![]() ![]() He was a small-time criminal who was already on the run after escaping from a notorious Missouri prison in a bread truck. None of this stopped a man who went by the name of Eric Stavro Galt and is known to history as James Earl Ray. ![]() The leaders of his movement were divided and King’s critics were swooping in to glory in his decline. ![]() King was not at the height of his powers in the spring of 1968. The book is a window on the passions and contradictions of an era – the hatred stirred by the civil rights movements, the battle lines within a single presidential administration, and a martyr who died just as his own flame seemed to be flickering amid dissension and disappointment.Ĭontrary to what we may remember, the Rev. The other was a weird and pathetic racist.īut as the remarkable new history Hellhound on His Trail shows, we can learn plenty by spending a few weeks in 1968 with Martin Luther King Jr., the man who shot him to death, and the investigators who tried to find a surprisingly savvy assassin. One was a hero, whose life has been chronicled again and again. More than four decades later, you might assume that there’s little more to say about either of these men. One had a rifle, and one did not, and that made all the difference. For a moment, there were just two men in Memphis. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |