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

After the triumph of the March on Washington, things took a turn for the worse. The Ku Klux Klan bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, and four young girls were killed. Then, just two months later, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. When King saw the news, he worried that the same fate awaited him.

Lyndon Baines Johnson, JFK’s vice president, was sworn in, and many people worried that he would not be sympathetic to the civil rights movement. However, whereas President Kennedy was “a reluctant civil rights warrior,” President Johnson became King’s “great political partner” (63) and made passing a Civil Rights bill his priority.

Throughout 1964, Johnson and King worked together to draft the civil rights Act, which “prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and voting” (65). It was a historic occasion when the Act was signed into law on July 2, 1964. Nevertheless, Johnson and King were committed to doing more. Meanwhile, white segregationists reacted violently, killing more high-profile figures in the civil rights movement.

In October 1964, King learned he would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, disliked King’s challenges to authority and suspected that communists had influenced him during the Cold War. The head of domestic intelligence, William Sullivan, wrote an anonymous letter to King along with recordings the FBI made of King’s correspondence, accusing him of “moral failings” and threatening to expose this information if King did not die by suicide before the Nobel Prize ceremony.

King wasn’t fooled by the letter and refused to be intimidated. On December 10, 1964, he became the youngest person ever to receive a Nobel Peace Prize, and this recognition brought him worldwide fame.

By 1965, Swanson suggests that “a climate of racial and political violence had become part and parcel of American public life” (70). Violence from white segregationists was commonplace, and President Kennedy’s assassination had shaken many people. Some people within the civil rights movement began to lose patience with King’s nonviolent methods. One such person was Malcolm X, a Nation of Islam minister who thought that Black people should “adopt more aggressive tactics to defend themselves” (71) and avoid integrating into white society.

Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965. Murdered by Black men who followed another leader in the Nation of Islam, his death reinforced the idea that political disagreements should be settled with violence. It was “an ill omen” that illustrated the danger of being “a black leader in America” (72).

Violence continued the following weeks. To gather support for the Voting Rights Act, King organized a protest where demonstrators would walk 50 miles from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. While marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the protesters were attacked by state troopers wielding clubs and tear gas, resulting in an event now referred to as Bloody Sunday. The march made a second attempt a few weeks later, escorted by National Guard troops, and successfully arrived in Montgomery, where King gave an energetic speech. However, this success was also marked by violence when a white civil rights volunteer was murdered later that night.

On August 6, 1965, the Voting Rights Act was passed, ensuring that Black people would not be prevented from exercising their right to vote. Nevertheless, frustration in Black communities was at an all-time high. These tensions boiled over in events like five days of rioting in Los Angeles, in which 34 people died.

In 1966, King brought the civil rights movement north to Chicago. Although it was a northern city, Chicago was extremely segregated, with Black and white people living in different parts of the city. King hoped to change this, but he was met with “vicious hatred” that rivaled the South. Even Black people in Chicago were often against King, believing he was “an outside agitator ignorant of their ways” (75). King was “shocked and depressed” by this reception.

By the mid-1960s, Swanson points out that the civil rights movement was changing. King was nearly 40 years old, and a new generation of younger leaders were calling “for a more radical response to white racism and violence” (76). Some even argued that nonviolence was “a kind of appeasement or surrender” (76) and called on Black people to fight back. The Black Power movement and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense were born, advocating for Black people to defend themselves with violence if necessary.

Although he was still a key figure, King “began privately to experience self-doubt” (78). After being the leader of the civil rights movement for more than 10 years, he started to wonder if it was “all too much […] for one man to bear” (78).

By 1967, more than 10,000 American soldiers had been killed fighting communism in Vietnam. King split the civil rights movement by declaring himself against the war. In one of the most famous speeches of his career, King called for the civil rights movement to become a “fight for social justice for people of all races, for economic equality, and for world peace” (81). He said that the United States must end the war in Vietnam.

King’s speech was unpopular with many people. Black leaders in the civil rights movement worried that there was still much work to be done in the United States, and argued that calling for global social justice was a distraction to obtaining equal rights for Black Americans. Others thought that King’s antiwar statement was “unpatriotic.” Furthermore, King’s stance offended his friend and ally President Johnson.

Despite the criticism, King stuck with his antiwar message, and slowly, he “began to change the tone of the debate” (82). He argued that the Vietnam War itself had caused division and distraction, not his antiwar stance. However, King remained “on dangerous ground,” close to undermining “his reputation and credibility as a leader, and […] the progress of the whole civil rights movement” (82).