Product Description

William Pepper was a young journalist, just back from Vietnam, when he first met Martin Luther King Jr. His photographs and first-hand accounts of the war prompted King's unflinching commitment to oppose it. On April 15, 1967, Pepper proposed an alternative to the re-election of Lyndon Johnson to a cheering New York crowd. Dr. Benjamin Spock was to be King's running mate highlighting an anti-poverty and antiwar agenda. A year later Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. The movement for social and economic change in the US has never been substantially, successfully revived.

Doubts raised from an initial ten- year investigation and hours of interrogations of James Earl Ray prompted Pepper to take up his case. The King family, persuaded by the growing evidence, joined his struggle in 1996. At the 1999 trial seventy witnesses under oath set out the details of the conspiracy and the jury took an hour to find for the King family. It was ruled that a wide-running conspiracy existed and that government agents were involved. The story was effectively buried.

An Act of State lays out, in hair-raising detail, the facts of the case as it evolved. These tell a tragic story of King's powerful and significant radicalism, government plans for his execution that involved the military and the FBI, media cover-ups, and the corporate forces that were already claiming their hold on the nation's polity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #128150 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Forget everything you think you know, Pepper insists. James Earl Ray did not pull the trigger. The journalist-turned-lawyer's previous title, Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King Jr., was more a prelude to this title than the final word. Twenty years after James Earl Ray was convicted, Pepper set out to clear him; in the process, he brought to light reams of evidence that were ignored in the original trial. The key to his case is Loyd Jowers, a bar owner who claims to have disposed of the murder weapon at the request of a local mob figure. Partially on the strength of the Orders to Kill material, Pepper won the support of King's wife and children, who brought Jowers and "unknown co-conspirators" to trial in a civil wrongful death suit in 1999. Dozens of witnesses contributed to a forceful, detailed case that accused the FBI, the CIA, the U.S. military, the Memphis police, and local and national organized crime leaders. After only an hour of deliberation, the jury found for the King family. The accusers, led by Pepper, cried vindication and fully expected to be at the center of one of the biggest news stories of the century. But the trial and the verdict barely registered in the media. Appalled by the silence that followed, Pepper remained determined to bring the details of his exhaustive probe and subsequent civil case to the public, and the result is this exacting book, dense with evidence and analysis of the murder. Pepper sets the tone by recalling the state of civil unrest in this country during the late 1960s and why King's radical activism was such a threat to government and corporate leaders. Simply put, Pepper claims those in power were scared to death of the mass mobilization King's Poor People's Campaign might have inspired. Pepper gradually introduces the vast cast of characters in a dizzying murder conspiracy that winds from a Memphis bar through the shadows of organized crime to the far reaches of national government. He carefully maps each player's place and role in the tangled web and doggedly tries to stick to a straightforward narrative. The number of unanswered questions complicates those efforts, but does not cloud the evidence that Ray was not the shooter. Pepper attempts nothing less than a rewrite of history, and a spurring of further investigation. While his moralizing epilogue on the deterioration of democracy is distracting, it is heartfelt, and honors Pepper's commitment to King's legacy.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
In 1978, Pepper began investigating the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. In this absorbing and detailed book, Pepper maintains that James Earl Ray was not the assassin. Instead, Pepper's investigation points to a conspiracy by the U.S. government and its military and intelligence organizations to silence King's growing criticism of the Vietnam War and his anti-poverty campaign. In part one, Pepper focuses on his early investigative efforts, including interviews with several witnesses to King's murder. Pepper also details his efforts to get a new trial for convicted assassin James Ray, and the cooperation by the King family in that effort. Part two details the 1999 trial, several years after Ray's death, and new testimony and forensic evidence pointing to government involvement in the assassination and cover-up. Pepper roundly criticizes the U.S. media for its lack of coverage of the trial; he also takes to task the 1998 report by the U.S. Attorney General, an investigation undertaken by the Clinton administration in lieu of the independent investigation requested by Pepper and the King family. Pepper also explores the promise for social change represented by King's aborted anti-war and anti-poverty campaigns. Readers--particularly conspiracy buffs--interested in the details surrounding the King assassination will enjoy this passionate, disturbing, and well-researched book. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Argues for the ultimate power of the dream and of a truth that cannot be denied. -- Kweisi Mfume, President and CEO of the NAACP

By far the most thorough critique...should be carefully read by every serious student of King's life and his tragic death. -- Professor Clayborne Carson, Director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project, Stanford University

If any students of Dr. King want to be fully informed as to historically what happened, read this book. -- Ed McCarthy, Hudson Valley Black Press, 1 April 2004

Provid[es] our family with a long-sought sense of closure and peace, which had been denied by official disinformation and cover-ups. -- Coretta Scott King

Customer Reviews

A Clouded Light
I'm new to the details of the King assassination, and though I lived through that period the details, as I recall, were never made clear unlike the previous JFK murder. It was pretty clear, however, that the killing was a coordinated effort by shadowy background forces, and not even the government pressed its usual lone assassin case very hard. The result was a lot of loose ends awaiting real investigation. This is Pepper's second book on the topic. I wish I had read the first one before picking up this one, because An Act of State does not serve well as an introduction. Instead of summarizing the official story and introducing the principals, the opening chapters plunge us into subsequent developments, which for newcomers like myself risks confusion from the outset. Moreover the work as a whole is neither well organized nor cogently edited creating additional obstacles for the uninitiated. Nonetheless, there are so many fascinating factual aspects brought to light by Pepper, that the book stands as a must read for those interested in America's hidden history. So for those with a skimpy background such as myself, either prep with a better intoduction or be prepared to sort through as best you can. The results speak volumes.

News fit to print, but...
This is the account of King lawyer William Pepper's pursuit of the facts in the King assassination, and his denouement of the evidence, centering on the successful civil suit of Lloyd Jowers, a local resident with a business across the street from the motel murder site and with a connection to the murder, which led to the unraveling. The credentials of the ringleaders and perpetrates are very impressive indeed and include J. Edgar ('the' J. Edgar),the CIA, FBI, Memphis Police Department and assorted sordid Mob hoodlums. That's quite a team. But then the motive appears to have centered on the decision by Martin Luther King to bring the focus of his movement on poverty and the Vietnam War. It took the jury one hour to decide that:
1. Yes--Lloyd Jowers participated in a conspiracy to do harm to Martin Luther King

2. Yes--Others including governmental agencies were parties to this conspiracy as alleged by the defendant.
This should have been headline news, but the story never survived, and it wasn't news to me until I stumbled on the book in the library, and I read a lot of books.
I hope you find out too.

Knowledge is a Burden
Coretta Scott King recommends this book "to everyone who seeks the truth about Dr. King's assassination." I do as well, and furthermore, I recommend it to the majority of Americans who would rather NOT know the circumstances and reality concerning MLKJr's death. These are sad times when the government can bestow a memorial day upon a fallen hero, but continue to deny the reality of their own complicity and possible participation.