Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin Read Online Free PDF

which could have had an effect on the crowd? Did King do anything to prevent violence? ... Although Martin Luther King preaches non-violence, violence occurs just about everywhere he goes."
    The FBI in Memphis was unable to find anything suggesting that King had in any way provoked the violence, but specialists with the Racial Intelligence Division did seize on one potential line of attack: King, who had urged Memphis blacks to boycott white businesses downtown, was "a hypocrite" for securing a room in the white-owned Rivermont when he could have stayed at the black-owned Lorraine Motel only a few blocks away.
    The FBI sent out a blind memorandum to what it termed "cooperative media"--pro-Hoover newspapers around the country. "The fine Hotel Lorraine 244 in Memphis," the memo stated, "is owned and patronized exclusively by Negroes, but King didn't go there from his hasty exit. Instead, King decided the plush Holiday Inn, white-owned, operated, and almost exclusively white patronized, was the place to 'cool it.' There will be no boycott of white merchants for King, only for his followers." (The memo made no mention of the fact that it was a Memphis motorcycle cop, on orders from police headquarters, who had chosen the Rivermont, led King there, and personally checked him in.)
    In the end, the FBI succeeded in making only minor hay out of this "hypocrisy" charge, but the smear had a more consequential effect: it ensured that the next time King and his party came to Memphis, they would stay at his old hangout, the thoroughly exposed, open-courtyard (but black-owned) Lorraine Motel.
    The violence in Memphis, meanwhile, prompted the FBI's leadership to renew its age-old request to wiretap the SCLC offices in Atlanta and Washington. William Sullivan sent a memo to Cartha DeLoach outlining "the gravity" of King's upcoming Poor People's Campaign and the need for enhanced intelligence on King. The Washington demonstrations, he said, "could end in great violence 245 and bloodshed. This being the capital city, it would do us irreparable propaganda damage around the world. We have been girding ourselves for this task ever since King's announcement to march on Washington. We should leave no stone unturned."
    DeLoach and Hoover concurred with Sullivan's assessment. A wiretap request signed by Hoover promptly landed on Ramsey Clark's desk, but the attorney general refused to dignify it with a reply.

    LATER THAT MORNING, around 10:00, King awakened in his Rivermont suite and pulled himself together. He knew it would be a bad day. He cringed at the prospect of reading the morning papers. In fact, the reaction in the news that morning--and for several days to come--would be even worse than he'd feared.
    The epithets were as prolific as they were colorful. The Memphis Commercial Appeal called him "Chicken a la King." 246 The Dallas Morning News: "The headline-hunting high priest 247 of nonviolent violence." The St. Louis Globe-Democrat: "A Judas goat 248 leading lambs to slaughter."
    Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia described King as "a man who gets other people into trouble 249 and then takes off like a scared rabbit." The Memphis riot was "a powerful embarrassment 250 to Dr. King," argued the usually sympathetic New York Times , calling the disturbance further indication that he should call off the Poor People's Campaign. Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee said that in view of the Beale Street violence, King's proposed march on Washington would be "like striking a match 251 to look in your gas tank to see if you're out of gas."
    King read enough of the offerings to get the gist of it. Disgusted, he took a shower and pulled on some clothes. He was just buttoning his shirt 252 when Abernathy knocked on his bedroom door. "Martin," he said, "we have visitors."
    King padded out to the common room to greet three young men in their twenties. "We're with the Invaders," one of them said. "We've come to explain what happened yesterday." They were