The martyrdom of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

On April 4th, 1968, at approximately 6pm Central standard time, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered by assassin(s) at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tenn. The government version of the story is that Dr. King was murdered by an individual assassin named James Earl Ray. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) characterized Ray as a white supremacist who killed Dr. King to cease King's integration work. The FBI points to the alleged story that Ray was captured on his way to South Africa to seek refuge in that apartheid society.

The true facts about Dr. King's murder are quite contrary to the FBI's "official" version. First we must start by saying it is a typical FBI tactic to produce a story and continue to tell that story until it is accepted as the official version of events, although no real evidence is ever produced to substantiate that story. This was the FBI's tactic in the frame up of Marcus Garvey, the murder of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, the murder of Annie Mae Aquash and other American Indian Movement activists, and the accusation that Saudi citizens carried out the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington D.C.

The facts in the Dr. King case are that King had clearly moved beyond fighting for integration. His work in the movement had advanced his consciousness to the point where he understood that African people, other people of color, and poor white people, are oppressed in the U.S. because of the unequal and oppressive nature of the capitalist system. This consciousness was consistently born out in King's later speeches, including the landmark "Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam" speech he delivered on 4/4/67, exactly one year before he was murdered. In that speech, King articulately attacked the capitalist system as the cause of human suffering around the world. He proclaimed the necessity to redistribute wealth (read socialism) and he called the U.S. government "the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet Earth." It was speeches like this one that probably signed Dr. King's death warrant since his stature as a national and international leader for political/economic, and social justice certainly reasoned that people were listening to his passioned and scientific attacks against the system.

The FBI, as well as the Memphis police, have of course never been able to explain by the African police officers organization, which had volunteered to serve as Dr. King's private security during his time in Memphis, were forced to relinquish their station as Dr. King's security. They never explained why the African police association was removed and not replaced with any security as had been agreed upon. The police agencies also quickly denied the claims that a shooter was sighted in the bushy area behind the Lorraine Hotel by several witnesses, but the FBI and police have never explained why that bushy area was cleared, on orders by the Memphis police, the very next day after Dr. King's murder. A very unusual occurrence in any situation when charges are made about any area that clearly represented an evidence zone. Finally, the police never explained why they never interviewed any of the witnesses who saw the bush shooter or military personnel who were spying on Dr. King from an adjacent building.

Its a pretty clear picture that Dr. King was murdered by the U.S. government by way of the military in an effort to eliminate his leadership in the movement for social justice in the U.S. In the U.S. military warped sense of right versus wrong, Dr. King was no doubt viewed as a threat to U.S. security because of his calls, and the active audience he commanded, in changing the essential structure of the U.S. capitalist system.

Dr. King was murdered because he stood up for justice and his martyrdom should serve as a message to all of us not to be easily bought in the horse and pony show that is displayed every third week in January. Dr. King is not a person who is celebrated by the U.S. government. Were he alive today, he wouldn't be impressed with the tokenism represented by the election of Obama. He would point our attention to the mass suffering still being experienced as policy by the masses of poor and working people in the U.S. and by the majority of people around the world due to the policies of the capitalist/imperialist network. For that reason, we have to honor Dr. King properly by going beyond the rhetoric and speaking truth to power about the necessity to continue Dr. Kings call for fundamental changes to capitalist exploitation once and for all.