Martin Luther King Jr. was an American Baptist minister, activist, and political philosopher who was one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. King advanced civil rights for people of color in the United States through the use of nonviolent resistance and nonviolent civil disobedience against Jim Crow laws and other forms of legalized discrimination.
King: A Filmed Record... Montgomery to Memphis is a 1970 American documentary film biography of Martin Luther King Jr. and his creation and leadership of the nonviolent campaign for civil rights and social and economic justice in the Civil Rights Movement.
Loyd Jowers was an American restaurateur and the owner of Jim's Grill, a restaurant near the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. For the first 25 years after the assassination of King, Jowers testified that he was in the restaurant at the time of the assassination, a fact supported by the other witnesses in the restaurant.
Dexter Scott King was an American civil and animal rights activist and author. The second son of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, he was also the brother of Martin Luther King III, Bernice King, and Yolanda King; and also grandson of Martin Luther King Sr. and Alberta Williams King. He is the author of Growing Up King: An Intimate Memoir.
Gerald Leo Posner is an American investigative journalist and author of thirteen books, including Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (1993), which explores the John F. Kennedy assassination, and Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1998), about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. A plagiarism scandal involving articles that Posner wrote for The Daily Beast and his book Miami Babylon arose in 2010.
The National Civil Rights Museum is a complex of museums and historic buildings in Memphis, Tennessee; its exhibits trace the history of the civil rights movement in the United States from the 17th century to the present. The museum is built around the former Lorraine Motel, which was the site of the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Two other buildings and their adjacent property, also connected with the King assassination, have been acquired as part of the museum complex.
Alberta Christine Williams King was an American civil rights organizer best known as the wife of Martin Luther King Sr.; and as the mother of Martin Luther King Jr., and also as the grandmother of Martin Luther King III. She was the choir director of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. She was shot and killed in the church by 23-year-old Marcus Wayne Chenault six years after the assassination of her eldest son Martin Luther King Jr.
Wade Hampton Sides is an American historian, author and journalist. He is the author of Hellhound on His Trail,Ghost Soldiers,Blood and Thunder, On Desperate Ground, and other bestselling works of narrative history and literary non-fiction.
William Francis Pepper was an American lawyer who was based in New York City and noted for his efforts to prove government culpability and the innocence of James Earl Ray in the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.. Pepper also tried to prove the innocence of Sirhan Sirhan in the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. He was the author of several books, and had been active in other government conspiracy cases, including the 9/11 Truth movement, and had advocated that George W. Bush be charged with war crimes.
"Hellhound on My Trail" is a blues song recorded by Mississippi Delta bluesman Robert Johnson in June 1937 and released as a 78 rpm single on Vocalion Records that September. It was inspired by earlier blues songs and blues historian Ted Gioia describes it as one of Johnson's "best known and most admired performances—many would say it is his greatest".
Willie Christine King Farris was an American teacher and civil rights activist. King was the sister of Martin Luther King Jr. She taught at Spelman College and was the author of several books and was a public speaker on various topics, including the King family, multicultural education, and teaching.
James Earl Ray was an American fugitive who was convicted of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. After the assassination, Ray fled to London, England and was captured in the United Kingdom. Ray was convicted in 1969 after entering a guilty plea—thus forgoing a jury trial and the possibility of a death sentence—and was sentenced to 99 years of imprisonment.
Martin Luther King Jr., an American civil rights activist, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. CST. He was rushed to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died at 7:05 p.m at age 39. He was a prominent leader of the civil rights movement and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was known for his use of nonviolence and civil disobedience. James Earl Ray, a fugitive from the Missouri State Penitentiary, was arrested on June 8, 1968, at London's Heathrow Airport, extradited to the United States and charged with the crime. On March 10, 1969, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in the Tennessee State Penitentiary. He later made many attempts to withdraw his guilty plea and to be tried by a jury, but was unsuccessful. Ray died in prison in 1998.
The Mountaintop is a play by American playwright Katori Hall. It is a fictional depiction of Martin Luther King Jr.'s last night on earth set entirely in Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel on the eve of his assassination in 1968.
John Karl Kershaw was an American attorney best known for challenging the official account of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, claiming that his client James Earl Ray was an unwitting participant in a ploy devised by a mystery man named Raul to kill the civil rights leader.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Records Collection Act, or MLK Records Act, is proposed legislation that would release United States government records pertaining to the life and death of Martin Luther King Jr. Versions of the law have been proposed on multiple occasions, and a complete version was brought to both chambers of the United States Congress in 2005–2006.
R.S. Lewis & Sons Funeral Home has operated continuously in downtown Memphis, Tennessee since 1914.
And the Walls Came Tumbling Down is a 1989 autobiography written by civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy. The book charts his life and work with his best friend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in their leadership of the Civil Rights Movement to help African Americans obtain equal rights with white Americans. His book engendered much controversy due to Abernathy's allegations of King's infidelity the night before he was assassinated.
Conspiracy theories about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., a prominent leader of the civil rights movement, relate to different accounts of the incident that took place on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. King was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, the day after giving his final speech "I've Been to the Mountaintop". Claims soon arose over suspect aspects of King's assassination and the controversial role of the assassin, James Earl Ray. Although his guilty plea eliminated the possibility of a trial before a jury, within days, Ray had recanted and claimed his confession was forced. Suspicions were further raised by the confirmation of illegal surveillance of King by the FBI and the CIA, and the FBI's attempt to allegedly prompt King to commit suicide.
The Loyd Jowers trial, known as King family v. Jowers and other unknown co-conspirators, was an American wrongful death lawsuit brought to trial by the family of Martin Luther King Jr. against Loyd Jowers. The family filed the lawsuit after Jowers admitted in an interview on PrimeTime Live that he had been part of a conspiracy to assassinate the civil rights leader in 1968. The trial occurred in late 1999. The jury unanimously agreed that there was a conspiracy perpetrated by Jowers and other parties, including various government agencies, to murder King and frame James Earl Ray as a patsy.
