Chasing King's Killer: The Hunt for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Assassin

Born in Alton, Illinois, on March 10, 1928, James Earl Ray was average and unremarkable in all the ways King was extraordinary. Whereas King symbolized progress and the future, Ray signified the United States’ racist past. He was the eldest of eight children and grew up in a poor and troubled family. Ray did poorly in school and dropped out at 15, completing only 8th grade. At 18, he joined the army, but was discharged for bad behavior in 1948. Ray then turned to a life of crime. He served jail time for various robberies, and in 1959 he was sentenced to 20 years in the Missouri State Penitentiary. 

Ray was successful as a criminal largely because he was forgettable, “a kind of everyman with an average-looking face and a flat, unremarkable personality” (92). The authorities dedicated few resources to searching for him when he broke out of prison in 1967. For a year, Ray traveled around the United States, Mexico, and Canada, finally settling in Los Angeles, where he began to build a new life.

No one knows Ray’s motives for killing King. Like many white Americans, Ray held “the prejudices common to his time, class, and region” (90). He believed in white supremacy, read hate literature, and volunteered for segregationist George Wallace’s presidential campaign. However, none of Ray’s previous crimes were known to be racially-motivated, and he “stood on the sidelines” (90) when it came to opposing the civil rights movement. Ray was usually motivated by money: Swanson suggests that Ray assumed killing King would turn him into “a hero,” and he could use “his infamy” to make money.

Once behind bars, Ray tried to retract his confession, claiming “that he was only a pawn or puppet of the real killers” (229). However, there is no evidence that anyone worked with Ray to plan and execute King’s assassination. Ray died in prison on April 23, 1998, still claiming that he did not kill King.

John F. Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961-1963. King and Kennedy crossed paths in 1960 when Kennedy was the Democratic nominee for president. King was jailed after a protest, and Kennedy helped free him. He went on to win the presidential election by just over 100,000 votes, leading many to believe “that his concern for Dr. King helped win votes for his narrow victory” (46). However, Kennedy was “a reluctant civil rights warrior” (63). In 1963, he finally addressed the civil rights movement in response to international outrage following the publication of photos showing police attacking Black children with dogs and firehoses. 

Kennedy’s relationship with King was complex. However, he did invite King and other leaders to the White House following the March on Washington, and they began to work toward passing Civil Rights legislation. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, shocked the nation and “caused many people to lose confidence in [the American] government and institutions” (70). Watching the president’s funeral, King worried that the murder “foreshadowed his own fate” (61) and told his wife that he, too, expected to be assassinated.

Lyndon B. Johnson was president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He previously served as John F. Kennedy’s vice president and was sworn in after Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. Johnson was a Southerner, and many worried that he would not be sympathetic to the civil rights cause. However, President Johnson was very supportive: During the first year of Johnson’s presidency, he and King worked together to draft the civil rights Act prohibiting discrimination. Johnson invited King to the White House when the bill was signed into law in 1964.

Johnson and King’s relationship soured when King spoke out against the Vietnam War. Johnson saw King’s opposition as “a personal betrayal” (81), and their friendship never recovered. By March 1968, the Vietnam War had become so controversial that Johnson announced he would not seek reelection.

Ralph Abernathy was King’s close friend and partner in the civil rights movement for more than 10 years, and many thought he deserved some of the credit for King’s Nobel Peace Prize. Like King, Abernathy was also ordained as a Baptist minister.

When King was assassinated, Abernathy was the first to reach the fallen leader and held his friend while they waited for the ambulance. Once King’s death had been confirmed, Abernathy stepped up as a leader. Before officiating at King’s funeral, Abernathy led the march for the striking sanitation workers that King had been organizing when he died. He continued to devote his life to supporting the civil rights movement and furthering King’s legacy.

Coretta Scott King was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s wife and mother to their four children. King and Coretta met in 1952 when King was a doctorate student at Boston University’s School of Theology. She was an aspiring concert singer at the New England Conservatory of Music and charmed King with her “physical beauty and intellectual nature” (35). The two were married in 1953 and had their first child in 1955. Coretta had to “give up her dreams of travel and a glamorous career as a professional singer” in order to become “a preacher’s wife” and mother (35). However, Coretta always supported her husband and spent her life as a widow leading the civil rights movement and promoting King’s legacy.

Malcolm X was another important leader of the civil rights movement. He was assassinated in 1965. He was a Nation of Islam minister and an example of a Civil Rights leader who grew “impatient with Martin Luther King’s strategy of nonviolence” (70). Instead, Malcolm X wanted Black people to “adopt more aggressive tactics to defend themselves” (71) and avoid integrating into white society.

King and Malcolm X only met once in person, and Malcolm X does not feature prominently in Chasing King’s Killer. However, he is an important figure because he illustrates the varied opinions and approaches in the civil rights movement regarding Violence and Nonviolence in the Fight Against Injustice.

J. Edgar Hoover was the director of the FBI and “one of King’s harshest enemies” (181). Hoover suspected King of being “anti-American” and a communist; the FBI wiretapped King and kept him under surveillance. When King was assassinated, Hoover was put in charge of the case and had to put his personal feelings about King aside. He remained the director of the FBI until he died in 1972.

Robert F. Kennedy was the brother of President John F. Kennedy. During his time as attorney general of the United States, he authorized FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s wiretapping and surveillance of Martin Luther King. This was a controversial move that later tarnished his reputation. Late on the night of June 4, 1968, Kennedy was assassinated in California while he celebrated winning the state’s Democratic primary. The news came just two months after King had been shot and was “a staggering blow almost too great for the nation to bear” (220).