Has Martin Luther King's Family Been Bamboozled by William Pepper?

CNN is going to re-air its special on the Martin Luther King assassination tonight and tomorrow. Yesterday, I wrote a diary documenting how CNN mischaracterized James Earl Ray and focused on unsubstantiated conspiracy theories. Because I admire Martin and Coretta Scott King so much, I feel compelled to do a follow-up while the interest in King’s life and death is so high. So today I would like to explore William Pepper, the man who has wormed his way into King’s legacy and seems intent on doing irreparable harm to it.

For anyone who’s taken an interest in the King assassination, they’ve no doubt come across one of Pepper’s two books on the subject. There are few books as crazy as these. Pepper dredges up every conspiracy theory ever imagined in his attempt to clear his client, James Earl Ray. Pepper’s list of those involved in King’s assassionation include the FBI, the CIA, the Mephis PD, Army Intelligence, Special Forces, the government’s Special Operations Group, Office of Security, its Domestic Operations Division, the Mafia and organized crime, the Secret Service, DEA, and big oil.

Now I understand that many in the African-American community have been duped by this man, members of the King family themselves, but I must object to giving this man a stage, the way CNN does in their special. In my opinion, William Pepper is an opportunist who seems intent on dividing the African-American community.

In 1988 Pepper became James Earl Ray’s lawyer. He then proceeded to pursue “all possible avenues through the courts to obtain justice and free James”. In the process he paints Ray a victim and claims, “The assassination of Martin Luther King and its coverup extends far and wide into all levels of government and public service (page xxvi). He then proceeds to rip apart everyone associated with the King family and the Civil Rights movement, along with every possible level of government. Sound familiar? It should. It’s basically the 1960’s platform of the John Birch Society.

Here’s some evidence of Pepper’s real intent from his book “Orders to Kill”;

In August there were an additional thirty-three riots which occurred in thirty-two cities in twenty-two states. Dr. King was at the center of it all. The leader most respected by those violent teenagers was not Stokely Carmichael nor H. Rap Brown but Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (page xxiv)

After taking credit for moving Dr. King to his postion on Vietnam by an article he wrote for Ramparts Magazine Pepper tries to tear down all of King’s allies;

Old friends (such as Phil Randolph and Bayard Rustin) either refused to comment publicly or disassociated themselves from King’s position. I noted Dr. King’s increasing pessimism that resulted from continued sniping from civil rights leaders like Roy Wilkins of the NAACP and Whitney Young of the National Urban League. (We didn’t know at the time that Wilkins was meeting and working with the FBI’s assistant director, Cartha DeLoach throughout the period.) Even some of King’s closest longstanding personal advisors were opposed to the speech. Five days before the demonstration, the NAACP board of directors passed a resolution attacking King’s effort to link the peace and civil rights movements. Martin said to me in a moment of frustration, “They’re all going to turn against me now, but still we must press on. You and the others must not only be steadfast, but constantly so” (pages 6-7).

Please reread Pepper’s words carefully. Within the first ten pages he has attacked just about everybody of importance in the Civil Rights movement. The Oxford lawyer has painted himself as King’s true friend and confidant and claims that the King family should be suspect of everyone else around them.

In Pepper’s own words there are groups involved in “the collection of information on private citizens and groups through the interception and reading of mail, and the placement of informants and covert operators in dissenting organiziations” (page 9). It is logical then that we should also question Pepper’s real intent. Let’s continue;

The combination of opposition to the war and a call for redistribution of the nation’s wealth served to increase King’s unpopularity with the government. It also antagonized segments of the black and white middle class as well as the black church. No doubt it confirmed the belief held by certain public and private forces that King was a serious threat to the very public order and system of the U.S. government (page 10).

Did he really just attack the black church? Does the image of a Trojan Horse come to mind?

Pepper has carefully intertwined himself into King’s family affairs so it’s instructive to learn what he thinks of another great family that has been systematically attacked;

That evening, Robert Kennedy invited a number of us to a gathering in his hotel suite. I did not go– I regarded the senator’s politically motivated actions as distasteful. I had long ago come to expect that from the Kennedy’s… (page 36)

Wow, the King’s can’t trust anybody, can they? Except for Pepper, that is. Would you pass up an opportunity to have a private meeting with Robert Kennedy in 1968? Very strange indeed.

Throughout the book, Pepper implicates many people, except James Earl Ray, of course. Strangely, there’s a theme here too;

She described the man (the assassin) as black (page 94). It was a nigger (page 95). It was a nigger who did it. “Yeah, it was a nigger” (page 96) Many of the black people who had been in the grill at the time of the shooting had never been identified (page 100). Coy saw that the man (running away) was black (page 253). I was aware of a witness who saw a black man in the room James had rented (page 322).

Eventually Pepper was pinned down and had to choose who exactly did do the shooting. Suddenly, all the flak about J. Edgar Hoover, Carlos Marcello, Raoul, and all the rest was irrevelent. Pepper claims that Lloyd Jowers did it. Yes, it’s as pathetic as that. I’m not going to get into the ridiculous arguments that Pepper makes to convict an old man who happened to be in the area at the time while absolving a man who had bought the gun found at the scene, who stayed in the room which everyone pointed to as where the gunshots came from, who was caught escaping the country at an airport with a loaded weapon and who freely confessed his guilt in open court, but you’re free to follow Pepper down his rabbit hole if you so choose.

Here’s the way Pepper depicts some of King’s other associates;

Her attention was in particular drawn to Jesse Jackson whom she said had one foot on the first step of the stairway looking up to the balcony while bent over “…putting something into a suit bag” (page 246).

The FBI’s paid informant on the SCLC’s executive staff was its comptroller, James Harrison, who had joined the organization in Octobeer 1964, working directly under Ralph Abernathy’s supervision (page 158).

Why had (Reverend Billy) Kyles lied? Was he simply trying to boost his stock as a civil rights leader by establishing himself as important enough to have been close to King just before his death? (I) found it curious that though he lived locally, Kyles had taken room 312 on April 3 and 4 (page 160).

Bet you didn’t know that Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson were in on the assassination, did you? It gets worse;

Davis maintained that in early 1968 he became aware of a plot to kill Dr. King which involved a local Birmingham doctor/gunrunner named Gus Prosch, a Mafia-connected man named Frank Liberto from Memphis and also, incredibly, King’s close friend Ralph Abernathy and Birmingham SCLC leader Fred Shuttlesworth. Davis said he observed Abernathy and Shuttlesworth meeting with Prosch and Liberto on two occassions in the parking lot of the Gulas Lounge in Birmingham, and that late on the afternoon of April 3 Prosch actually showed him the gun that he said was to be used in the killing (page 134).

If Pepper was willing to print these allegations against Abernathy, a pastor and one of King’s closest friends, what boundaries does the man have? What could be Pepper’s possible motives? And if he’s willing to write such garbage, what is he willing to say off the record? Is it any wonder that the King family has withdrawn and look skeptically at everyone around them? Yet, they still trust Pepper. Very strange indeed.

As you watch CNN’s special, ask yourself why they misrepresent and sugarcoat James Earl Ray’s racist and neo-nazi background. While you’re watching, check out The Atlantic article that details Ray’s fascination with David Duke and which describes Jerry Ray’s racist past. Jerry Ray plays a prominent part on CNN’s broadcast. Ask yourself why CNN chose an avowed racist, like Jerry Ray, to tell the story of what it means to be Black in America? While you’re at it, ask yourself why CNN allows someone like William Pepper to spread wild conspiracy theories across America and the world.

I am saddened to have watched the King family’s reputation be discredited by their involvement with William Pepper. They have trusted a man not be trusted and have become a laughing stock with their embrace of his conspiracy theories. I hope that they will soon come to their senses and realize the wrong turn they took. Martin Luther King is an American hero and deserves better.

Aaron Dahl

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