Early morning, April 4

Shots ring out, in the Memphis sky...


A measure of America's trauma is that it is no longer even possible to imagine how it could raise up a Dr King. It's like a fairy tale liberals tell themselves, of a golden age of activism and raised consciousness. William Pepper, who represented the King family in the civil trial which found for conspiracy, writes in Orders to Kill that "For one bright moment back there in the late 1960s we actually believe that we could change our country. We had identified the enemy. We saw it up close and we had its measure - and we were very hopeful that we would prevail."

Imagine today, hoping such a thing.

A constriction of hope is the legacy of three headshots two generations ago. A ceiling for what is possible is now acknowledged (Darn, they stole another one. Oh well - Hillary in '08!) even as the ceiling grinds down until simply standing upright becomes an act of defiance. Like a dog whose spirit has been broken, Americans have had rebellion beaten out them. They know what happens to those who bite, as well as bark. The bed is made and the little yappy dog is lying in it, head tucked under its paw.

That's the price of letting them get away with it.



See the men pointing? They're not pointing to the bathroom of Jim's Grill, where James Earl Ray allegedly stood on his tippy toes to fire a single kill shot. The bathroom is level with the balcony. The men are pointing instead to the rooftop.

See the man kneeling? He was first to Dr King's side. He checked him for vital signs. He is Marrell McCollough, an undercover agent of the Memphis Police Department, Intelligence Division, who had infiltrated a local civil rights organization. On June 11, 1967, McCollough had been recalled to military service and assigned to the Memphis PD from the 111th Military Intelligence Group. After the assassination, he acted as an agent provocateur, resulting in the conviction of a number of black activists. Soon after that, he joined the CIA.

Pepper writes in An Act of State, his account of the King trial which, it must be said again, found for conspiracy, that Lloyd Jowers claimed "there was at least one, and probably up to three meetings in Jim's Grill to prepare for the assassination":

While he maintained that he did not sit in on all these planning sessions, he remembered them taking place and recalled most of the participants. They included his old, now deceased friend John Barger - by then an MPD inspector - and undercover police officer Marrell McCollough, whose military intelligence role was unknown to Jowers. At an earlier time, Barger had brought McCollough to the grill and introduced him as his new sidekick. In his 1977 testimony to the HSCA McCollough had denied any intelligence role at the time of the assassination. Now with the CIA, McCollough was interviewed in April 1997 by an ABC Prime Time Live producer. He confirmed that he knew Lloyd Jowers. When asked about Jowers implicating him in the King assassination he said he had no comment and put the phone down.




See the man smirking? From the White House transcript of January 21, 2002, ironically titled "President Honors Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.":

THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you all very much for coming. Mrs. King, thanks for this beautiful portrait. I can't wait to hang it. (Laughter.)

Does the man know what he's saying? The video is here. Watch the pregnant pause and the glint in his eye. The laughter is anticipated. He knows what he's saying. And he knows he's gotten away with it again.

The radio preacher asks a good question in Bob Dylan's film, Masked and Anonymous: "What did Martin Luther King get out of the whole thing? A boulevard?"

Keep pointing to the rooftops.