James Earl Ray was found guilty of killing Martin Luther King Jr. Before Ray killed MLK, he traveled from Los Angeles to Atlanta and then eventually ended up in Memphis. Right after James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King, he did not have an escape plan. He traveled from Canada to London, and then he was caught trying to go to Brussels. His goal was to end up in Rhodesia. He pled guilty and faced the death penalty, but he took the guilty statement back. James claimed that he was not guilty. The test bullets from the rifle did not match the one that killed Martin Luther King. Years after the assassination, the government thought of reinvestigating the crime to see if James Earl Ray was guilty or not. Ray was found guilty. Ray had spent almost half his adult life behind bars. In 1967 he squeezed into a bread box to escape his maximum security prison. He was never caught and never brought back to prison. Prison guards and even his sister had trouble forgiving him and remembering anything positive about him.
On August 28th ,1963 Martin Luther King gave his “I Have A Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. King mentioned the Emancipation Proclamation and how Lincoln signed this freeing the African American slaves. Unfortunately, it did not make the slaves equal. Martin Luther King believed that the nation was disgraced because of segregation and discrimination of blacks. Even though slavery was ended for blacks, they still had to face discrimination. When MLK said that America had been given the Negro ‘a bad check’ he meant that America treats whites fairly but not blacks. King thought that segregation and discrimination brought America to a shameful condition. MLK spoke out for civil rights for blacks. When Martin Luther King gave his speech, it made certain whites mad because Martin Luther King wanted blacks to be as equal as whites. This anger made people want to assassinate MLK.
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was an example of African Americans standing up for equal rights. It all started with Rosa Parks. Parks was told to go to the back of the bus because she was black. This was not the first time she was told to get to the back. The first time she said she would not go to the back of the bus and then the bus driver kicked her off the bus. The second time she also did not move to the back of the bus. The bus driver did the same thing and tried to kick her off , but she did not move this time. The cops came and took her. She did not even sit in the white section. She was sitting in the black section. There were too many people on the bus so any African Americans had to get off for a white man even if they were in the black section. Rosa did not know what she had started. Parks was invited to a speech where she met a young man named Martin Luther King Jr. She sat down and heard his speech. She heard his words, and she was touched by his speech. He was mad Parks went to jail for sitting in the black section and how she was not treated fairly. That event made him want to speak about it.
Martin Luther King was shot at 6:01pm April 4th, 1968. He died at 7:05pm (8:05pm New York time). He was shot in the lower right face and rushed to the hospital but died.The people that were with King at the speech took King to the hospital. When Dr. King was shot, he was talking to one of his friends over the railing telling them to get dinner ready. One of King’s friends was a musician and he was asking him to sing “Precious Lord Take My Hand.” This was not the first assassination attempt on Martin Luther King. On September 20th 1958, King was beaten and stabbed. The results of his death were outbreaks of racial violence that resulted in forty-six deaths and many people’s property being damaged. On the same date, there were two riots and cities and towns were destroyed. There was a potential that Boston could blow up into riots even though all the other cities did blow up with riots. King’s funeral was held in Atlanta at Ebenezer Baptist Church. He had ties to the church because he was a church pastor there.
At 6:01 p.m on Thursday April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was shot by a gun in Memphis, Tennessee. He was in Memphis because he was planning a march to support the city’s sanitation workers who were on strike. He was going to give a speech to all the African Americans about how they should be equal to whites. When he was shot, he was asking one of his friends to sing a song called “Precious Lord Take My Hand.” His friend was a professional singer. Right when King said that, he looked up and saw the light of the bullet hit him. The shot was right in the neck, but he did not die right away. It took him a couple of minutes to die. An ambulance took Dr. King to St. Joseph Hospital where he died later on that day. He died at 7:05 pm central standard time (8:05 pm New York time). This was not the first assassination attempt on Martin Luther King Jr. Previously Dr. King was beaten and stabbed in September 20th, 1958.