One of America's most troubling historical chapters is the case of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who led the battle against racial segregation, was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.
The authorities remain convinced that his assassin was a career criminal named James Earl Ray. But the story was never that simple. For years, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI had treated King as an enemy of the state, with that alarm growing when King opposed the Vietnam War and called for a poor people's march on Washington.
Last December, after a civil trial brought by King's family, a 12-member jury challenged the conventional wisdom of a lone gunman. But the major media attacked the trial as bizarre and ridiculed the King family as conspiracy theorists.
A new investigative article at Consortiumnews.com reexamines that case and sorts through what the case may have contributed to the historical record. The article by Douglas Valentine can be found at http://www.consortiumnews.com