Brown was thrust into the national spotlight while presiding over James Earl Ray's last appeal of his conviction for the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Brown was removed from the reopened investigation of King's murder due to alleged bias. Therefore, ironically, the society that King intended to bear the cost for his civil disobedience was to be ablack society. I served my six months, got out and was put right back in for using amphetamine. Law enforcement agencies believe that he started indulging in criminal activities as he could not support himself financially. Later in life his pleas for a trial were encouraged by some civil-rights leaders, notably the King family. There was, however, some question in our minds about Ray's coordination. The box was picked up, and Ray successfully escaped on April 23, 1967. Its not clear when Coretta Scott King, widow of King, began to believe in Rays innocence. Brown, who retains his law license, was reviewing a child support matter as a favor to an acquaintance. Jerry Ray was J.B. Stoner's campaign manager when Stoner ran for Governor of Georgia against Jimmy Carter. In 1962, when King mentioned to Levinson that he was thinking of adding an administrative assistant to his staff, Levinson recommended ODell, who was then head of SCLCs New York office. This doesnt mean that Ray couldnt have received assistance. Undercover Agent, was an undercover agent for the FBI in the Cleveland area. When ODell was again exposed, King went through the same routine of announcing his dismissal. Indeed, to them the perception is reality. (Emphasis in original.). Ray spent the rest of his life in prison and suffered with kidney and liver ailments in his last years. Ray believed in white supremacy and had strong prejudice against the black people. James. and chemically, revealed the presence of lead from a disintegrating At the Tag Plant I met Jerry Ward Davis, an Oklahoman who'd been shot in 1959 after kidnapping several guards (along with Rollie Laster and Ronnie Westberg) during an attempted escape that involved the use of zip-guns. In 1999, James Earl Ray was found innocent of killing Martin Luther King Jr. in the same way O.J. His first prison break happened in 1967, when he escaped the Missouri State Penitentiary on a bread truck before fleeing to Canada. The murder of Lee Harvey Oswald had closed the door to an open trial that might have answered the question of whether Oswald acted alone, or was part of a conspiracy. When The John Birch Society first made Kings communist connections known almost 50 years ago, most people were skeptical. In June 1977 Ray escaped from Brushy Mountain (Tennessee) Prison and remained at large for 54 hours before being recaptured in a massive manhunt. [13], Brown is twice divorced and has two sons from his first marriage.[14]. He employed such Communists as Bayard Rustin and Hunter Pitts ODell; and he worked closely with Carl Braden and James Dumbrowski. The verdict did convict Loyd Jowers and "other parties known and unknown" for their parts in the vast US government conspiracy to assassinate King. . He was sentenced to 99 years at the State penitentiary. But within a few days of confessing, Ray began to claim his innocence, arguing that that he had been set up by a man he knew only as Raoul. It was Raoul, Ray said, who had directed him to buy the gun and the binoculars, and rent the room across the street from the motel. Although Ray had been sentenced from St. Louis, he was not part of the St. Louis "crowd.". The New American magazine, published twice a month in print and daily online, is the essential news source for freedom-loving Americans. His law license was entered on the disability inactive list (suspending his ability to practice law in Tennessee), and the discipline case was placed on indefinite hold until such a time as Brown is healthy enough to face the complaint. After he was recaptured, Ray hired attorney Jack Kershaw to promote his claim that he was not the person who actually shot King. . Christopher S. Bond (now U.S. He was a founder and the long-time chairman of the National States' Rights Party as well as the publisher of its newsletter, The Thunderbolt. On Feb. 17, 1997, while working for The Tennessean, I sat in the office of ReverendKings youngest son, Dexter, then chairman, president and chief executive officer of the King Center for Non Violent Social Change in Atlanta, as he told me why his family felt Ray should have a new trial. It was a clear case of arson, and five people from Marlborough were duly convicted of the crime. Westberg, in turn, liked James Earl Ray. James Earl Ray was the assassin of American Baptist minister and civil rights activist, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Ray was born in on March 10, 1928 in a poor Irish-American family of Alton, Illinois, and was raised a Catholic. Ray fled to Toronto, secured a Canadian passport through a travel agency, flew to London (May 5), then to Lisbon (May 7? An egregious example of shoddy workmanship is the book The Making of an Assassin by George McMillan. He edited most of the chapters of Kings book Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? He guided King in deciding whether to accept or reject public appearances. Said Byrd: Yesterday, Mr. President, the Nation was given a preview of what may be in store for this city by the outrageous and despicable riot that Martin Luther King helped to bring about in Memphis, Tenn. The project, while stopping short of violent riots, nevertheless advocated widespread civil disobedience (a nonviolent, but nevertheless illegal activity) that King said he and 3,000 of his followers planned on staging in Washington that spring. Ray was also Stoner's bodyguard and chauffeur. The facts are these. Therefore, I challenge your authority to hear it. King said he liked the idea. Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting. There were always convict clerks assigned to the reception area, and the fingerprints could have been switched--either because Ray had paid someone to do it, or, just as likely, because some convict wanted to help Ray beat the system. James Earl Ray From the viewpoint of a man who served time with Ray in prison, then went on to become a journalist, . [2] He earned a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Juris Doctor from UCLA School of Law. In the year 1977, Ray escaped from the prison for the second time along with six other convicts from the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary located in Petros, Tennessee. The Committee Believes, on the Basis of the Circumstantial Evidence Available to it, that there is a Likelihood that James Earl Ray Assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King, JR., as a Result of a Conspiracy. Ray fled from the scene immediately and could not be located immediately by the police. Jerry was returned to solitary in 1963 for making zip-guns, and a few days later I was put in B-Basement on suspicion of stabbing an inmate who'd volunteered to help the guards search the Tag Plant for the rest of the zip-guns, which were never found. And, although the FBI later claimed to have interviewed every convict in Jefferson City who had served time with Ray, they never tried to interview me, or Davis, or Laster, or Westberg or anyone I knew. The Rays would have had many opportunities to meet racists. pleaded guilty to the first degree murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Even though he played an elitist liberal psychiatrist on "Frasier," Kelsey Grammer is a Republican in real life. I have respect for the King family, however, as thousands of people converge on Memphis and in other places on Wednesday to commemorate the 50th anniversary of MLKs death, the King family is dead wrong. Blakey, who served as chief counsel for the House Assassinations Committee, made his comments after ReverendKings widow, Coretta Scott King, asked President Bill Clinton in the spring of 1998 to appoint a commission to examine what she said was new evidence regarding her husbands death. Early life [ edit] This list details the strange, unstable life of James Earl Ray, a man who confessed to and then spent his life denyingthe murder of Martin Luther King Jr. But it turned out that rather than discharging this key Red, he had transferred and promoted ODell to a higher post within Kings Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Charley McCracken, a friend from the St. Louis City Jail, pointed him out to me in H-Hall, where the newly arriving convicts at the maximum-security penitentiary were oriented. Early Ray fired a single shot by standing in the bathtub of his shared room and balancing the rifle on a window ledge. Laster made several more desperate attempts to escape, including one attempt to saw out of death row (during which a guard captain was blinded). Ray, although not personally motivated by racism, comes from a rural background where blacks are not highly regarded. On June 8 he was apprehended by London police at Heathrow Airport as he was about to embark for Brussels; the FBI had established him as the prime suspect almost immediately after the assassination. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Those of us who had been involved in escape attempts did not consider Ray a joke. In the hours and days after the Tucson shootings, the left wing media in America attempted to blame the Tea Party and right wing rhetoric for the deaths of six and the injuries of thirteen. The incident was incredibly damaging to the cause of King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The King familys belief in Rays innocence was partly influenced by the strange case of Loyd Jowers, whod owned the restaurant below Rays rented room in Memphis. The prosecutors have enough efficient evidence in establishing guilt against James Earl Ray concerning the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. First, James Earl Ray was in close enough vicinity of the Lorraine Hotel to successfully fire a clear shot to kill Dr. King from only a block away. That caused the Reverend Emanuel Cleaver, then executive director of the Kansas City Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (and now Mayor of Kansas City, Missouri) to send a request to Missouri Gov. There were half a dozen guys who rented magazines, and they hawked their wares by the yard shack (a small rock building where the guards stayed). They were not going to have me, or any other convict, expounding on the subject of Ray. Then, the (U.S.) House Assassinations Committee spent two years and $2.5 million investigating the case. This should have been driven home years ago when a surreptitious tape recording was made of J.A. As one example, Dan Smoot, a former FBI agent, was a steadfast anti-Communist who became associated with The John Birch Society and wrote for the societys American Opinion and The Review Of The News magazines. Ray was finally caught hiding in London in February 1968. Those who express skepticism at the results of the 1999 trial in which James Earl Ray was found innocent of assassinating King have an incredible hurdle to overcome the belief of the King family, which sides with Ray. Most of my friends were people I'd known in reform school, or people I'd met through them. In an article in The New American back in 1999, John F. McManus, former publisher of this magazine and president emeritus of The John Birch Society, provided further detail about ODell association with King: In 1960, King hired one Hunter Pitts ODell to his staff. My review took issue with many assumptions in the book, such as those centering on Ray's involvement with drugs in prison, and how he escaped from Jefferson City. A man named Vincent Harding is credited with writing most of it. In the year 1968, Ray underwent through a facial reconstruction surgery to hide his identity in Los Angeles. Judge Horne began increasing the quantity of days Brown could be held in contempt after Brown continued disrupting the court. "Somebody's gotta get him," Ray would say, his face drawn with tension, his fists clenched. He was first convicted for a burglary in California in the year 1949. Martin Luther King Jr. James Earl White (born July 16, 1964) is a former member of the Texas House of Representatives for District 19, which encompassed Polk, Hardin, Jasper, Newton, and Tyler counties. James Earl Ray, an escaped American convict, is arrested in London, England, and charged with the assassination of African American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. On April 4,. Ray replied that he did not commit the crime. You would also know who had just gotten a shipment of dope. Stoner is the following: Over the years, state and federal authorities have come to suspect that Stoner's violent rhetoric cannot be dismissed merely as fascist ravings. He was a loner. Ray, a hardened thief, robber and a sometimes-moody liar, assassinated the Rev. But within Martin Luther Kings family, there remains a persistent belief that Ray is innocent, and was set up to take the fall. https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/james-earl-ray-30416.php. The 12-person jury verdict unanimous exonerated the "patsy" James Earl Ray for any role in the assassination of MLK. Stoner's hatred of blacks would not have been offensive to him Ray; he might have viewed it as a little extreme, but he would have admired Stoner for being a rebel and for having a network of trusted associates. In the 1950s, Ray became notorious as a petty criminal, and by the end of the decade he was a failed pornographer who had served some jail time and successfully completed a prison escape. In the 1960s John Larry Ray (another brother) owned a tavern in St. Louis, and that tavern was an unofficial headquarters for the Wallace for President campaign. King was shot by Earl Ray when the former was standing in the balcony of his motel room. Weirich responded: "Its a sad day that someone that out of touch with reality considers himself a viable candidate for one of the important positions in Shelby County. . After the King shooting, one person living at the rooming house where the shot was fired described the assassin as heavy set with receding hair. 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