The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I

Summary

Podcast Summary: "The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I" Stuff You Should Know Host/Authors: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant
Release Date: March 25, 2025

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Introduction

In this two-part episode of "Stuff You Should Know," hosts Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant delve deep into the complex circumstances surrounding the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. Part I sets the stage by exploring King's rise to prominence, the internal and external challenges he faced, his evolving activism, and the events leading up to his tragic death.

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Martin Luther King Jr.'s Rise to Prominence

Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant begin by tracing King's ascent within the civil rights movement. From his pivotal role in the Montgomery Bus Boycott to his recognition as Time Magazine's Man of the Year in 1963 and winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, King became one of America's most revered figures.

Josh Clark [03:12]: "He was one of the most famous Americans by the early 1960s."

However, King's growing influence also attracted criticism from various quarters, both within the African American community and from white Americans.

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Internal and External Criticisms

While King championed nonviolence and integration, his approach was not universally accepted. Chuck Bryant highlights the tension between King's methods and those advocated by other civil rights leaders.

Chuck Bryant [05:10]: "Malcolm X believed in black separatism. He was like, this nonviolent approach isn't working."

Josh Clark emphasizes that King faced backlash not only from white Americans who were resistant to desegregation but also from black Americans who questioned the efficacy of nonviolent protest.

Josh Clark [05:03]: "There was a real division in the civil rights movement between Martin Luther King's vision of his doctrine of nonviolence... and Malcolm X's idea."

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King's Anti-Vietnam War Stance

In the mid-1960s, King began to vocally oppose the Vietnam War, a stance that further complicated his public image and strained his alliances.

Josh Clark [06:27]: "He was always against it, but really changed his stance in 1967."

King's "Beyond Vietnam" speech in April 1967 marked a significant shift in his activism, linking civil rights with economic justice and broadening his advocacy to address poverty and systemic inequality.

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Shift to Economic Justice: The Poor People's Campaign

Expanding his focus beyond racial segregation, King initiated the Poor People's Campaign, aiming to address economic disparities affecting Americans of all races. This move was both a strategic broadening of the civil rights agenda and a source of friction with his advisors and supporters.

Josh Clark [07:39]: "He created something called the Poor People's Campaign... it’s essentially pretty socialist at its core."

This pivot towards economic issues signaled King's recognition of the interconnectedness of race and class struggles but also exposed him to increased criticism and challenges within his movement.

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The Memphis Sanitation Workers' Strike

By 1968, Memphis, Tennessee, was embroiled in a sanitation workers' strike. King saw this as a prime opportunity to further his economic justice agenda. The strike highlighted the dire working conditions and systemic injustices faced by black sanitation workers, many of whom struggled with wages insufficient to sustain their families.

Josh Clark [14:20]: "There was a couple of different marches... King had to get the invaders on board with not doing this again."

King's involvement in Memphis exemplified his commitment to addressing both racial and economic injustices but also set the stage for heightened tensions in the city.

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Events Leading Up to the Assassination

The tension in Memphis escalated with violent Marches and increasing hostility. On March 28, 1968, King led a march of 5,000 people through Memphis, which quickly turned violent due to the actions of a militant group known as the Invaders.

Chuck Bryant [15:57]: "A group called the Invaders... started looting. Police came in and... there was a 16-year-old named Larry Payne that was shot and killed."

The city responded by imposing a curfew and deploying nearly 4,000 National Guardsmen to maintain order. Despite these efforts, the situation remained volatile, compelling King to remain in Memphis to support the sanitation workers and navigate the complex dynamics of the protests.

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"I've Been to the Mountaintop" Speech and the Assassination Attempt

On April 3, 1968, King delivered his famous "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech at the Mason Temple Church in Memphis. The speech is particularly poignant as it reflects King's awareness of his mortality and foreshadows his untimely death.

Chuck Bryant [19:10]: "He talked about not being around. He said... I just want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land."

Ironically, just a day later, King was assassinated. The evening before his death, during a dinner at Reverend Billy Kyle's house, King was struck by a bullet while speaking on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.

Josh Clark [22:31]: "King had just been grinding away in Memphis for two days by then and he was staying in room 306 of the Lorraine Motel."

The assassination scene was captured in the famous photograph by South African photographer Joseph Lau, depicting King's group and the fatal moment.

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Details of the Assassination

King was shot in the chin and neck area, a wound so severe it was speculated that a mere sneeze could have been fatal. Despite initial survival, King succumbed to his injuries an hour later at the age of 39.

Josh Clark [25:00]: "He just wouldn't have heard it. And I was thinking it was possible that he died almost instantly."

The investigation revealed the presence of a .30-06 Remington 760 Game Master Rifle, a weapon not commonly used, which added layers of complexity to the ensuing investigation.

Chuck Bryant [27:10]: "...they found a .30-06 Remington 760 Game Master Rifle with a scope..."

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Aftermath and National Response

King's assassination sparked widespread mourning and violence across the United States. President Johnson declared April 7 a National Day of Mourning, urging unity and peaceful advocacy over violence.

Josh Clark [33:24]: "Johnson said... the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has not died with him."

However, the nation saw riots in over 125 cities, leading to 39 deaths and thousands of injuries. The federal government deployed 50,000 federal troops to quell the unrest, highlighting the deep-seated racial tensions that King sought to address throughout his life.

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King's Funeral

King's funeral was a monumental event, with his widow, Coretta Scott King, leading a silent march of 40,000 people in Memphis. The funeral procession in Atlanta was witnessed by approximately 100,000 people, symbolizing a unified mourning across racial lines.

Josh Clark [40:04]: "...a hundred thousand people in this procession, not including people lined up on either side of the street..."

The funeral was held at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, a place deeply connected to King's life and legacy.

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Legacy and Preservation

The Lorraine Motel, where King was assassinated, was preserved as the National Civil Rights Museum, ensuring that King's legacy and the lessons of the civil rights movement remain accessible to future generations.

Chuck Bryant [40:34]: "And we have it preserved with room 306 just as King left it as well."

The museum serves as a poignant reminder of the struggles and triumphs of the civil rights era, honoring King's enduring impact on American society.

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Conclusion

Part I of "The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr." provides a comprehensive overview of the factors leading up to King's death, emphasizing his unwavering commitment to justice and equality amidst mounting opposition. The episode sets the foundation for Part II, which promises to delve into the investigations and conspiracy theories that followed his assassination.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Josh Clark [03:12]: "He was one of the most famous Americans by the early 1960s."
• Chuck Bryant [05:10]: "Malcolm X believed in black separatism. He was like, this nonviolent approach isn't working."
• Josh Clark [07:39]: "He created something called the Poor People's Campaign... it’s essentially pretty socialist at its core."
• Josh Clark [14:20]: "There was a couple of different marches... King had to get the invaders on board with not doing this again."
• Chuck Bryant [15:57]: "A group called the Invaders... started looting. Police came in and... there was a 16-year-old named Larry Payne that was shot and killed."
• Josh Clark [19:10]: "...I just want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land."
• Chuck Bryant [19:38]: "Like anybody, I would like to live a long life... I just want to do God's will."
• Josh Clark [22:31]: "King had just been grinding away in Memphis for two days by then and he was staying in room 306 of the Lorraine Motel."

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Recommendation:
For listeners interested in understanding the full scope of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, including the subsequent investigation and lingering questions, be sure to tune into Part II of this in-depth series.

Transcript

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[Josh Clark]

This is a message from sponsor Intuit. TurboTax Taxes was feeling stuck trying to squeeze in getting tax help but never having enough time. Now Taxes is getting a turbo tax expert who does your taxes from start to finish. While they work on your taxes, you get real time updates on their progress and you get the most money back guaranteed. Get an Expert now on TurboTax.com only available with TurboTax Live full service real time updates only in iOS mobile app. See guarantee [e-mail] guarantees welcome to Stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

Youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And it's just the two of us today, which is fine because we need to keep our nose to the grindstone and really focus on a pair of really important episodes which we kick off now.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. We haven't done a two parter in a while, but as we got into the originally one parter of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. You were like, man, there's a lot more here that we can just kind of explode this into a two parter.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that was verbatim what I said.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I said, let's do it.

[Josh Clark]

There was a ton of stuff that I did not know about MLK assassination.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, same James Earl Ray.

[Josh Clark]

Like there is a lot of stuff around it and it's just a reminder that history gets so boiled down to like it's its bare essence or even like a caricature of itself. And when you really dig into like a historical event, you're just reminded that there's just so many people affected and involved and it's not just, you know, James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King Jr. And you know, the world mourned. I mean that was all true, but there was just so much more to it. So hopefully we'll kind of get some of that across in this.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, we'll talk about it some, but I went to, I've been to the King Center, I've been to the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis at the Lorraine Motel. And like, I thought I knew a lot about this stuff. But until we do our job like we do, I learned a lot more. So it's pretty great.

[Josh Clark]

So let's talk mlk, because he kind of skyrocketed to prominence from just the start. He became involved in the Montgomery bus boycott, which most people say kicked off the civil rights era in the United States thanks to Rosa Parks, who we did an episode on. Rosa Parks, Agent of Change. You remember that?

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right, yeah, for sure. And all this is just, you know, so we're setting the table kind of as a lead in to where things were in April of 1968. Yes. So like you said, you know, 12ish years earlier is when he really rose to prominence. And so much so that In February of 57, he was on the COVID of Time magazine.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So in 1963 he was times man of the Year after being on the COVID just a handful of years earlier. And in 1964, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. So he was one of the most famous Americans by the early 1960s.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, but one of the things you don't learn about these days as often is that he was at that point beginning to become widely criticized, not just by white Americans, many of whom have been criticizing him all along, but by black Americans as well. There was a real division in the civil rights movement between Martin Luther King's vision of his doctrine of nonviolence, which is basically saying like, hey, we're going to essentially do everything we can to show white Americans the problems that black Americans face just by being black in America. And no matter what they do to us, we're not going to fight back and we're going to make an example of ourselves that will hopefully set for them. And the ultimate goal was to integrate into America, to integrate black Americans into. Into America so that there wasn't black America and white America. And that ran very much contrary to the other rival idea, which was Malcolm X's idea.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And we haven't done one on Malcolm X yet, so maybe we should hit that up as a follow up at.

[Josh Clark]

Some point for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

But yes, this was sort of the other side of the coin. Malcolm X believed in black separatism. He was like, this nonviolent approach isn't working and black people cannot integrate into white America. It's a racist society. And it's just not possible. So we need self determination. Violence by any means necessary is an acceptable sort of avenue to achieve the goals of black determination. And especially considering violence as being inflicted upon black people by white people constantly. So it's time to fight back, like with fist in clubs and whatever else.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And again, that's totally contrary to King's doctrine of nonviolence, which Malcolm X considered criminal, as he put it, in the face of just being beaten by whites just for marching in the streets peacefully. And a big portion of the people who are critical of King and his nonviolence doctrine were the younger generations. They tended to lean more militantly, more in Malcolm X's direction. And then in white America, with white Americans, he was basically never popular during his lifetime, at least with the majority of white Americans.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, and we know this because, you know, they did polls back then. There were Gallup polls that found in 1963 through 1966, each year found that fewer than 40% of white Americans viewed Martin Luther King Jr favorably. So one of the other things that didn't help, besides his work in the, you know, in civil rights, was his stance on Vietnam and the war in Vietnam. He was always against it, but really changed his stance in 1967. Started being really, really vocal about it as far as publicly condemning the war. Started leading anti war marches, giving speeches against the war. One very famous one was Beyond Vietnam Colonial A Time to Break the Silence. A speech he gave in New York City at Riverside Church in April, actually exactly one year, April 4, 1967, before his murder. And it was a very controversial speech because it was his most adamant anti war, anti Vietnam speech yet. And he specifically called out America and the US Military by sending a disproportionate number of kind of poor black American boys to fight that war.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And so this was. It's really hard to overstate how controversial this speech was. Like he just stopped mincing words and came out and said everything that needed to be said. And so his alliance with Lyndon Bain Johnson, who was president at the time, was just shattered. Right then LBJ stepped away from him, publicly broke with him. I think Laura helped us out with this. She found 168 newspapers issued editorials denouncing him for that speech. So that like, he was already not super popular with white Americans. He. His popularity was so. So with black Americans. And all Americans were now mad at him for his stance on Vietnam, or a ton of them were. And then one of the other things that really proved to be very difficult for him later in his life was, later in his career was he shifted focus from strictly civil rights for black Americans to economic justice for poor Americans of all races. He created something called the Poor People's Campaign, came up with an economic bill of rights that is essentially pretty socialist, I mean, at its core. And he also basically said like, this campaign is also going to be a shift not just in focus but in potency. Like we're not going to be quite as peaceful as we were before. We're not going to go Malcolm X like full on militant. But you can expect, you know, I think he famously said 15 to 16% more militancy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right? Yeah. And you know, this ship. So he already had, you know, people coming at him from all sides. And now even within his own camp, they didn't love it either. His advisors and his staff didn't love this change of direction. So, you know, by the time April of 1968 rolls around, he's exhausted, he's tired, he's got people coming at him from every angle, even within his own camp. And he just wasn't at his peak personally or with his career.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So, Chuck, do you want to take a break now?

[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

So in the spring of 1968, Memphis, Tennessee, which had previously prided itself on its white community and black communities kind of being, you know, fairly getting along, especially compared to some other places, like places in Alabama. It was by this time in high tension as a town, and it was largely because of the Memphis Sanitation workers strike. MLK became very interested in helping further the goals of the Memphis sanitation workers in their strike because he basically saw this as like, this is a perfect bridge between this transition from a focus just on civil rights to this larger focus on poor people of all colors. Because like, this was mostly almost exclusively black sanitation workers who were struggling for recognition of their work, dignity in their work, decent wages. Apparently if you were a full time sanitation worker in Memphis, you were still eligible for food stamps after your full salary. And he was like, this is exactly the perfect kind of thing that I'm trying to get across. Like this is important. So he kind of focused on Memphis in the spring of 1968. And like I said, it was in a state of high tension because a couple of protests, marches Essentially to support the workers had not really gone really well previously.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, but before these marches, there was, you know, there was already a strike going on. It just wasn't, you know, full throttle at this point. What would really kick that into gear were the very tragic deaths of two sanitation workers, Echo Cole and Robert Walker. They were crushed to death. Their truck malfunctioned. They were trying to take shelter from the rain and were crushed by the truck. And the city didn't pay any compensation to their families at all. So this is what really kind of triggered the mass walk off the job. Almost all the workers, black sanitation workers, went on strike at the time. And King was like, all right, I gotta get to Memphis. It's in trouble. It's an opportunity for me as well, like you said, to sort of help me segue into this other movement. And there were a couple of different marches. On March 28th, he led a march of 5,000 people through Memphis. And almost right away, it turned violent. Not by his hand, but it was a group called the Invaders. It was a militant group of young African Americans who were not on board with King. They were not on board with nonviolence, obviously. And they started looting. They started breaking windows in stores. Police came in and, you know, we all know the drill at this point. People scatter. Police are beating people, shooting at people. There was a 16 year old named Larry Payne that was shot and killed by a police officer named Leslie Dean Jones. 60 people injured. And then all of a sudden, Memphis is under curfew and close to 4,000 National Guardsmen are brought in.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, and this was on the heels of another march the month before in February, where protesters, including some ministers who were marching, were maced by police. So Memphis, just like, basically, almost like throwing a switch, went from like a generally okay city as far as race relations were concerned to like, the National Guard is now here keeping order in like a month. It just changed that quickly. And because he was leading the march on March 28, King became totally, I don't want to say obsessed, but he was fully zeroed in on returning to Memphis to set things right, because that was a huge black eye against him, his career, and in particular, his whole doctrine of nonviolence. And again, like, the Invaders were not related to what was going on. They essentially used this as a chance to mix things up. And King just basically wanted to go give it another try and hopefully restore his reputation, hopefully restore the reputation, reputation of the civil rights movement he was leading. And he put everything on the line to go back to Memphis. And try it again, because it could have gone wrong again and that would have really damaged things even further. A lot of his advisors were like, we don't need to go back to Memphis. Like, we have a trip to Africa scheduled. And like, let's just follow through and we'll leave it behind us. And he was like, no, we have to go back. So we actually canceled that Africa trip and brought everyone back to Memphis. And he got back there on April 3rd. And that evening he gave what's been known today as his I've been to the mountaintop speech. I believe it was his final speech. Gave it at the Mason Temple Church in Memphis. And it was a pretty significant speech, as you can imagine. I mean, basically everyone's aware of this, but in it he recounts in a previous assassination attempt that I had never heard of. Had you?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, from visiting the museums. But it's certainly not something, I don't think that's like super widely known.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Well, so he was signing a book at a department store when he was stabbed in the chest by a mentally ill woman named Isola Curry. Stabbed in the chest with a 7 inch letter opener. And Isola Curry was convinced that civil rights organizations like MLK's were tracking her, had singled her out and were tracking her, preventing her from getting employment, just generally messing with her life. And the papers all reported that the surgeon who treated mlk, obviously he survived, was that the letter opener came so close to his heart that had he sneezed, it would have penetrated his aorta and killed him. So he really lucked out. And he talked about this in his I've been to the mountaintop speech. But the thing that most people remember about it is that he, in a way, almost predicted his death the following day at the end of the speech.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, I'll go ahead and read it. He talked about not being around. He said, like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain and I've looked over and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So a definite sort of eerie thing to happen the night before his murder.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And I've read that some people are like, he was. He felt like that death was close, that he didn't have much time left. So it makes sense that he would have put that in. I don't think he expected to be murdered the next day, but he just. I read that he sensed that he was not going to live much longer.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, he had seen what happened with Kennedy, obviously what happened with Robert Kennedy afterward, but, yeah, those kind of things very sadly were just much more common back then.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I was thinking about that and just living in an era of assassinations, like successful assassinations of prominent political figures, one of whom was the president at the time. I just. That's just nuts that America went through that period.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, King, Malcolm X, the two Kennedys. Yeah, it's just a very fraught, fraught time in our history, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

For sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

So he's back in town to hold a march to set the previous march. Right. And one of the things he had to do was get the invaders on board with not doing this again. So at the Lorraine Motel, he was actually meeting with them. One of the things he did there was meet with them and negotiate a deal where like, hey, you guys, don't turn this thing violent. And they said, okay, we can do that. Give us some money, give us some cars, and give us a little more influence, and we'll do that. So they were negotiating that the march was actually planned for April 4th. And this is one of those sort of sliding doors thing. It was actually put on hold because the city got an injunction to stop it from a federal court. And if that hadn't happened and he would have been marching on April 4, perhaps James Earl Ray would have continued to sort of pursue King, because, as we'll see, he had been following him around for about a month, or maybe not. Maybe that assassination never happens. But because of that injunction, the march was delayed from April 4. King stayed in town to go to court to help appeal. That injunction was in Court on April 4th through the day. And then late that afternoon, the judges said, all right, we can do this march. It'll be next Monday. And King. So late that afternoon, the judges said, all right, the march can go forward, but it's going to go forward next Monday.

[Josh Clark]

So that day, on April 4, it was the evening. It turns out Bono got it wrong in that song Pride, because he says.

[Chuck Bryant]

Earlier, did you know they corrected it?

[Josh Clark]

Did they?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I never listened to much of it, but they put out reimaginings of a bunch of their songs called Songs of Surrender. And like you said, it was early morning April 4, shot rings out in the Memphis sky and the song Pride in the name of Love. And he changed it to in the evening, April 4th.

[Josh Clark]

Well, yes, that's much more accurate because that's when it happened. King had just been grinding away in Memphis for two days by then and he was staying in room 306 of the now very famous Lorraine Motel. That was the room that he usually took anytime he and his people were in Memphis. They stayed at the Lorraine Hotel because it was a black owned business and had been owned by Walter Bailey and his wife lori since the 1940s. It was listed in the Green Book even it was just a black owned business and it was a nice hotel to stay in. And by the time the late afternoon, early evening rolled around, MLK was late for a dinner at the Reverend Billy Kyle's house in Memphis. And they all started to leave to head to Billy Kyle's house for dinner. And he stepped outside of his room and onto the balcony and he was speaking down to some other members of his group. I think he told one of them to start the car. And a shot did ring out and it hit MLK in the face.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, sort of in the chin and jaw area and the neckline. There's that very famous photograph of the people, you know, his group standing on the balcony. I think like three guys are pointing across Mulberry street, which ran between the Lorraine Motel and the, what was it, the Bessie what boarding house?

[Josh Clark]

Bessie Brewers Boarding House.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, Bessie Brewers Boarding House. And they were like, that's where the shot came from. The picture was taken by a South African photographer named Joseph Lau. L O U W became one of the most famous photographs in American history, of course. And the gentleman kneeling, attending to King, trying to do whatever he could, that was a guy named Merrill McCullough. And he was an undercover cop who had infiltrated the invaders. So just by chance he was on hand as an undercover cop there, and he's the one that's kneeling, kind of trying to tend to King again. He was shot at 06:01 was alive even at the hospital, barely, but he died just an hour later. He's pronounced dead at the age of 39 at 7:05pm yeah, and a doctor.

[Josh Clark]

Named Jerry T. Francisco was the medical examiner at Shelby county at the time and he conducted an autopsy and he concluded that Martin Luther King was killed by a gunshot wound to the chin and neck with the total transaction of the lower cervical and upper thoracic spinal cord and other structures of the neck. I read somewhere that that Martin Luther King probably didn't even hear the shot that that killed him. It just hit him. So Fast and was shot from a high powered rifle at, you know, close enough by that like it would have. He just wouldn't have hurt it. And I was thinking it was possible that he died almost instantly. Had you read that he was still alive for a period like when he got to the hospital?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he was apparently just hanging on. You know, he was alive in the ambulance. He was alive, I think shortly after he got to the hospital.

[Josh Clark]

Well, hopefully he was completely unconscious at the time. So I mean, it's my hope that he just never knew what hit him or anything hit him. I didn't. Yeah, I didn't realize that. Yeah, I thought he probably died instantly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But when Francisco, that doctor, he, you know, he described the gunshot wound, but he didn't fully dissect the path of the bullet. He said he did that cause he didn't want to deform the body any further. But that of course, you know, would help out later with conspiracy theories. As far as, you know, not having a full accounting of the path of the bullet, which we'll get into all that. I believe in part two. But right after the shooting, like literally the minutes right afterward, there were two men in that boarding house who saw a guy leaving with a suitcase and like a blanket bundled up that had a bunch of stuff in it big enough to where it could have held a rifle. And what happened was. Well, there was another witness that said they saw a man passing. I don't know how it's pronounced. K A N I P E K Nipe or Kanip Kanep.

[Josh Clark]

That's what I'm going.

[Chuck Bryant]

Kniep's. Okay, Kniep's Amusement Company. And just drop this bundle on the front door of the store. You can, you know, there's a picture of it if you look that up and you can kind of see the rifle poking out even. And that's what they found. They found some aftershave, they found a portable radio, they found some brand new binoculars, a couple of cans of beer. And precisely a.30 06 Remington 760 Game Master Rifle with a scope, which is a hunting rifle. It's. It's kind of a unique gun in that it's a. It's a long range rifle. That's a pump action rifle, which usually they are bolt action rifles.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, that is fairly unique. So. Yeah, that's pretty specific. At the boarding house too. At Bessie Brewer's boarding house. People who were staying there later told police that they heard people or at least someone maybe going back and forth to the bathroom. This is a boarding house, so obviously there was a shared bathroom rather than a bathroom in each room. And somebody kept going to the bathroom, hanging out in the bathroom, coming out of the bathroom, going back to the bathroom. And the cops who investigated found scuff marks in the bathtub, obviously left by somebody's shoes. And the bathtub was where you would have had to stood to see out the window to have a shot at Martin Luther King on the balcony. Yeah, so the. The people in the boarding house heard MLK's assassin. The question was who it was. And obviously we know now it was James Earl Ray. But at the time, they didn't realize.

[Chuck Bryant]

That also, like two minutes later, the shooting had been radioed into the police. And just five minutes later, at 6:08, the owner of that amusement company told police that he saw a white man running through the alley and, like, actually saw him drop that bundle and then flee the scene in a white Ford Mustang.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, we'll talk about the investigation and everything like that in part two, but I say we take our second break and come back and talk about what happened after MLK died.

[Dan Roth]

Ever wonder what it would be like to be mentored by today's top business leaders? My podcast, this Is Working can help with that. Here's some advice from Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, on standing out from the leadership crowd.

[Jamie Dimon]

Develop your eq. A lot of people have plenty of brains, but EQ is, do you trust me? Do I communicate well? You know, when you walk in a room, do people feel good? You're there? Are you responsive to people? Do people know you have a heart? Develop the team, develop the people. Create a system of trust. And it works over time.

[Dan Roth]

I'm Dan Roth, LinkedIn's editor in chief. On my podcast, this Is Working, leaders like J. Jamie Dimon, Mark Cuban, and Richard Branson share strategies for success and the real lessons that have shaped them. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, everybody. Chuck and Josh here. And I was recently a guest once again on one of my favorite podcasts. It's called the Puzzler with old pal and friend of the show, AJ Jacobs. AJ Gives really fun and funny word puzzles to guests like me, like Ken Jennings, like Dax Shepard, and hopefully like Josh because he would be so great on this show.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's definitely on my to do list.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, you gotta be on it. It's a lot of fun. It's sort of like wordle or connections, but for your ears. And I think we should play everyone just a little clip. It's a puzzle that I have to convert movie titles from the metric system back to their actual title.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

From my second appearance on the Puzzler right now.

[Josh Clark]

Nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so I'm gonna give you a title of a movie, and you have to reconvert it to the imperial system. All right, this is gonna be great. Here we go. The green 1.6 kilometer is. I would say it's the Green Mile. Exactly. The Green Mile. So subscribe to the Puzzler with AJ Jacobs to tease your mind and tickle your funny bone.

[Jay Shetty]

Hey, you're listening to On Purpose with Jay Shetty. And today, my guests are none other than Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco. I can't wait for you to hear this episode about their love story, about their relationship like you've never heard it before. I want to go back to the first time you ever met.

[Chuck Bryant]

Thank you so much for this.

[Josh Clark]

One of the great. Thank you.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm Selena, but we're watching Disney Kids. When you're a pop star like she is, and you're a huge entity and people set up all these walls before, and then the first second, you, like, disarmed everybody.

[Josh Clark]

By the way, congratulations on your engagement.

[Chuck Bryant]

What I felt for Benny, it was.

[Josh Clark]

Everything about him was honest. He'll tell me anything that he's feeling, and it made me feel like I could do the same.

[Chuck Bryant]

If we would have met each other when we were younger, it would have never worked.

[Jay Shetty]

Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

So, you know, very famously, Walter Cronkite came on the news and very somberly told the nation what had happened. On the CBS Nightly News, President Johnson declared the next day, April 7, the National Day of Mourning. Flags went to half staff. A lot of businesses around the country closed for the day. And he said, Johnson said on TV, the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Has not died with him. Men who are white, men who are black, must and will now join together as never in the past to let all the forces of divisiveness know that America should not be ruled by the bullet, but only by the ballot of free and of just men.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So, yeah, like you said, the national Day of mourning was April 7th. But throughout that whole period, from the day that his assassination took place to his funeral, there was a lot of places closed down. And I saw Chuck, that on the day of his funeral, the New York Stock exchange closed, which is pretty significant. The NBA and the NHL were in their playoffs, and they rescheduled their games. But the Major League Baseball did not postpone opening day, much to their discredit. But Roberto Clemente and Maury Willis of the Pirates said, well, we're not playing today. It's Martin Luther King Jr. S funeral.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's great.

[Josh Clark]

And we're not going to disrespect it like that. And they inspired players on other teams to sit it out, too. So from what I saw, effectively opening day was postponed for a number of teams, if not all of mlb.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And, hey, we did do a good episode on Roberto Clemente. Remember that one?

[Josh Clark]

Yep. That was a good one.

[Chuck Bryant]

So all across the country, you know, people react with extreme upset, which led to violence and some rioting and uprising in, like, 125 cities over the course of a few days, 39 people were killed, 3,500 people were injured, 50,000 federal troops dispatched all over the country, basically, except New York and Los Angeles. They were a couple of the only major cities that they managed to kind of talk people down.

[Josh Clark]

Atlanta, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, Atlanta as well. That's great. So despite the fact that black folks and a lot of white folks are mourning this death, it also sort of widened the rift because it became a symbol all of a sudden, as white America's rejection of equal rights, basically, and white Americans rejection of nonviolence by literally dying by a bullet, a nonviolent man. But there were. You know, it wasn't just this. This was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back with just sort of every. The state of things in 1968 with race relations.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I would call it more like a match thrown on a powder keg. Just the explosive reaction was, like you said, not just because of MLK's assassination, but that was the thing that set it off. Previously, the summer before, it was called the long Hot summer because there'd been a ton of riots nationwide in cities like Detroit. There was five days of rioting. It just kept happening all over the place in black communities around the United States. And there were reasons for this. There were, like, segregation had officially ended, but in practice, there was tons of segregation left, especially kinds of, like, housing discrimination that essentially created black ghettos in downtown American cities that white Americans had left for. For the suburbs. And then they were starting to build highways through these cities, and it was tough to find employment. And the city itself didn't usually maintain stuff there, so it was crumbling and deteriorating. So there was a ton of frustration already. And there had been riots already, but there were a ton of them after MLK passed as well.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And, you know, there was a legitimate fear that a race war could break out in the United States. It wasn't. I don't think it was overstated, looking back. That was a very real thing that could have happened. And there was one editorial writer who basically, in the month after the assassination, was like, King was the one that was preventing this from happening. So we may be in trouble here in the United States, like, real trouble. Thankfully, that didn't happen, obviously. But like we said, a lot of these cities, people were killed, arrested, buildings were burned. Wilmington, Delaware, was occupied by the National Guard for a year afterward. And looking back, it's looked as basically, it was just a harassment campaign that made things worse.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. The mayor was like, okay, you guys can leave pretty shortly after things calmed down, but the governor was like, no, we're going to stay. We're going to keep them here for a year. It was very odd. And it was the longest occupation of any American city ever, which is. I mean, you just don't think of Wilmington, Delaware, stuff like that happening to Wilmington, Delaware.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. One of the sort of positive things that happened after this, and it's hard to even frame it like that. But Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King's widow, did finish the job in Memphis on April 8th. She did leave that lead, that March with her four small kids, along with 40,000 other people in a silent march. And that was King. You know, Martin Luther King was so adamant about going back to Memphis and having a nonviolent march. So it was special that she was able to see that through.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And imagine seeing 40,000 people pass by you silently. How powerful that would be to see.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So the following day, after Coretta Scott King led the Memphis march that MLK had set out to lead, his funeral was held in Atlanta at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he had been a preacher, and I think his father was the preacher there at the time. Is that right?

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm not sure. It's like four miles from my house, right in the middle of Atlanta. I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I was going to say later, but that whole area that's called the Sweet Auburn community.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's awesome.

[Josh Clark]

Is largely preserved. Like, it was around King's death. Like, they, they, you know, there's still new businesses and people move in and out, but they. They've really gone to a lot of trouble to preserve, like, how it looked. The National Park Service has preserved It. And. And like you said, you toured the King Center. That's an amazing place to. To go as well. But I thought that was really cool that it's been designated a national historic site that's under protection.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Which is always a little odd when you're driving through that area and you see a park ranger in the middle of the city. You're like, what's going on? And you're like, oh, yeah, yeah. National National Historic Site. So that was.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. You just assume they're lost.

[Chuck Bryant]

But that's the place that I always recommend when stuff you should know. People write in or saying they're coming to Atlanta.

[Josh Clark]

No, that's a good.

[Chuck Bryant]

And, like, what should they do? I'm like, well, the Carter center and the King center are both very close to each other, and that's just a really great afternoon to go in there. And there's a lot of really cool displays, including a very sort of. I think I've talked about it before. A very sort of chilling single thing at the King center, which is just a lone case with the room 306 Lorraine Motel Hotel key sitting in it with nothing else around it. It just sort of speaks for itself.

[Josh Clark]

That's better than what I always reply with. I just tell them that they should go to Applebee's.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. I'm glad you got a good joke in this one. God bless you.

[Josh Clark]

Thank you. So his funeral. I looked up a picture of it. His casket was carried on a cart by two mules processing down one of the streets, probably Auburn Avenue. I didn't catch which street it was, but there were a hundred thousand people in this procession, not including people lined up on either side of the street as it passed in a procession behind his casket. 100,000 people. And it's hard to get across what that looked like unless you see a photo of it. It just keeps going back and back and back and back, literally as far as you could see, as far as the photographer could capture. There's a stream of people filling the road entirely following his casket and procession. And I was heartened to see when I zoomed in that, like, it wasn't 50, 50, but it wasn't completely lopsided. The. The number of white faces and black faces in the photograph all marching together, mourning mlk. Like when it happened, you know?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, especially in Atlanta, you know, a city with a fraught racial history as well.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Benjamin Mays delivered the eulogy. He was the president of Morehouse University. And Morehouse would have their own ceremony, I believe. A day later on their campus, which, by the way, Martin Luther King Jr. Was a student at Morehouse at 15 years old. So let that sink in for a second. And Mays predicted in that eulogy that here's the quote that King would probably say that if death had to come, I'm sure there was no greater cause to die than to get a just wage for garbage collectors.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Pretty powerful stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So the Lorraine Motel has become the National Civil Rights Museum. But after King's assassination, Walter Bailey kept it open for years. But he never rented room 306 again. And he didn't touch it. He left it exactly as it was when mlk, as MLK had left it when he was assassinated. But Walter Bailey's story was additionally sad. He was very proud hotel owner to have MLK stay every, every time he came into Memphis. So it was bad enough that Martin Luther King was assassinated at his motel, but he also, his wife Lori, who the motel was named after, she had a stroke in all of the commotion and the horrificness of what had happened right after MLK was assassinated. And she died five days later.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And so over the years, I'm sure after Walter Bailey passed, the motel started to fall into disrepair and it finally closed in 1988. But it was purchased and refurbished and preserved and turned into the National Civil Rights Museum, like I said, which is. I have not been there, but it looks like a world class museum and it looks amazing. And they've preserved room 306 just as King left it as well.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it is a great museum. I can highly recommend Memphis as a whole for a weekend trip. I've spoken before. That's where my mom's family is from and grew up going to Memphis and, you know, went back a couple of years ago with Ruby and it's just a great weekend. You can go see that, you can go to. There's obviously all the Graceland and Sun Records and Stacks Records and Beale Street. It's just you can easily find like three days of great fun stuff to do in Memphis.

[Josh Clark]

Very nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Memphis, where it's at.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. So that's it for part one, I guess we're gonna skip listener mail as we traditionally do on our two parters, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I figured we would.

[Chuck Bryant]

So maybe just the traditional sign off. That's you, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't do that, do I?

[Josh Clark]

No, you don't. Even though we're not going to read listener mail, if you want to send us a listener mail in the future, you can Send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.

[Chuck Bryant]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartradio. For more podcasts my heart radio visit the iHeartradio app. Apple Podcasts are where you listen to your favorite shows.

[Geico Representative]

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[Chuck Bryant]

In 2020, a group of young women found themselves in an AI fueled nightmare.

[Josh Clark]

Someone was posting photos.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was just me naked.

[Dan Roth]

Well, not me, but me with someone else's body parts.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart podcasts Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope about the rise of deep fake pornography and the battle to stop it. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Colleen Witt]

Are you hungry? Colleen Witt here and Eating While Broke is back for Season four every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network. This season we've got a legendary lineup serving up broke dishes and even better, better stories on the menu. We have Tony Baker, Nick Cannon, Melissa Ford, October London and Carrie Harper. Howie turning Big Macs into Big moves. Catch Eating While Broke every Thursday on the Black Effect Podcast Network. IHeartRadio app Apple podcasts Wherever you get your favorite shows, come hungry for season four.