Title: Hellhound On His Trail
Rating: 5 Stars
This is the second time that I’ve read this book. Generally speaking, I’m a fan of narrative history. This very well might be my favorite read of this genre.
The book is broken up into three parts. The first part are the struggles that Martin Luther King goes through in the months preceding his assassination. At the same time, we follow a mysterious recent prison escapee as he meanders through his life until the two fitfully meet on April 4, 1969.
The second part is the FBI investigation. J Edgar Hoover detested Dr King, had him under regular surveillance, harassed him, including but not limited to sending him anonymous notes encouraging him to kill himself. In the immediate aftermath of his assassination, there were many riots in major cities. This was a crime of national importance that could only be handled with the resources of the FBI. Even though Hoover wanted no part of it, the Attorney General ordered the FBI to take over the investigation. To their credit, they did. It took immense resources and significant luck, but eventually they identified the assassin as James Earl Ray.
The third part is the manhunt. Ray, knowing that he was the target of our country’s biggest manhunt, was pretty much constantly on the run. He holed up in various places in the South, made a run to Canada, fled to England, went to Portugal, went back to England, and was trying to get to Belgium so that he could fly to the sanctuary of the white supremacist government of Rhodesia. He was picked up by Scotland Yard as he was trying to clear customs to get on his flight to Belgium.
All of these facts can be easily read on King’s or Ray’s wiki page. Hampton Sides uses a deep body of research and his literary skills to create a narrative fiction that will leave you on the edge of your seat. It’s seldom that I read a history where I can’t seem to help myself from reading the next chapter, and then the next chapter, and so on.
Dr King was at a significant crossroads in his life. Having been instrumental in the passing the significant civil rights bills, he began preparing to embark upon his next big project. In addition to opposing the Vietnam War, he wanted to broaden his movement to include poor people of all races. Although he still dominated his organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, younger, ambitious leaders such as Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson were trying to step up and take a larger role. At the same time, after the previous summer’s city riots, many were beginning to question Dr King’s approach of nonviolence. Many felt that Dr King was from a older phase of the civil rights movement and that time has passed him by. He wanted to re-establish his leadership position by leading a Poor People’s March to Washington DC to highlight the problems of poverty across all of America.
As this was unfolding, there was a strike by predominantly Black garbage workers in Memphis. At first, Dr King was just going to do a quick speech, but inspired by their passion and determination, he saw this as an opportunity to treat this both as a civil rights issue as well as an economic issue. His first march in Memphis ended in violence. Horrified that this violence was going to derail his plans for the Poor People’s March, he agreed to come back to Memphis for yet another march.
In all of this, the man known as Eric Galt was scuffling along at the edges of society. He spent some time in Puerto Vallarta. He moved to California. Weirdly, he took dancing lessons. He made a couple trips to the South. He joined the George Wallace presidential campaign as a volunteer. All along, he regularly read newspapers to keep current. Knowing that Dr King was going back to Memphis, Galt headed there with a newly purchased rifle. He rented a room at a boarding house that had excellent sight lines to the Lorraine motel room that Dr King was staying at. Seeing his chance, he took his shot and fled, ultimately invoking an international manhunt.
Hampton Sides maintains taut narrative suspense. Obviously, I know that Dr King gets assassinated by Ray. This is history. There can be no other conclusion. It’s telling that I became so consumed with the story that I found myself hoping that Ray would miss or that Dr King would leave the balcony and head out to his planned dinner. I found myself shattered all over again at the opportunities that were missed by Dr King’s tragic death.
Along with John and Robert Kennedy, Dr King’s assassination seemed incomprehensible. How could one lone gunman end such a significant life? So, along with Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan, various conspiracy theories have been built up around Ray. Ray, a manipulator, had enabled some of these conspiracies by referencing some shadowy Raoul character.
With Sides giving a day by day and at times nearly a minute by minute accounting of Ray’s time, he goes a long ways towards dispelling these far fetched theories. Even so, there are still some questions. He did spend several thousands of dollars on his travels. He did occasionally engage in mysterious long distance phone calls. However, Sides makes clear that these questions do not mean some deep conspiracy. It’s estimated that Ray made several thousand dollars selling drugs while he was in prison. Others that might have helped him or possibly provide funds to him include one of his brothers and an acquaintance that had publicly expressed interest in putting a price on Dr King’s head. Even if he had such low level support, there’s really no question that it was Ray, a known racist who had expressed hatred of Dr King, that had pulled the trigger.
Ray was born in a family of crime and squalor. Ray’s great-grandfather was hanged after killing six men. His uncle was a convicted rapist. Ray’s father abandoned the family. As a result, two of his siblings (including one that was mentally disabled) were given up for adoption. Two of his siblings died young. In the winter, they’d cannibalize their wooden house for heat until finally it collapsed. In addition to Ray, two of his brothers were convicts.
The tragic irony of all of this is that Dr King’s commitment to addressing the causes of poverty, regardless of race, was directly targeted at the multi-generational poverty that was experienced by the Ray family. Ray cut short the life of the one person that possibly could have changed the trajectory of families like his own.
dorkenstein 