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Memphis, Friday, April 5 -- The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who preached nonviolence and racial brotherhood, was fatally shot here last night by a distant gunman who raced away and escaped.
Four thousand National Guard troops were ordered into Memphis by Gov. Buford Ellington after the 39-year-old Nobel Prize-winning civil rights leader died.
A curfew was imposed on the shocked city of 550,000 inhabitants, 40 per cent of whom are Negro.
But the police said the tragedy had been followed by incidents that included sporadic shooting, fires, bricks and bottles thrown at policemen, and looting that started in Negro districts and then spread over the city.
White Car Sought
Police Director Frank Holloman said the assassin might have been a white man who was "50 to 100 yards away in a flophouse."
Chief of Detectives W.P. Huston said a late model white Mustang was believed to have been the killer's getaway car. Its occupant was described as a bareheaded white man in his 30's, wearing a black suit and black tie.
The detective chief said the police had chased two cars near the motel where Dr. King was shot and had halted one that had two out-of-town men as occupants. The men were questioned but seemed to have nothing to do with the killing, he said.
Rifle Found Nearby
A high-powered 30.06-caliber rifle was found about a block from the scene of the shooting, on South Main Street. "We think it's the gun," Chief Huston said, reporting it would be turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Dr. King was shot while he leaned over a second-floor railing outside his room at the Lorraine Motel. He was chatting with two friends just before starting for dinner.
One of the friends was a musician, and Dr. King had just asked him to play a Negro spiritual, "Precious Lord, Take My Hand," at a rally that was to have been held two hours later in support of striking Memphis sanitation men.
Paul Hess, assistant administrator at St. Joseph's Hospital, where Dr. King died despite emergency surgery, said the minister had "received a gunshot wound on the right side of the neck, at the root of the neck, a gaping wound."
"He was pronounced dead at 7:05 P.M. Central standard time (8:05 P.M. New York time) by staff doctors," Mr. Hess said. "They did everything humanly possible."
Dr. King's mourning associates sought to calm the people they met by recalling his messages of peace, but there was widespread concern by law enforcement officers here and elsewhere over potential reactions.
In a television broadcast after the curfew was ordered here, Mr. Holloman said, "rioting has broken out in parts of the city" and "looting is rampant."
Dr. King had come back to Memphis Wednesday morning to organize support once again for 1,300 sanitation workers who have been striking since Lincoln's Birthday. Just a week ago yesterday he led a march in the strikers' cause that ended in violence. A 16-year-old Negro was killed, 62 persons were injured and 200 were arrested.
Yesterday Dr. King had been in his second-floor room- Number 306- throughout the day. Just about 6 P.M. he emerged, wearing a silkish-looking black suit and white shirt.
Solomon Jones Jr., his driver, had been waiting to take him by car to the home of the Rev. Samuel Kyles of Memphis for dinner. Mr. Jones said later he had observed, "It's cold outside, put your topcoat on," and Dr. King had replied, "O.K., I will."
Two Men in Courtyard
Dr. King, an open-faced, genial man, leaned over a green iron railing to chat with an associate, Jesse Jackson, standing just below him in a courtyard parking lot:
"Do you know Ben?" Mr. Jackson asked, introducing Ben Branch of Chicago, a musician who was to play at the night's rally.
"Yes, that's my man!" Dr. King glowed.
The two men recalled Dr. King's asking for the playing of the spiritual. "I really want you to play that tonight," Dr. King said, enthusiastically.
The Rev. Ralph W. Abernathy, perhaps Dr. King's closest friend, was just about to come out of the motel room when the sudden loud noise burst out.
Dr. King toppled to the concrete second-floor walkway. Blood gushed from the right jaw and neck area. His necktie had been ripped off by the blast.
"He had just bent over," Mr. Jackson recalled later. "If he had been standing up, he wouldn't have been hit in the face.
Policemen 'All Over'
"When I turned around," Mr. Jackson went on, bitterly, "I saw police coming from everywhere. They said, 'where did it come from?' And I said, 'behind you.' The police were coming from where the shot came."
Mr. Branch asserted that the shot had come from "the hill on the other side of the street."
"When I looked up, the police and the sheriff's deputies were running all around," Mr. Branch declared.
"We didn't need to call the police," Mr. Jackson said. "They were here all over the place."
Mr. Kyles said Dr. King had stood in the open "about three minutes."
Mr. Jones, the driver, said that a squad car with four policemen in it drove down the street only moments before the gunshot. The police had been circulating throughout the motel area on precautionary patrols.
After the shot, Mr. Jones said, he saw a man "with something white on his face" creep away from a thicket across the street.
Someone rushed up with a towel to stem the flow of Dr. King's blood. Mr. Kyles said he put a blanket over Dr. King, but "I knew he was gone." He ran down the stairs and tried to telephone from the motel office for an ambulance.
Mr. Abernathy hurried up with a second larger towel.
Police With Helmets
Policemen were pouring into the motel area, carrying rifles and shotguns and wearing helmets.
But the King aides said it seemed to be 10 or 15 minutes before a Fire Department ambulance arrived.
Dr. King was apparently still living when he reached the St. Joseph's Hospital operating room for emergency surgery. He was borne in on a stretcher, the bloody towel over his head.
It was the same emergency room to which James H. Meredith, first Negro enrolled at the University of Mississippi, was taken after he was ambushed and shot in June, 1965, at Hernando, Miss., a few miles south of Memphis; Mr. Meredith was not seriously hurt.
Outside the emergency room some of Dr. King's aides waited in forlorn hope. One was Chauncey Eskridge, his legal adviser. He broke into sobs when Dr. King's death was announced.
"A man full of life, full of love, and he was shot," Mr. Eskridge said. "He had always lived with that expectation- but nobody ever expected it to happen."
But the Rev. Andrew Young, executive director of Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference, recalled there had been some talk Wednesday night about possible harm to Dr. King in Memphis.
Mr. Young recalled: "He said he had reached the pinnacle of fulfillment with his nonviolent movement, and these reports did not bother him."
Mr. Young believed that the fatal shot might have been fired from a passing car. "It sounded like a firecracker," he said.
In a nearby building, a newsman who had been watching a television program thought, however, that "it was a tremendous blast that sounded like a bomb."
There were perhaps 15 persons in the motel courtyard area when Dr. King was shot, all believed to be Negroes and Dr. King's associates.
Past the courtyard is a small empty swimming pool. Then comes Mulberry Street, a short street only three blocks away from storied Beale Street on the fringe of downtown Memphis.
Fire Station Nearby
On the other side of the street is a six-foot brick restraining wall, with bushes and grass atop it and a hillside going on to a patch of trees. Behind the trees is a rusty wire fence enclosing backyards of two-story brick and frame houses.
At the corner at a Butler Street is a newish-looking white brick fire station.
Police were reported to have chased a late-model blue or white car through Memphis and north to Millington. A civilian in another car that had a citizens band radio was also reported to have pursued the fleeing car and to have opened fire on it.
The police first cordoned off an area of about five blocks around the Lorraine Motel, chosen by Dr. King for his stay here because it is Negro-owned. The two-story motel is an addition to a small two-story hotel in a largely Negro area.
Mayor Henry Loeb had ordered a curfew here after last week's disorder, and National Guard units had been on duty for five days until they were deactivated Wednesday.
Last night the Mayor reinstated the curfew at 6:35 and declared:
"After the tragedy which has happened in Memphis tonight, for the protection of all our citizens, we are putting the curfew back in effect. All movement is restricted except for health or emergency reasons."
Governor Ellington, calling out the National Guard and pledging all necessary action by the state to prevent disorder, announced:
"For the second time in recent days, I most earnestly ask the people of Memphis and Shelby County to remain calm. I do so again tonight in the face of this most regrettable incident.
"Every possible action is being taken to apprehend the person or persons responsible for committing this act.
"We are also taking precautionary steps to prevent any acts of disorder. I can fully appreciate the feelings and emotions which this crime has aroused, but for the benefit of everyone, all of our citizens must exercise restraint, caution and good judgment."
National Guard planes flew over the state to bring in contingents of riot-trained highway patrolmen. Units of the Arkansas State Patrol were deputized and brought into Memphis.
Assistant Chief Bartholomew early this morning said that unidentified persons had shot from rooftops and windows at policemen eight or 10 times. He said bullets had shattered one police car's windshield, wounding two policemen with flying glass. They were treated at the same hospital where Dr. King died.
Sixty arrests were made for looting, burglary and disorderly conduct, chief Bartholomew said.
Numerous minor injuries were reported in four hours of clashes between civilians and law enforcement officers. But any serious disorders were under control by 11:15 P.M., Chief Bartholomew said. Early this morning streets were virtually empty except for patrol cars riding without headlights on.
Once Stabbed in Harlem
In his career Dr. King had suffered beatings and blows. Once- on Sept. 20, 1958- he was stabbed in a Harlem department store in New York by a Negro woman later adjudged insane.
That time he underwent a four-hour operation to remove a steel letter opener that had been plunged into his upper left chest. For a time he was critical list, but he told his wife, while in the hospital, "I don't hold any bitterness toward this woman."
In Memphis, Dr. King's chief associates met in his room after he died. They included Mr. Young, Mr. Abernathy, Mr. Jackson, the Rev. James Bevel and Hosea Williams.
They had to step across a drying pool of Dr. King's blood to enter. Someone had thrown a crumpled pack of cigarettes into the blood.
After 15 minutes they emerged. Mr. Jackson looked at the blood. He embraced Mr. Abernathy.
"Stand tall!" somebody exhorted.
"Murder! Murder!" Mr. Bevel groaned. "Doc said that's not the way."
"Doc" was what they often called Dr. King.
Then the murdered leader's aides said they would go on to the hall where tonight's rally was to have been held. They wanted to urge calm upon the mourners.
Some policemen sought to dissuade them.
But eventually the group did start out, with a police escort.
At the Federal Bureau of Investigation office here, Robert Jensen, special agent in charge, said the F.B.I. had entered the murder investigation at the request of Attorney General Ramsey Clark.
Last night Dr. King's body was taken to the Shelby County morgue, according to the police. They said it would be up to Dr. Derry Francisco, county medical examiner, to order further disposition.
Herodotus, a Greek historian, wrote a history of the known world 2,440 years ago. It is the oldest book we have where a person we would call White talks at length about black-skinned people.
Three things set him apart from the way Whites talk about Blacks in our time:
“The Ethiopians to whom Cambyses sent these gifts are reputed to be the tallest and most beautiful of all peoples.” (3.20)
The incomplete list of people with black skin in Herodotus:
Other Africans: Herodotus talks about the people who live along the coast between Egypt and Carthage (4.168-180) and along the caravan route that goes west across the Sahara (4.181-199). He does not bring up their skin colour, but remarks on the long hair of those who live along the coast. Most of them would have been Berbers.
In Africa, Herodotus visited Egypt and, just to the west, Cyrene. The rest he knows about from asking questions, particularly in Egypt.
Cicero called Herodotus the “Father of History”. Plutarch called him the “father of lies”. Herodotus felt his duty was to report what he had seen and heard. He expresses doubts about some of what he reports, but puts it out there to let readers come to their own conclusions.
Source: Herodotus, “History” (425 BC). See above for book and section numbers.
See also:
Hollywood Acredits the Memes : Billie Kyles - The Witness in Room 306 from Spike EP on Vimeo.
"Because you know, that was a dum-dum bullet...." - The Liar Rev. Billie Kyles
"Philip Mellanson, a professor and author, testified that Memphis Police Inspector Sam Evans, now deceased, told him that he ordered tactical units away from the Lorraine at the request of a specific "Memphis Minister" associated with Dr. King, whom he named.
The notion that the "Memphis Minister" was involved in the assassination and inadvertently revealed his participation during a public speech is far-fetched.
We confronted the "Memphis Minister" with the accusation and he denied it.
