all right, I gotta get to Memphis. It's in trouble.
11:46
Speaker 1: It's an opportunity for me as well, like you said,
11:48
Speaker 1: to sort of help me segue into this other movement.
11:53
Speaker 1: And there were a couple of different marches. On March
11:55
Speaker 1: twenty eighth, he led a march of five thousand people
12:00
Speaker 1: through Memphis, and almost right away it turned violent, not
12:04
Speaker 1: by his hand, but it was a group called the Invaders.
12:07
Speaker 1: It was a militant group of young African Americans who
12:11
Speaker 1: were not on board with King. They were not on
12:14
Speaker 1: board with non violence obviously, and they started looting. They
12:17
Speaker 1: started breaking windows and stores. Police came in, and we
12:21
Speaker 1: all know the drill. At this point, people scatter, Police
12:26
Speaker 1: are beating people, shooting at people. That was a sixteen
12:29
Speaker 1: year old named Larry Payne that was shot and killed
12:31
Speaker 1: by a police officer named Leslie Dean Jones. Sixty people injured.
12:36
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, Memphis is under curfew
12:39
Speaker 1: and close to four thousand National guardsmen are brought in.
12:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this was on the heels of another march
12:46
Speaker 2: the month before in February where protesters, including some ministers
12:51
Speaker 2: who were marching were mazed by police. So Memphis just
12:55
Speaker 2: like basically almost like throwing a switch, went from like
12:58
Speaker 2: a generally o case city as far as race relations
13:02
Speaker 2: were concerned, to like the National Guard is now here
13:06
Speaker 2: keeping order in like a month. That just changed that quickly.
13:09
Speaker 2: And because he was leading the march on March twenty eighth,
13:16
Speaker 2: King became totally, I don't want to say obsessed, but
13:20
Speaker 2: he was fully zeroed in on returning to Memphis to
13:23
Speaker 2: set things right. Yeah, because that was a huge black
13:28
Speaker 2: eye in his against him his career and in particular
13:32
Speaker 2: his whole doctrine of nonviolence. And again, like the invaders
13:37
Speaker 2: were not related to what was going on, they essentially
13:40
Speaker 2: used this as a chance to mix things up, and
13:47
Speaker 2: King just basically wanted to go give it another try
13:49
Speaker 2: and hopefully restore his reputation, hopefully restore the reputation of
13:53
Speaker 2: the civil rights movement he was leading. And he put
13:56
Speaker 2: everything on the line to go back to Memphis and
14:01
Speaker 2: try it again because it could have gone wrong again
14:03
Speaker 2: and that would have really damaged things even further. A
14:07
Speaker 2: lot of his advisors were like, we don't need to
14:10
Speaker 2: go back to Memphis, Like we have a trip to
14:12
Speaker 2: Africa scheduled, and like, let's just follow through and we'll
14:15
Speaker 2: leave it behind us, and he was like, no, we
14:17
Speaker 2: have to go back. So we actually canceled that Africa
14:20
Speaker 2: trip and brought everyone back to Memphis and he got
14:23
Speaker 2: back there on April third, and that evening he gave
14:28
Speaker 2: what's been known today as is. I've been to the
14:31
Speaker 2: Mountaintop speech. Yeah, I believe it was his final speech.
14:35
Speaker 2: Gave it at the Mason Temple church in Memphis, and
14:39
Speaker 2: it was a pretty significant speech, as you can imagine.
14:42
Speaker 2: I mean, basically everyone's aware of this. But in it
14:46
Speaker 2: he recounts in a previous assassination attempt that I had
14:51
Speaker 2: never heard of, had.
14:52
Speaker 1: You, yeah, from visiting the museums. But it's certainly not
14:56
Speaker 1: something I don't think this like super widely known.
14:59
Speaker 2: Right. Well, So he was signing a book at a
15:01
Speaker 2: department store when he was stabbed in a chest by
15:05
Speaker 2: a mentally ill woman named Isola Curry. Stabbed in the
15:09
Speaker 2: chest but with a seven inch letter opener, and Isola
15:12
Speaker 2: Curry was convinced that civil rights organizations like mlk's were
15:17
Speaker 2: tracking her, had singled her out, and we're tracking her,
15:20
Speaker 2: preventing her from getting employment, just generally messing with her life.
15:25
Speaker 2: And the papers all reported that the surgeon who treated
15:28
Speaker 2: MLKA obviously here survived, was that the letter opener came
15:32
Speaker 2: so close to his heart that had he sneezed, it
15:35
Speaker 2: would have penetrated his aorda and killed him. So he
15:38
Speaker 2: really lucked out, and he talked about this, and I've
15:41
Speaker 2: been to the mountaintop speech. But the thing that most
15:44
Speaker 2: people remember about it is that he he in a
15:49
Speaker 2: way almost predicted his death the following day in the
15:53
Speaker 2: At the end of the.
15:53
Speaker 1: Speech, yeah, I mean, I'll go ahead and read it.
15:57
Speaker 1: He talked about not being around. He said anybody it
16:00
Speaker 1: would like to live along life. Longevity has its place,
16:03
Speaker 1: but I'm not concerned about that now.
16:05
Speaker 3: I just want to do God's will.
16:06
Speaker 1: And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain,
16:08
Speaker 1: and I've looked over and I've seen the Promised Land.
16:10
Speaker 1: I may not get there with you, but I want
16:13
Speaker 1: you to know tonight that we as a people will
16:15
Speaker 1: get to the Promised Land. So a definite sort of
16:19
Speaker 1: eerie thing to happen the night before his murder.
16:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I've read that some people are like he was.
16:25
Speaker 2: He felt like that death was close, that he didn't
16:27
Speaker 2: have much time left, So it makes sense that he
16:31
Speaker 2: would have put that in. I don't think he expected
16:33
Speaker 2: to be murdered the next day, but he just I
16:37
Speaker 2: read that he sensed that he was not going to
16:39
Speaker 2: live much longer.
16:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he had seen what happened with Kennedy
16:44
Speaker 1: obviously what happened with Robert Kennedy afterward. But yeah, it
16:48
Speaker 1: was those kind of things, you know, very sadly were
16:51
Speaker 1: we just much more common back then.
16:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was thinking about that, and just like living
16:56
Speaker 2: in an era of assassinations, like success full assassinations of
17:01
Speaker 2: prominent political figures, one of whom was the president at
17:04
Speaker 2: the time. That's just nuts that America went through that period.
17:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, I mean King Malcolm X, the two Kennedy's. Yeah,
17:13
Speaker 1: it's just a very fraught, fraught time in our history
17:17
Speaker 1: for sure. So he's back in town to hold a
17:20
Speaker 1: march to set the previous march right, and one of
17:22
Speaker 1: the things he had to do was get the invaders
17:25
Speaker 1: on board with not doing this again. So at the
17:28
Speaker 1: Lorraine Motel he was actually meeting with them. One of
17:32
Speaker 1: the things he did there was meet with them and
17:34
Speaker 1: negotiate a deal where like, hey, you guys, don't turn
17:37
Speaker 1: this thing violent. And they said, okay, we can do that.
17:40
Speaker 1: Give us some money, give us some cars, and give
17:43
Speaker 1: us a little more influence and we'll do that. So
17:46
Speaker 1: they were negotiating that. The march was actually planned for
17:50
Speaker 1: April fourth, and this is one of those sort of
17:53
Speaker 1: sliding doors things. It was actually put on hold because
17:57
Speaker 1: the city got an injunction to stop it from a
18:00
Speaker 1: federal court. And if that hadn't happened and he would
18:04
Speaker 1: have been marching on April fourth, perhaps James or Ray
18:08
Speaker 1: would have continued to sort of pursue King because as
18:11
Speaker 1: we'll see, he had been following him around for about
18:13
Speaker 1: a month or maybe not. Maybe maybe that assassination never happens.
18:18
Speaker 1: But because of that injunction, the march was delayed from
18:22
Speaker 1: April fourth.
18:23
Speaker 3: King stayed in town.
18:24
Speaker 1: To go to court to help appeal that injunction, was
18:28
Speaker 1: in court on April fourth through the day and then
18:32
Speaker 1: late that afternoon the judges said, all right, we can
18:34
Speaker 1: do this march.
18:35
Speaker 3: It'll be next Monday. And King.
18:40
Speaker 1: So late that afternoon the judges said, all right, the
18:43
Speaker 1: march can go forward, but it's going to go forward
18:45
Speaker 1: next Monday.
18:46
Speaker 2: So that day on April fourth, it was the evening.
18:51
Speaker 2: It turns out Bono got it wrong in that song Pride.
18:54
Speaker 3: Because he says early, you know they corrected it, did they? Yeah? They?
19:00
Speaker 1: I never listened to much of it, but they put
19:01
Speaker 1: out a reimaginings of a bunch of their songs called
19:05
Speaker 1: songs of Surrender. And like you said, it was early
19:08
Speaker 1: morning April fourth, shot rings out in the Memphis s
19:10
Speaker 1: Guy and the song Pride in the Name of Love,
19:13
Speaker 1: and he changed it to in the evening April fourth.
19:15
Speaker 2: Well, yes, that's much more accurate, because that's when it happened.
19:19
Speaker 2: King had just been grinding away in Memphis for two
19:22
Speaker 2: days by then, and he was staying in room three
19:25
Speaker 2: h six of the now very famous Lorraine Motel. That
19:29
Speaker 2: was the room that he usually took anytime he and
19:32
Speaker 2: his people were in Memphis. They stayed at the Lorraine
19:35
Speaker 2: Hotel because it was a black owned business and had
19:38
Speaker 2: been owned by Walter Bailey and his wife Laurie since
19:41
Speaker 2: the nineteen forties. It was listed in the Green Book
19:45
Speaker 2: even it was just a black owned business, and it
19:48
Speaker 2: was a nice hotel to stay in. And by the
19:50
Speaker 2: time the late afternoon early evening rolled around, MLK was
19:56
Speaker 2: late for a dinner at the Reverend Billy Kyle's house
20:00
Speaker 2: in Memphis, and they all started to leave to head
20:03
Speaker 2: to Billy Kyle's house for dinner, and he stepped outside
20:07
Speaker 2: of his room and onto the balcony and he was
20:09
Speaker 2: speaking down to some other members of his group. I
20:12
Speaker 2: think he told one of them to start the car
20:15
Speaker 2: and a shot did bring out and it hit MLK
20:19
Speaker 2: in the face.
20:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, sort of in the chin and jaw area and
20:25
Speaker 1: the neckline. There were there's that very famous photograph of
20:31
Speaker 1: the people, you know, his his group standing on the
20:34
Speaker 1: on the balcony off I think like three guys are
20:36
Speaker 1: pointing across Mulberry Street, which ran between the Lorraine Motel
20:41
Speaker 1: and the what was it, the Bessie What boarding house?
20:44
Speaker 2: Bessie Brewers boarding House.
20:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, Bessie Brewers boarding House, and they were like, that's
20:48
Speaker 1: where the shot came from. The picture was taken by
20:52
Speaker 1: a South African photographer named Joseph Lowe l o u
20:56
Speaker 1: W became one of the most famous, you know photographs
20:59
Speaker 1: in a American history, of course. And the gentleman kneeling
21:03
Speaker 1: attending to King, trying to do whatever he could, that
21:07
Speaker 1: was a guy named Meryll McCullough and he was an
21:12
Speaker 1: undercover cop who had infiltrated the invaders. So just by
21:19
Speaker 1: chance he was on hand as an undercover cop there
21:23
Speaker 1: and he's the one that's that's kneeling kind of trying
21:25
Speaker 1: to tend to King again. He was shot at six
21:29
Speaker 1: oh one, was alive even at the hospital, barely, but
21:35
Speaker 1: he died just.
21:36
Speaker 3: An hour later.
21:36
Speaker 1: He's pronounced dead at the age of thirty nine at
21:38
Speaker 1: seven five pm.
21:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a doctor named Jerry T. Francisco was the
21:47
Speaker 2: medical examiner at Shelby County at the time, and he
21:50
Speaker 2: conducted it an autopsy, and he concluded that Martin Luther
21:54
Speaker 2: King was killed by a gunshot wound to the chin
21:57
Speaker 2: and neck with a total transaction action of the lower
22:01
Speaker 2: cervical and upper thoracic spinal cord and other structures of
22:05
Speaker 2: the neck. I read somewhere that that Martin Luther King
22:11
Speaker 2: probably didn't even hear the shot that killed him. It
22:16
Speaker 2: just hit him so fast and was shot from a
22:19
Speaker 2: high powered rifle at you know, close enough by that
22:23
Speaker 2: like it would have he just wouldn't have heard it.
22:26
Speaker 2: And I was thinking it was possible that he died
22:29
Speaker 2: almost instantly. Had you read that he was still alive
22:33
Speaker 2: for a period like when he got to the hospital.
22:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was apparently just hanging on, you know, he
22:39
Speaker 1: was alive in the ambulance. He was alive, I think
22:42
Speaker 1: shortly after he got to the hospital.
22:44
Speaker 2: Well, hopefully he was completely unconscious at the time. So
22:48
Speaker 2: I mean, it's my hope that he just had he
22:51
Speaker 2: just never knew what hit him or anything hit him.
22:55
Speaker 2: I didn't, Yeah, I didn't realize that. Yeah. I thought
22:57
Speaker 2: he probably died instantly.
23:00
Speaker 3: Yeah.
23:00
Speaker 1: But when Francisco, that doctor, he you know, he described
23:02
Speaker 1: the gunshot wound, but he didn't fully dissect the path
23:06
Speaker 1: of the bullet.
23:07
Speaker 3: He didn't.
23:08
Speaker 1: He said he did that because he didn't want to
23:09
Speaker 1: deform the body any further. But that, of course, you know,
23:13
Speaker 1: would help out later with conspiracy theories as far as
23:18
Speaker 1: you know, not having a full accounting of the path
23:20
Speaker 1: of the bullet, which we'll get into all that, I
23:23
Speaker 1: believe in part two. Yeah, but right after the shooting,
23:27
Speaker 1: like literally the minutes right afterward, there were two men
23:30
Speaker 1: in that boarding house who saw a guy leaving with
23:34
Speaker 1: a suitcase and like a blanket bundled up that had
23:37
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff in it, big enough to where
23:39
Speaker 1: it could have held a rifle. And what happened was, well,
23:43
Speaker 1: there was another witness that said they saw a man
23:46
Speaker 1: passing I don't know how it's pronounced k k n
23:50
Speaker 1: i p e kN iper cannip.
23:53
Speaker 2: Caneps. That's what I'm going CAP's.
23:55
Speaker 1: Okaynie's Canep's Amusement Company, and just drop this bundle on
24:01
Speaker 1: the front door of the store. You can, you know,
24:03
Speaker 1: there's a picture of it if you if you look
24:04
Speaker 1: that up, and you can kind of see the rifle
24:07
Speaker 1: poking out even And that's what they found. They found
24:10
Speaker 1: some aftershave, they found portable radio, they found some brand
24:14
Speaker 1: new binoculars, a couple of cans of beer, and precisely
24:18
Speaker 1: a thirty out six Remington seven sixty game Master rifle
24:24
Speaker 1: with a scope, which is a hunting rifle. It's it's
24:27
Speaker 1: kind of a unique gun in that it's a it's
24:30
Speaker 1: a long range rifle that's a pump action rifle, which
24:33
Speaker 1: usually they are bolt action rifles.
24:35
Speaker 2: Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, that is fairly unique.
24:39
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's that's pretty specific. At the boarding house too.
24:44
Speaker 2: At Bessie Brewer's boarding house, people who are staying there
24:48
Speaker 2: later told police that they heard people, at least someone
24:51
Speaker 2: maybe going back and forth to the bathroom. This is
24:54
Speaker 2: a boarding house, so obviously there was a shared bathroom
24:57
Speaker 2: rather than a bathroom in each room, and so somebody
25:00
Speaker 2: kept going to the bathroom, hanging out in the bathroom,
25:03
Speaker 2: coming out of the bathroom, going back to the bathroom,
25:06
Speaker 2: and the cops who investigated found scuff marks in the bathtub,
25:12
Speaker 2: obviously left by somebody's shoes, And the bathtub was where
25:16
Speaker 2: you would have had to stood to see out the
25:19
Speaker 2: window to have a shot at Martin Luther King on
25:23
Speaker 2: the balcony. So the people in the boarding house heard
25:27
Speaker 2: mlk's assassin. The question was who it was, And obviously
25:32
Speaker 2: we know now it was James Earl Ray, but at
25:34
Speaker 2: the time they didn't realize that.
25:35
Speaker 1: Also, like two minutes later, the shooting had been radioed
25:38
Speaker 1: into the police, and just five minutes later, at six
25:41
Speaker 1: point eight, the owner of that amusement company told police
25:45
Speaker 1: that he saw a white man running through the alley
25:48
Speaker 1: and actually saw him drop that bundle and then flee
25:51
Speaker 1: the scene in a white Ford Mustang.
25:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll talk about the investigation and everything like that
25:57
Speaker 2: in part two, but I say we take our second break,
26:00
Speaker 2: come back and talk about what happened after MLK died.
26:35
Speaker 1: So, you know, very famously, Walter Cronkite came on the
26:40
Speaker 1: news and very somberly told the nation what had happened
26:43
Speaker 1: on the CBS Nightly News President Johnson declared the next day,
26:48
Speaker 1: April seventh, the National Day of Morning.
26:50
Speaker 3: Flags went to half staff.
26:52
Speaker 1: A lot of businesses around the country closed for the day,
26:56
Speaker 1: and he said, Johnson said on TV, the dream of
26:59
Speaker 1: doctor Martin Luther King, Junior has not died with him.
27:01
Speaker 1: Men who are white, men who are black, must and
27:04
Speaker 1: will now join together as never in the past, to
27:06
Speaker 1: let all the forces of divisiveness know that America should
27:09
Speaker 1: not be ruled by the bullet, but only by the
27:12
Speaker 1: ballot of free and of just men.
27:15
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, yeah, like you said, the National Day of
27:18
Speaker 2: Morning was April seventh, But throughout that whole period, from
27:22
Speaker 2: the day that his assassination took place to his funeral,
27:27
Speaker 2: there was a lot of places closed down.
27:29
Speaker 3: Yeah.
27:30
Speaker 2: And I saw Chuck that on the day of his funeral,
27:33
Speaker 2: the New York Stock Exchange closed, which is pretty significant.
27:36
Speaker 3: Yeah.
27:37
Speaker 2: The NBA and the NHL were in their playoffs and
27:40
Speaker 2: they rescheduled their games, but the Major League Baseball they
27:45
Speaker 2: did not postpone opening day, much to their discredit. But
27:50
Speaker 2: Roberto Clemente and Maury Willis as the Pirates, said, well,
27:53
Speaker 2: we're not playing today. It's Martin Luther King Junior's funeral.
27:57
Speaker 3: That's great.
27:57
Speaker 2: We're not going to disrespect it like that. And they
28:01
Speaker 2: inspired players on other teams to sit it out too,
28:04
Speaker 2: So from what I saw, effectively, opening Day was postponed
28:08
Speaker 2: for a number of teams, if not all, of MLB.
28:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, and hey, we did do a good episode on
28:13
Speaker 1: Roberto Clemente, remember that one.
28:15
Speaker 2: Yep, that was a good one.
28:17
Speaker 1: So all across the country, you know, people react with
28:24
Speaker 1: extreme upset, which led to violence and some rioting and
28:28
Speaker 1: uprising in like one hundred and twenty five cities over
28:32
Speaker 1: the course of a few days. Thirty nine people were killed,
28:35
Speaker 1: thirty five hundred people were injured, fifty thousand federal troops
28:41
Speaker 1: you know, dispatched all over the country basically except New
28:44
Speaker 1: York and Los Angeles. There were a couple of the
28:46
Speaker 1: only major cities that they managed to kind of talk
28:49
Speaker 1: people down. Atlanta too, Oh, Atlanta as well.
28:53
Speaker 3: That's great.
28:54
Speaker 1: So despite the fact that you know, black folks and
28:57
Speaker 1: a lot of white folks are mourning this death, it
29:01
Speaker 1: also sort of widened the rift because it became a
29:04
Speaker 1: symbol all of a sudden as white America's rejection of
29:09
Speaker 1: equal rights basically and white Americans rejection of non violence
29:15
Speaker 1: by literally dying by a bullet a nonviolent man. But
29:19
Speaker 1: there were you know, it wasn't just this. This is
29:21
Speaker 1: sort of the straw that broke the camels back with
29:24
Speaker 1: just sort of every the state of things in nineteen
29:27
Speaker 1: sixty eight with race relations.
29:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would call it more like a match thrown
29:31
Speaker 2: on a powder keg. The just the explosive reaction was,
29:37
Speaker 2: like you said, not just because of mlk's assassination, but
29:41
Speaker 2: that was the thing that set it off previously, the
29:44
Speaker 2: summer before it was called the long Hot Summer. Yeah,
29:47
Speaker 2: because there have been a ton of riots nationwide in
29:50
Speaker 2: cities like Detroit, there was five days of rioting. It
29:54
Speaker 2: just kept happening all over the place in black communities
29:59
Speaker 2: around the United State States. And there were reasons for this.
30:03
Speaker 2: There were like segregation had officially ended, but in practice
30:08
Speaker 2: there was tons of segregation left, especially kinds of like
30:11
Speaker 2: housing discrimination that essentially created black ghettos in downtown American
30:18
Speaker 2: cities that white Americans had left for the suburbs. And
30:22
Speaker 2: then they were starting to build highways through these cities,
30:25
Speaker 2: and it was tough to find employment, and the city
30:28
Speaker 2: itself didn't usually maintain stuff there. So it was crumbling
30:31
Speaker 2: and deteriorating. So there was a ton of frustration already,
30:35
Speaker 2: and there had been riots already, but there were a
30:37
Speaker 2: ton of them after MLK passed as well.
30:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, there was a legitimate fear that
30:46
Speaker 1: a race work could break out in the United States.
30:48
Speaker 1: It wasn't I don't think it was overstated looking back,
30:53
Speaker 1: that that was a very real thing that could have happened.
30:57
Speaker 1: And there were you know, there was one editorial writer
30:59
Speaker 1: who basically in the month after the assassination was like,
31:02
Speaker 1: King was the one that was preventing this from happening,
31:05
Speaker 1: So we may be in trouble here in the United States,
31:08
Speaker 1: like real trouble. Thankfully that didn't happen obviously, but like
31:13
Speaker 1: we said, a lot of these cities, you know, people
31:14
Speaker 1: were killed, arrested, buildings were burned. Wilmington, Delaware was occupied
31:19
Speaker 1: by the National Guard for a year afterward, and looking back,
31:23
Speaker 1: it's looked as basically it was just a harassment campaign
31:27
Speaker 1: that made things worse.
31:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, the mayor was like, Okay, you guys can leave
31:32
Speaker 2: pretty shortly after things calmed down, but the governor was like, no,
31:37
Speaker 2: we're going to stay. We're going to keep them here
31:40
Speaker 2: for a year. It was very odd. It was the
31:43
Speaker 2: longest occupation of any American city ever, which is I mean,
31:49
Speaker 2: you just don't think of Wilmington, Delaware, stuff like that
31:52
Speaker 2: happening to Wilmington, Delaware.
31:54
Speaker 3: Yeah.
31:55
Speaker 1: One of this sort of positive things that happened after this,
32:01
Speaker 1: and it's hard to even frame it like that. But
32:03
Speaker 1: Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King's widow, did finish the
32:07
Speaker 1: job in Memphis on April eighth. She did lead that
32:10
Speaker 1: march with her four small kids, along with forty thousand
32:14
Speaker 1: other people, in a silent march.
32:16
Speaker 3: And that was King.
32:17
Speaker 1: You know, Martin Luther King was so adamant about going
32:19
Speaker 1: back to Memphis and having a non violent march. So
32:23
Speaker 1: it was, you know, special that she was able to
32:25
Speaker 1: see that through.
32:26
Speaker 2: Yeah. And imagine seeing forty thousand people pass by you silently,
32:30
Speaker 2: how powerful that would be to see.
32:32
Speaker 3: Yeah.
32:33
Speaker 2: So the following day, after Coreta Scott King led the
32:38
Speaker 2: Memphis march that MLK had set out to lead, his
32:42
Speaker 2: funeral was held in Atlanta at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where
32:46
Speaker 2: he had been a preacher, and I think his father
32:50
Speaker 2: was the preacher there. At the time. Is that right.
32:53
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. It's like four miles from my house. Yeah,
32:56
Speaker 1: right in the middle of Atlanta.
32:57
Speaker 3: I don't know.
32:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say later, but that that whole
33:01
Speaker 2: area that's called the Sweet Auburn Community, Yeah, it's awesome.
33:05
Speaker 2: Is largely preserved like it was around King's death. Like
33:09
Speaker 2: they they you know, there's still new businesses and people
33:13
Speaker 2: move in and out, but they they've really gone to
33:16
Speaker 2: a lot of trouble to preserve like how it looked.
33:20
Speaker 2: The National Park Service is preserved it. And and like
33:23
Speaker 2: you said, you toured the King Center. That's an amazing
33:25
Speaker 2: place to to go as well. But I thought that
33:28
Speaker 2: was really cool that it's been designated a National Historic Site. Yeah,
33:32
Speaker 2: it's under protection.
33:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is always a little odd when you're driving
33:36
Speaker 1: through that area and you see a park ranger in
33:40
Speaker 1: the middle of the city.
33:40
Speaker 3: You're like, what's going on.
33:41
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, yeah, yeah, national Historic site.
33:45
Speaker 2: So yeah, you just assume they're lost.
33:48
Speaker 1: But the uh, that's the place that I always recommend
33:51
Speaker 1: when you know stuff, you should know. People right in
33:53
Speaker 1: or saying they're coming to Atlanta, that's again like.
33:55
Speaker 3: What what should they do?
33:56
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, the Carter Center and the King Center
33:58
Speaker 1: are both very close to each other, and that's just
34:00
Speaker 1: a really great afternoon to go in there. And there's
34:04
Speaker 1: a lot of really cool displays, including a very sort
34:08
Speaker 1: I think I've talked about it before, a very sort
34:10
Speaker 1: of chilling single thing at the King Center, which is
34:14
Speaker 1: just a lone case with the room three h six
34:19
Speaker 1: Lorraine Motel hotel key sitting in it, with nothing else
34:22
Speaker 1: around it.
34:22
Speaker 3: It's just sort of speaks for itself.
34:25
Speaker 2: That's better than what I always reply with. I just
34:28
Speaker 2: tell them that they should go to Applebee's.
34:32
Speaker 1: I'm glad you got a good joke in this one.
34:35
Speaker 2: God bless you, Thank you. So his funeral, I looked
34:39
Speaker 2: up a picture of it was his casket was carried
34:45
Speaker 2: on a cart by two mules, processing down one of
34:49
Speaker 2: the streets, probably Auburn Avenue. I didn't catch which street
34:53
Speaker 2: it was, but there were one hundred thousand people in
34:58
Speaker 2: this procession, including people lined up on either side of
35:02
Speaker 2: the street as it passed in a procession behind his casket.
35:07
Speaker 2: One hundred thousand people. And it's hard to get across
35:11
Speaker 2: what that looked like unless you see a photo of it.
35:14
Speaker 2: It just keeps going back and back and back and back,
35:18
Speaker 2: literally as far as you could see, as far as
35:20
Speaker 2: the photographer could capture, there's a stream of people filling
35:25
Speaker 2: the road entirely following his casket and a procession. And
35:29
Speaker 2: I was hardened to see when I zoomed in that, Like,
35:32
Speaker 2: it wasn't fifty to fifty, but it wasn't completely lopsided. Yeah,
35:36
Speaker 2: the number of white faces and black faces in the
35:40
Speaker 2: photograph all marching together morning MLK Like, yeah, for sure
35:45
Speaker 2: when it happened.
35:46
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, I mean especially in Atlanta, you know,
35:48
Speaker 1: a city with a racial history as well. Yeah, Benjamin
35:53
Speaker 1: Mays delivered the eulogy. He was the president of Morehouse University,
35:58
Speaker 1: and Morehouse have their own ceremony, I believe a day
36:02
Speaker 1: later on their campus, which, by the way, Martin Luther
36:05
Speaker 1: King Junior was a student at Morehouse at fifteen years old.
36:09
Speaker 1: So let that sink in for a second. And May's
36:13
Speaker 1: predicted in that eulogy that here's the quote that King
36:18
Speaker 1: would probably say that if death had to come, I'm
36:20
Speaker 1: sure there was no greater cause to die than to
36:23
Speaker 1: get a just wage.
36:24
Speaker 3: For garbage collectors.
36:25
Speaker 2: Yeah.
36:26
Speaker 3: Pretty powerful stuff.
36:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the Lorain Hotel has become the National Civil
36:34
Speaker 2: Rights Museum. But after King's assassination, Walter Bailey kept it
36:38
Speaker 2: open for years, but he never rented room three oh
36:41
Speaker 2: six again, and he didn't touch it. He left it
36:44
Speaker 2: exactly as it was when MLK, as MLK had left
36:48
Speaker 2: it when he was assassinated. But Walter Bailey's story was
36:53
Speaker 2: additionally sad. He was very proud hotel owner to have
36:57
Speaker 2: MLK stay every time he came in Memphis. So it
37:01
Speaker 2: was bad enough that Martin Luther King was assassinated at
37:05
Speaker 2: his hotel, but he also his wife, Laurie, who the
37:08
Speaker 2: motel was named after. She had a stroke in all
37:12
Speaker 2: of the commotion and the horrificness of what had happened
37:16
Speaker 2: right after MLK was assassinated, and she died five days later. Yeah,
37:22
Speaker 2: And so over the years, I'm sure after Walter Bailey passed,
37:26
Speaker 2: the motel started to fall into disrepair, and it finally
37:29
Speaker 2: closed in nineteen eighty eight, but it was purchased and
37:32
Speaker 2: refurbished and preserved and turned into the National Civil Rights Museum.
37:36
Speaker 2: Like I said, which is I've not been there, but
37:38
Speaker 2: it looks like a world class museum, and it looks
37:41
Speaker 2: amazing and they've preserved Room three h six just as
37:46
Speaker 2: King left it as well.
37:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a great museum. I can highly recommend
37:51
Speaker 1: Memphis as a whole for a weekend trip. I've spoken before.
37:54
Speaker 1: That's where my mom's family is from and grew up
37:57
Speaker 1: going to Memphis and went back a couple of years
37:59
Speaker 1: ago with Ruby, and it's just a great weekend you
38:02
Speaker 1: can go see that you can go to. You know,
38:04
Speaker 1: there's obviously all the Graceland and Sun Records and Stax
38:08
Speaker 1: records and Beale Street. It's just you can easily find
38:12
Speaker 1: like three days of great fun stuff to do in Memphis.
38:16
Speaker 2: Very nice. Yeah, Memphis where it's at.
38:20
Speaker 3: That's right. So that's it for part one.
38:22
Speaker 1: I guess we're going to skip listener mail, as we
38:25
Speaker 1: traditionally do on our two.
38:27
Speaker 2: Partners, right, yeah, I figured we would, so.
38:30
Speaker 1: Maybe just the traditional sign off that's you, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
38:33
Speaker 1: I don't do that, do I?
38:34
Speaker 2: No, you don't. Even though we're not going to read
38:37
Speaker 2: listener mail. If you want to send us a listener
38:39
Speaker 2: mail in the future, you can send it off to
38:41
Speaker 2: Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
38:48
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38:51
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38:55
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