Martin Luther King: Killing the Dream and Murder In Memphis
Killing the Dream and Murder In Memphis
Review Essay
Conspiracy theories have always been part of the history of the United States. No event can simply have one correct reason for its happening; there is always someone who believes something else. Every couple years something big happens that shocks the nation. As recently as the bombing of the World Trade Center Buildings and the Columbine High School shootings and back to the assassinations of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. holds a shady past of cover-ups and scandalous activities. Gerald Posner, author of Killing the Dream, and Mark Lane and Dick Gregory, authors of Murder in Memphis, both take a look at the assassination of King in their own separate way.
Gerald Posner does not try to prove whether there was one single situation that leads to the death of King, he gives facts to try to show how one situation is more probable than the others. His thesis is that if a conspiracy was taking place, it involved the Ray brothers rather than the FBI or another government agency. There are questionable circumstances in every possibility in the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Theorists have many different theories ranging from government involvement to the mysterious "Raul." Posner looks mainly at the theory of James Earl Ray and how it is most plausible and almost definite that he was the assassin but not that he necessarily worked alone.
The theories of possibility were all faulty in one way or another. To prove his thesis Posner simply needed to discard most of the main theories as well as investigate deep into the James Earl Ray theory. Through the use of witnesses, evidence, and his own personal investigation Gerald Posner put together an un-biases view of how each of the theories are wrong in their idea.
The theory of Raul" is one of an unintelligent man and how he was apparently framed by a mysterious man. The two worked together in a smuggling business. Raul told Ray to buy a gun and check into a certain room in a Memphis boarding house where he either: a. gave him the gun never to see him again or b. he gave him the gun and waited in the car only to rush away with Raul after hearing a shot had been fired. Using evidence from the trial...