In Memphis April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, unelected but indisputable leader of what today we call the Civil Rights Movement. In Hellhound On His Trail: The Electrifying Account of the Largest Manhunt in American History (Anchor Books, 2010, 2011), Hampton Sides tells the pre and post-assassination story of the strange, smart but disturbed James Earl Ray aka Eric S. Galt aka Harvey Lowmeyer aka John Willard aka Ramon George Sneyd.
Sides writes a quite readable book, a kind of combination biography and historical novel. He digs deep on Ray: the man’s odd flophouse life, prison terms, and seeming creativity in finding ways to escape prison. Sides also uncovers Ray’s racism, a longtime part of his life but interestingly not often blatantly expressed—until he took one minute standing in a dirty bathroom tub to end the life of one the more gifted American orators of the 20th Century.
Conspiracy theories rage on to this day. Just google it and you’ll see. But Sides lays out the overwhelming amount of evidence that points to Ray and concludes without reservation that Ray acted alone.
I was in high school in April 1968. It was a challenging year for America, to say the least. A few months before MLK, Jr succumbed to a bullet, the Tet Offensive was launched in Viet Nam. In March, LBJ said he would not run for a second term as President. A few months after MLK, Jr died, Robert F. Kennedy, RFK, joined him when Sirhan Sirhan took his life in a California hotel June 6, 1968. In August, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago was marred by violent protest. The Counter Culture Movement had not yet reached its zenith. All of this is seared in my memory.
MLK, Jr, was a flawed leader, as Sides doesn’t hesitate to note, but MLK, Jr’s essential message from his most well-known speech continues to resonate: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
If it’s true that racism is not what it once was in the United States, it is also true that it yet exists. So books like this remind us we've yet got work to do.
This book is not “fun” to read because its topic is serious and sad, but I recommend it highly.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2012
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