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00:26He had been on the road for weeks.
00:30Marches, meetings, threats, the constant press of reporters and movement business.
00:38The Nobel Peace Prize had pushed him into a spotlight even brighter than the one he
00:42already occupied.
00:46Yet on this quiet November evening in 1964, something unexpected waited for him at home.
00:54A small package, no return address.
00:58His wife, Coretta, was the one who discovered it sitting on the table, heavy enough to suggest
01:04something inside, light enough to feel wrong.
01:08She opened it before he ever saw it, a reel of tape and a letter.
01:15The language was unlike anything he'd ever received.
01:19Not from an enemy in the streets.
01:21Not from the segregationists who followed him from city to city.
01:25This was different.
01:27Clinical.
01:28Cold.
01:30Written by someone who knew his private life, his movements, his vulnerabilities.
01:37The author claimed to have recordings, intimate moments, taken without his knowledge.
01:42The letter insisted he was a fraud.
01:45And then the final line.
01:47A deadline.
01:48Thirty-four days.
01:51A demand that he take action.
01:55A demand that he end his own life.
02:01King stared at the page.
02:04Who could have sent it?
02:06He knew he was being watched.
02:07The movement had whispered for months that phones were tapped and hotel rooms wired.
02:13But this, this was something else.
02:17This was personal.
02:19This was a strike meant for his heart, his home, his family.
02:25He folded the letter once, twice, and in the silence of that room, he realized the truth.
02:32Whoever had written it didn't simply want to expose him.
02:35They wanted to break him.
02:40Only later would the authorship become clear.
02:43Not a fringe hate group.
02:45Not a lone extremist.
02:47But the most powerful law enforcement agency in the United States.
02:53The FBI had reached into the private life of America's most visible moral leader and urged
02:59him towards self-destruction.
03:02And the question that hangs over his legacy, and over American history itself, begins here.
03:08With a package on a kitchen table.
03:10And a letter meant to end Martin Luther King Jr.'s life before a bullet ever could.
03:26Noticing what was being done on the part of his black brothers and sisters in Africa gave him a new
03:32sense of dignity in the United States and a new sense of self-respect.
03:36The Negro came to feel that he was somebody.
03:41His religion revealed to him that God loves all of his children.
03:47And that all men are made in his image.
03:51And that the basic thing about a man is not his specificity but his fundamental.
04:03And so the Negro in America could now cry out unconsciously with the eloquent poet, fleecy locks and black complexion
04:12cannot forfeit nature's claim.
04:15Skin may differ but affection dwells in black and white the same.
04:22And were I so tall as to reach the pole or to grasp the ocean at a span, I must
04:29be measured by my soul.
04:31The mind is the standard of the man.
04:34And with this new sense of dignity and this new sense of self-respect, a new Negro came into being
04:40with a new determination to suffer, to struggle, to sacrifice and even to die if necessary in order to be
04:49free.
04:49And this reveals that we have come a long, long way.
04:57To understand the danger Martin Luther King Jr. was walking into, you have to understand the America he was fighting
05:04to change.
05:05The early 1960s were not simply a time of racial tension.
05:09They were a time in which the country was divided between two incompatible versions of itself.
05:18On one side stood millions who believed equality was long overdue.
05:23That segregation was an open wound.
05:26And that nonviolent resistance could force a nation built on democratic ideals to finally live up to them.
05:34On the other side stood those who believed the old order.
05:38White supremacy enforced by custom, law and violence was not just tradition, but survival.
05:47Across the South, segregation wasn't a social preference.
05:51It was a system engineered over decades.
05:55Reinforced by police, business owners, school boards, judges and governors.
06:01In states like Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia, racial hierarchy was woven into the streets themselves.
06:08Determining where people could eat, sleep, work, vote or even drink water.
06:15And when that order was threatened, the response was swift.
06:20Churches were bombed.
06:22Homes were burned.
06:23Marchers were beaten in broad daylight.
06:26The message was simple.
06:28Change would come only over someone's dead body.
06:31Into this stepped King, a wordsmith, strategic, unshakably committed to nonviolent protest.
06:40His approach didn't just challenge the system.
06:43It humiliated it.
06:44We feel also that one of the great glories of American democracy is that we have the right to protest
06:50for rights.
06:51We will do it in an ordinary fashion.
06:54This is a nonviolent protest.
06:56We are depending on moral and spiritual forces using the method of passive resistance.
07:02When marchers met police dogs with hymns.
07:06When they met tear gas with locked arms.
07:09When they faced down clubs without lifting a hand.
07:12The whole world saw the reality Southern officials tried to deny.
07:17And as the cameras rolled, something even more dangerous happened.
07:23Americans who had never joined a protest, who had never spoken about race at all, began to feel sympathy.
07:30And then outrage.
07:33King's influence grew because his message made sense to ordinary people.
07:38And for those who depended on segregation to maintain power, that was unacceptable.
07:44His rise meant their grip was slipping.
07:48But King wasn't only challenging the South.
07:51His vision threatened the North too.
07:54Banks.
07:55Business owners.
07:56Landlords.
07:57Unions.
07:58Political machines.
08:00Anyone who profited from unequal housing.
08:03Cheap black labor.
08:04Or the political suppression of black communities.
08:07Watched King's growing influence with unease.
08:10He was pointing at systems they preferred to keep invisible.
08:16Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 was the beginning.
08:19In the heart of the deep South, Montgomery's traditional pattern of segregation touched all forms of the city's life.
08:25The long frustration which this produced in its Negro citizens erupted when a colored seamstress riding in a bus refused
08:32to honor the traditions of segregated seating.
08:34From this incident grew a protest movement headed by Dr. King, then an obscure pastor of a Baptist church in
08:40Montgomery.
08:41The protest took the form of a boycott of the city's bus.
08:45For 381 days the Negroes of Montgomery walked or rode in special carpools.
08:50The half-filled and sometimes empty buses made the effect of the boycott felt.
08:55Animosities buried beneath years of social custom struck dangerous sparks in the tense atmosphere of Montgomery.
09:02But Dr. King, himself a victim of these same animosities, continued to inspire his people with his own philosophy of
09:08non-violence.
09:10I will not rest until we are able to make this kind of witness in this city so that the
09:19power structure downtown will have to say we can't stop this movement and the only way to deal with it
09:25is to give these people what we owe them and what their God-given rights and their constitutional rights demand.
09:37By 1963, King's movement had become national.
09:42Birmingham, the March on Washington, Selma, and then the moment that changed everything.
09:49The Civil Rights Act of 1964.
09:52Five hours after the House passes the measure, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is signed at the White House
09:59by President Johnson.
10:00Before an audience of legislators and civil rights leaders who have labored long and hard for passage of the bill,
10:06President Johnson calls for all Americans to back what he calls a turning point in history.
10:13We must not approach the observance and enforcement of this law in a vengeful spirit.
10:22Its purpose is not to punish.
10:25Its purpose is not to divide, but to end divisions, divisions which have lasted all too long.
10:34Its purpose is national, not regional.
10:38This Civil Rights Act is a challenge to all of us to go to work in our communities and our
10:44states, in our homes and in our hearts, to eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country.
10:56There's warm applause for members of both parties as the President sets to work.
11:00It is work.
11:01He uses nearly a hundred pens to affix his signature and date.
11:05Souvenirs go to Republican leader Everett Dirksen and Democrat-equipped Hubert Humphrey.
11:10The President seems to have mastered the art of just touching each pen to the paper.
11:16The integration leader Martin Luther King receives his pen, a gift he said he would cherish.
11:22The Department of Justice will enforce the law if necessary, and G-Man Chief J. Edgar Hoover is present.
11:28It wasn't just the law.
11:30It was a signal that the federal government, after decades of looking away, was beginning to heed King's demands.
11:39With every victory, his public profile soared.
11:43He was on the front pages of newspapers around the world.
11:46He was Time Magazine's Man of the Year.
11:49He was traveling constantly, organizing marches, negotiating with presidents, and pushing the cause beyond polite appeals and into the realm
11:59of moral crisis.
12:00I have felt all along that we are working and protesting under the aegis of the Constitution, and I feel
12:09that somewhere this conviction will be found unconstitutional.
12:13We will continue to protest in the same spirit of love and nonviolence and passive resistance.
12:22I might say that that is no bitterness on my part, and certainly no bitterness on the part of the
12:27more than 40,000 Negro citizens of Montgomery.
12:32We feel that we are right, and that we have a legitimate complaint, and also we feel that one of
12:40the great glories of America is the right to protest far right.
12:45Using peaceful methods, the Negroes of Montgomery won their battle, and with it, they won the admiration and support of
12:51millions of their countrymen, black and white alike.
12:56But with each step forward, the list of people who wanted him stopped grew longer.
13:03Some enemies were obvious.
13:06The Ku Klux Klan saw him as an existential threat.
13:10Hardline segregationists called him a communist, a destabilizer, a man who wanted to ruin America.
13:17Local police tracked him obsessively.
13:20Governors like George Wallace publicly condemned him.
13:24Insisting that King's movement was an attack on states' rights and southern identity.
13:29I'm very interested in talking about something that 87% of the American people oppose, and most governors say they
13:36oppose, and the president says he opposes, and it's hard for me to understand if everybody's against it, why do
13:43we have it?
13:44But some enemies were quieter, more professional, and far more dangerous.
13:51Within the federal government, the rise of the civil rights movement collided with Cold War paranoia.
13:58To J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI's director, everything in American life was a battlefield between communism and democracy.
14:08Movements, protests, and demands for systemic change were viewed not as expressions of citizenship, but as potential threats, even infiltrations.
14:21Hoover believed that the civil rights movement was being manipulated by communist agents seeking to destabilize the country from within.
14:30He convinced himself that Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister who preached nonviolence, was the centerpiece of that plot,
14:38and took it upon himself to stop it, by whatever means necessary.
14:52April 4th, 1968, early evening in Memphis.
14:58The Lorraine Motel sits quietly on Mulberry Street, its courtyard calm, almost ordinary.
15:05Martin Luther King Jr. is in the city to support striking sanitation workers who were protesting the lack of safety
15:12standards and their low pay.
15:14Oh, there's no doubt about the fact that violence is in the air.
15:18There's no doubt about the fact that there's more talk of violence these days and in years gone by.
15:25There are many reasons for this.
15:28When a nation runs wild, violently in the world, it creates a climate for violence within its own confines.
15:38And one must never overlook the fact that our nation is obsessed with the guns of war in Vietnam.
15:44And it has created a climate of violence, a climate of confusion, a climate of division, and even a climate
15:51of hatred.
15:52And I think we have to recognize this as we move on in the days ahead.
15:57Now, this does not mean that it is not possible to have a nonviolent demonstration.
16:03I think we have to see that it's more difficult at this time.
16:06Consequently, we have to take greater precautions, and we have to train people in a very disciplined manner over a
16:14longer period, maybe,
16:15to control elements that can become uncontrollable because of the nature of the situation.
16:23And that night, Martin Luther King Jr. gave his last speech.
16:27We have to begin to talk about the threats of what would happen to me from some of our sick
16:36white brothers.
16:38Well, I don't know what will happen now, but it really doesn't matter with me now because I've been to
16:45the mountain top.
16:47And I've seen the promised land.
16:52I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will
16:59get to the promised land.
17:01He is tired.
17:03He has been carrying the weight of marches, threats, and constant travel.
17:08But on this evening, for a moment, the tension seems to lift.
17:13King jokes with his friends.
17:15He teases Jesse Jackson about an untucked shirt.
17:18He asks musician Ben Branch to play his favorite hymn that night,
17:22Precious Lord, take my hand.
17:38Just after 6 p.m., King steps out onto the balcony of room 306.
17:45Below him, the movement's leaders gather to head to dinner.
17:49He leans over the railing, calling down to them.
17:55Then at 6.01 p.m., a single rifle shot cracks through the warm air.
18:02King falls backward instantly, struck in the jaw and neck.
18:06His friends rush to him, shouting his name, trying to stop the bleeding, pointing frantically toward the boarding house across
18:13the street where someone, something, moved just seconds before.
18:19Within an hour, at St. Joseph's Hospital, Martin Luther King Jr. is pronounced dead.
18:30And I said, Dr. King, Ben Branch.
18:33He said, yes, Ben.
18:34He said, I want you to sing that song for me tonight.
18:36I want you to do Precious Lord.
18:38I want you to do it real pretty for me.
18:40So Ben said, okay, Dr. King.
18:42And so I said, Doc, you ready to go?
18:44He said, yes, Jesse, let's get ready to go right now.
18:48I said, Dr. King.
18:50That was it.
18:51I said, Dr. King, just as he's straightening up, I said, Dr. King.
18:54And the bullet exploded in his face.
18:57And every then they came from this direction because he was standing at an acute angle.
19:04And the bullet knocked him off of his feet in that direction against that ledge over there.
19:10And we knocked him off of his feet.
19:13And we turned around immediately because we didn't know how many bullets were coming.
19:17But we turned around looking.
19:20And we were looking to see where it had come from because you couldn't tell it was a shot.
19:26You didn't see a shot?
19:27No, until it hit his face.
19:29It sounded like a stick of dynamite or a large firecracker.
19:33And when we turned, all we could see was police coming.
19:36Police were coming from the direction of the shot.
19:39They had been lined up along the streets.
19:43News spreads across the country like a shockwave.
19:47Streets fill with grief and anger.
19:51Millions more.
19:59Mrs. King, in this conference, will issue a statement.
20:07My husband often told the children that if a man had nothing that was worth dying for,
20:14then he was not fit to live.
20:18He said also that it's not how long you live, but how well you live.
20:27He knew that at any moment his physical life could be cut short.
20:33And we face this possibility squarely and honestly.
20:39My husband faced the possibility of death without bitterness or hatred.
20:45He knew that this was a sick society, totally infested with racism and violence, that questioned his integrity, maligned his
20:58motives and distorted his views which would ultimately lead to his death.
21:03And he struggled with every ounce of his energy to save that society from itself.
21:14It was a moment of pain and trauma, and yet it was an inevitable moment.
21:20In some sense, we had prepared for such a moment because we were clear that there had to be some
21:27suffering, that there had to be some crucifixion in order to get a resurrection in American society.
21:35Given the fact that our commitment was to stop the racial polarization, to stop the economic exploitation, and we were
21:43aware of the critical nature of the forces that were against us.
21:50And almost immediately, a single urgent question rises above the chaos.
21:57Who killed him?
21:59The official answer comes quickly.
22:01James Earl Ray, a petty criminal arrested two months later.
22:07Case closed.
22:11But to many who knew King, this never felt like the full story, not with the threats he'd been receiving.
22:18Not with the enemies he'd made.
22:21And not with the government agency that had been watching him, tracking him, and trying to break him for years
22:28before a bullet did.
22:31Yes, I have been threatened many, many times.
22:36There was a time that we received as many as 30 and 40 threatening calls a day.
22:43And, of course, I received numerous threatening letters.
22:48My secretary has come to the point now that she doesn't show me most of these letters, but occasionally I
22:55come across them.
22:57Within the last few days, I remember receiving a threatening letter.
23:02And they say such things as this, you are causing too much trouble in this town, and if you aren't
23:10out within 10 days, you and your family will be killed.
23:14Now, in Montgomery, our home was bombed twice, and I guess these were the most severe instances of violence that
23:25we confronted.
23:26But even today, we still confront threats through telephone calls and through the mail.
23:32Because the assassination didn't begin at 6.01 p.m.
23:38It began with the people who wanted Martin Luther King Jr. silenced.
23:49So what really happened?
23:52How was the civil rights leader known for nonviolence cut down on a balcony so violently?
23:59Well, long before the world heard the gunfire in Memphis, another kind of assault had already begun.
24:06Quiet, methodical, engineered with the most powerful investigative body in the United States.
24:13The Federal Bureau of Investigation, better known as the FBI.
24:20It started in the late 1950s, when King first emerged as a national figure during the Montgomery bus boycott.
24:28J. Edgar Hoover, already in his third decade as FBI director, was suspicious.
24:34To him, mass movements were not expressions of democracy.
24:38They were disruptions, signs of potential subversion.
24:43He zeroed in on Stanley Levison, one of King's closest advisors, who had passed ties to the Communist Party.
24:51For Hoover, that was enough.
24:54He had convinced himself that King was either being manipulated, influenced, or knowingly working with Communists.
25:00This belief, unsupported by evidence, became the justification for years of surveillance.
25:09Inside the Bureau, William Sullivan became the architect of the operation.
25:14But when his intelligence report finally arrived, five days before King's historic march on Washington, it concluded the opposite.
25:23No communist control.
25:26No infiltration.
25:27No plot.
25:29But for J. Edgar Hoover, the truth wasn't acceptable.
25:34He rejected Sullivan's findings outright.
25:36He wanted King tied to Communists, not because the evidence pointed there, but because it gave him the legal foundation
25:44to spy.
25:47So just days later, Sullivan produced a second report.
25:54One that contradicted his own conclusion.
25:59This new memo called King the most dangerous Negro in America, a phrase Hoover later underlined himself.
26:09The report insisted that King's advisors, especially Stanley Levison, were secret Communist assets.
26:16It didn't matter that the FBI's own investigation debunked this.
26:21In the Bureau's internal logic, the accusation was the justification.
26:27And with that single document, the door opened to a campaign of surveillance unlike anything directed at an American citizen
26:35who hadn't committed a crime.
26:37The Bureau now had what it needed.
26:40A pretext.
26:43COINTELPRO, the counterintelligence program, began the framework.
26:48Originally created to monitor Communists during the Cold War, it expanded to what the FBI called black nationalist or subversive
26:57groups.
26:59Under Hoover, the definition of threat grew so expansive that anyone advocating for racial justice could be targeted.
27:07And King became the biggest target of all.
27:12By 1963, the monitoring had escalated dramatically.
27:17Hoover authorized round-the-clock monitoring.
27:20Hotel wiretaps.
27:22Room bugs.
27:23Informants planted inside the SCLC.
27:26Every phone call was recorded.
27:29Every trip was tracked.
27:31Every private moment was potentially captured.
27:34The FBI didn't simply want to watch King.
27:37They wanted to discredit him.
27:39Destroy his reputation.
27:41Neutralize his influence.
27:43This wasn't surveillance for security.
27:46It was surveillance for sabotage.
27:52As months passed, the Bureau collected audio it claimed revealed moral failings, the kind of material they believed could ruin
28:00him.
28:02Internal summaries described King as engaging in sexual orgies involving both male and female participants, inebriation, and what they vaguely
28:13labeled depravity.
28:15They alleged encounters with white prostitutes, claiming King would drink heavily, become vulgar, even aggressive.
28:24All of this written by men who wanted him destroyed.
28:28All of this recorded without any way for King to defend himself.
28:32And all of it deliberately framed in sensational language meant not to report, but to smear.
28:39One internal memo, declassified decades later, described King's private behavior as a series of sordid affairs, adding that the surveillance
28:50tapes would destroy his image if released.
28:53Another summarized the night in Washington by saying King was running a call girl service, a claim no historian believes,
29:02but which the FBI used as ammunition.
29:05To the Bureau, these allegations were a weapon, not a discovery.
29:12Sullivan's operation shifted from gathering intelligence to constructing a case for character assassination.
29:19Their goal wasn't to expose communism anymore.
29:22It was to fracture King's leadership, his marriage, his movement, and his public credibility.
29:30By late 1964, the FBI had gathered everything it believed could damage Martin Luther King Jr.
29:37Hours of tapes, pages of transcripts, and a catalog of unverified allegations meant to portray him as immoral and unworthy.
29:46But surveillance alone wasn't enough for J. Edgar Hoover.
29:50He wanted King neutralized.
29:54He wanted him broken.
29:57So the Bureau escalated.
30:01The anonymous package that arrived at King's home looked harmless enough.
30:05No return address.
30:07No fingerprints to trace.
30:09And it wasn't Martin who opened it.
30:11It was his wife, Coretta Scott King.
30:16She found the parcel sitting quietly among the day's mail.
30:20Inside was a reel of tape and a typed letter.
30:24When Martin read the letter later that evening, its message landed like a blade.
30:31Accusations, threats, intimate details only a hidden microphone could capture.
30:37And then the final line.
30:4034 days to take your own life.
30:44It wasn't aimed at his politics.
30:46It was aimed at his marriage.
30:49His family.
30:50His spirit.
30:51But this letter was just the centerpiece of a broader strategy.
30:56The FBI began circulating portions of their recordings to selected journalists in Washington, hoping the press would destroy King for
31:04them.
31:05Most refused.
31:07They recognized what they were being handed was not a scoop.
31:11It was an attack.
31:13Still, Hoover was convinced the public revelation of King's private life would shatter the movement.
31:19He told aides that King was a notorious liar.
31:23He publicly called him the most dangerous Negro in America.
31:28And behind closed doors, his team drafted memos that openly strategized how to expose, neutralize, and discredit King before his
31:37influence grew even further.
31:40But the blow didn't land the way Hoover expected.
31:44King was shaken, yes.
31:46He was human.
31:47The package embarrassed him deeply.
31:50It caused tension in his marriage.
31:52Friction within his circle.
31:56Sleepless nights.
31:58He had always known he was being watched.
32:01Now he knew just how intimately.
32:10Yet, he refused to retreat.
32:15Instead, he pushed further into the struggle.
32:18He accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.
32:21He marched in Selma.
32:23He campaigned for voting rights.
32:26He began speaking out against poverty, inequality, and the Vietnam War.
32:31Subjects Hoover found even more threatening.
32:34The prophet must remind America of urgency of now.
32:39The oft-repeated cliches, the time is not right, Negroes are not culturally ready, are a stench in the nostrils
32:49of God.
32:51The time is always right to do what is right.
32:54Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.
32:59Now is the time to transform the bleak and desolate midnight of man's inhumanity to man into a glowing daybreak
33:08of freedom and justice.
33:09Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children.
33:17Now is the time to change the pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherly love.
33:25I do plan to stir up trouble in some of the big cities in our country this summer.
33:33But my stirring up trouble will be righteous trouble to bring about non-violent solutions.
33:42There is no doubt about the despair in the Negro community, and I don't think we deal with that despair
33:48by doing nothing.
33:50We've got to have outlets through which people can channelize their legitimate discontent.
33:57King once said, if a man has not discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
34:04It's a pleasure now to present the moral leader of our nation, one who has conducted a massive moral campaign
34:13in the southern area of the nation against the citadel of racism.
34:19Dr. Martin Luther King, J.R.
34:23Thank you, Mr. Randolph.
34:24Well, I would simply like to say that I think this has been one of the great days of America,
34:30and I think this march will go down as one of the greatest, if not the greatest demonstrations for freedom
34:40and human dignity ever held in the United States.
34:45The FBI tried to take his life with shame.
34:48He responded by expanding the scope of his mission, and with every step forward, Hoover's anger deepened.
34:58Inside FBI headquarters, the tone hardened.
35:02One memo from Sullivan stated bluntly, we must mark him now.
35:07Another declared, the time is now to take him off his pedestal.
35:12These weren't warnings.
35:14They were intentions.
35:16The Bureau attempted to sow division within the SCLC by leaking rumors.
35:21They encouraged rival leaders to distrust King.
35:25They sent threatening letters to other civil rights leaders, implying King was betraying them.
35:30They even attempted to sabotage his marriage, sending Coretta Scott King anonymous notes hinting at affairs, hoping the emotional fallout
35:39would weaken him at home.
35:40By 1967, the FBI had accumulated hundreds of hours of recordings, yet none of it damaged King publicly.
35:49The movement continued to grow.
35:52His influence widened.
35:53His voice carried further.
35:55And to Hoover, this made King more dangerous than ever.
36:00It's a fact now, and everybody knows it, that there are growing racial problems in Britain as a result of
36:07the large number of colored persons from the West Indies, from Pakistan and India, who are coming into the country.
36:15And it is my feeling that if Great Britain is not eternally vigilant, if England does not in a real
36:24sense go all out to deal with this problem now, it can mushroom and become as serious as the problem
36:31we face in some other nations.
36:32Robert Kennedy, when he was Attorney General, said that he could imagine the possibility of a Negro President of the
36:38United States within perhaps 40 years. Do you think this is at all realistic?
36:42Well, let me say first that I think it is necessary to make it clear that there are Negroes who
36:49are presently qualified to be President of the United States.
36:53There are many who are qualified in terms of integrity, in terms of vision, in terms of leadership ability.
37:00But we do know that there are certain problems and prejudices and mores in our society which make it difficult
37:07now.
37:08However, I am very optimistic about the future. Frankly, I have seen certain changes in the United States over the
37:16last two years that surprise me.
37:19I've seen levels of compliance with the Civil Rights Bill and changes that have been most surprising.
37:26So on the basis of this, I think we may be able to get a Negro president in less than
37:3240 years.
37:32I would think that this could come in 25 years or less.
37:37King's path took a new radical turn.
37:41He launched the Poor People's Campaign, his boldest challenge yet, aimed at dismantling economic injustice at its roots.
37:51He planned a mass demonstration in Washington, a protest that threatened to disrupt the nation's capital for weeks.
37:58To King, this was the next step in America's moral evolution.
38:03To the FBI, it was a threat to national stability.
38:12I have the pleasure to present to you, Dr. Martin Luther King, J.R.
38:34I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history
38:45as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
38:58Five score years ago, a great American in whose symbolic shadow we stand today signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
39:16This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared
39:27in the flames of withering injustice.
39:31It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
39:41But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.
39:52There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, when will you be satisfied?
40:00We can never be satisfied.
40:01We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.
40:08We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity
40:15by signs stating for whites only.
40:21No.
40:24No.
40:25No, we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like
40:33a mighty stream.
40:43He put us on the roof over bullet points.
40:51He got a dramatic piece of advice with快適.
40:56I have a dream.
40:57I dream that one day, even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice,
41:10sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
41:17I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not
41:27be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
41:31I have a dream today.
41:39And then came Memphis. King traveled to support the sanitation strike.
41:44Another battle for dignity that the Bureau dismissed as communist agitation.
41:50His presence attracted national attention once more.
41:53His speeches reignited the fire of hope in thousands of workers.
41:58The psychological campaign had failed to break him.
42:02The smears had failed to silence him.
42:06King had survived everything Hoover threw at him.
42:10But he could not escape the climate that campaign created.
42:13A climate that televised him as a threat.
42:17That dehumanized him in law enforcement circles.
42:20That emboldened extremists.
42:22That convinced parts of the government that Martin Luther King Jr. was a man who needed to be stopped.
42:30And so, as King walked onto the balcony of the Lorraine Motel on April 4th, 1968.
42:37He was not only a leader at the height of his moral power.
42:41He was a target standing in the crosshairs of multiple forces.
42:46Public, private and governmental.
42:50A man who had survived years of blackmail, psychological warfare, and surveillance.
42:58But who would not survive the bullet waiting on the other side of the street.
43:12Within hours of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, investigators focused on a rooming house across the street from the Lorraine
43:20Motel with a bathroom window facing King's balcony.
43:23A bundle of belongings were found nearby.
43:27Inside, a rifle, binoculars, a radio, and a map marked with King's route through the city.
43:35The items led police to a name, James Earl Ray.
43:40Ray was not a political operator.
43:43Not a trained sniper.
43:44Not a man with a known ideology.
43:46He was a career criminal.
43:48A prison escapee who had broken out of the Missouri State Penitentiary in 1967 by hiding in a bread truck.
43:56He'd spent the next year drifting across North America under aliases.
44:00Doing odd jobs.
44:02Taking survival level work.
44:04And avoiding attention.
44:06He was intelligent enough to stay on the move, but not sophisticated.
44:11Resourceful, but not disciplined.
44:13A man who lived life on the margins.
44:16Yet within days, the FBI declared him the sole assassin.
44:22The evidence was presented quickly.
44:25He had purchased a rifle identical to the murder weapon.
44:29Fingerprints linked him to the bundle of items found near the scene.
44:32And multiple witnesses recalled seeing a man resembling Ray fleeing the boarding house moments after the shot.
44:38Two months later, he was arrested at Heathrow Airport with a passport under the name Ramon Sneed.
44:47An alias stolen from a Canadian immigrant who had never left North America.
44:53News of Ray's arrest came first from the FBI chief Edgar Hoover in Washington.
44:58He said that Ray was carrying two Canadian passports and a fully loaded pistol when he landed at London from
45:04Lisbon.
45:05Ray was brought straight here from London Airport and immediately on arrival he was charged with having a forged passport
45:12and possessing firearm without a certificate.
45:14He would appear at Bow Street Magistrates Court on these charges on Monday morning.
45:19He's charged in the name of Raymond George Snade, which is the name in which he was travelling.
45:25I'm very pleased that Mr. Ray has been apprehended.
45:29Can you tell us the purpose of your visit here, sir?
45:32Well, the principal purpose is to be on the scene and try to expedite extradition, Mr. Ray, back to the
45:39United States.
45:40Will you hope for voluntary extradition or will you try to get an extradition order?
45:44Well, the easy way is always the best way.
45:47You think you'll get the easy way?
45:49Well, it remains to be seen.
45:51Facing overwhelming pressure and the threat of the death penalty, Ray pleaded guilty in March 1969 and he was sentenced
45:59to 99 years in prison.
46:02He never stood trial, he never faced cross-examination, and the public never saw the evidence tested in court.
46:11But only three days after the sentence, he recanted.
46:16For the rest of his life, James Earl Ray insisted he was a patsy, a fall guy.
46:22He claimed he had been manipulated by a mysterious figure he called Raoul,
46:27a man who allegedly directed him around the South in the months leading up to the assassination.
46:33Ray said he didn't fire the shot, that he wasn't even in the bathroom at the time, that he had
46:39been set up to take the blame.
46:42To many, Ray's claims were the desperate attempts of a guilty man seeking escape.
46:48But to others, civil rights leaders, lawyers, and eventually members of King's own family, the official story felt too simple,
46:57too quick, too convenient.
47:00A petty criminal with no history of racial hatred, no known political motive, no skill as a marksman,
47:08yet he somehow executed one of the most consequential assassinations in American history?
47:14That question, whether Ray acted alone or was part of something larger, became the fault line on which decades of
47:21doubt would rest.
47:25But then came 1999.
47:33A full generation after the assassination, the King family supported a civil lawsuit brought against a Memphis businessman, Lloyd Jowers,
47:42who claimed he had participated in a broader conspiracy to kill King involving local figures, organized crime, and government agencies.
47:53After weeks of testimony, under the civil standard of more likely than not, the jury returned a remarkable verdict.
48:02They found that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated as the result of a conspiracy and that James Earl Ray
48:09did not act alone.
48:12They also found that unknown government agencies were involved.
48:16Coretta Scott King called the verdict a validation of what we have believed all along.
48:22But it's important to understand what this verdict does and does not mean.
48:28It does mean a legally recognized jury believed Ray was not the sole assassin and that the official narrative is
48:36incomplete.
48:39However, it does not overturn his conviction, identify specific government officials, or prove criminal guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
48:49Still, it remains the only courtroom decision in American history to publicly examine the assassination,
48:56and it concluded, unequivocally, that James Earl Ray was not the lone killer the world had been told he was,
49:03and may not have been the killer at all.
49:11This is the fracture in the story, the opening through which countless doubts, questions, and theories flood.
49:20And it's the reason the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. refuses to stay closed.
49:36More than half a century has passed since the gunshot in Memphis.
49:40In that time, thousands of pages of FBI files on Martin Luther King Jr. have been released,
49:46including memos, surveillance summaries, transcripts of wiretaps, internal debates, and orders from Hoover himself.
49:56Together they expose a truth the government once denied.
50:01But even with all that disclosure, one part of the story is still sealed.
50:07The surveillance tapes, the recordings Hoover claimed would destroy King, remain locked away at the National Archives.
50:16But by court order, they are scheduled to be released in the very near future.
50:22We don't know what's on them.
50:24We don't know whether they contain proof of the allegations,
50:28or proof of how far the FBI was willing to go to fabricate a narrative.
50:34And that uncertainty is where the questions grow.
50:38What will those tapes reveal?
50:41Will they confirm a man with human flaws?
50:44Will they expose the depths of a government smear campaign?
50:48Or will they show something the public has never been prepared to confront?
50:55The truth is, the United States has a history of secrets.
51:00And some of those secrets have shaped entire generations of distrust.
51:07The assassination of John F. Kennedy, still shadowed by decades of classified documents and unanswered questions.
51:14The CIA's involvement in MKUltra, where citizens were used in mind-controlled experiments without consent.
51:21Covert operations in foreign nations.
51:24Iran in 1953.
51:27Or Chile in 1973, where the U.S. played a role in toppling governments behind the scenes.
51:34More recently, the sealed files surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, and the powerful individuals whose name remained redacted.
51:46Scandals, leaks, classified pages, redacted reports.
51:50Each one reinforcing a familiar pattern.
51:54When institutions have something to lose, information disappears.
52:00And so, the story of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death does not exist in isolation.
52:05It lives inside a wider American history.
52:09A history where official accounts are not always the complete accounts.
52:13And where public trust erodes every time the government chooses secrecy over transparency.
52:20But one fact stands above all the theories.
52:24Martin Luther King Jr. was seen as a threat by those in power.
52:28A man whose words could move nations.
52:31Whose presence could shift policy.
52:34And whose moral force challenged the deepest injustices in America.
52:39i
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