wfn.org | Two United Methodist leaders close to MLK welcome verdict

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG>]

Dec. 16, 1999	News media contact: Joretta Purdue·(202)546-8722·Washington
10-21-31-71BP{673}

NOTE: File photographs of the Rev. James Lawson and the Rev. Joseph Lowery
are available.

By United Methodist News Service

Two United Methodist leaders and friends of the late Rev. Martin Luther King
Jr. welcome a Memphis, Tenn., jury's verdict that the civil rights leader's
assassination was the result of a conspiracy.

The Rev. James Lawson and the Rev. Joseph Lowery, both retired, say they
have waited a long time for this verdict.

 "The trial means that now in a Memphis courtroom, for the first time, a
wide range of witnesses, evidence and issues were brought before a jury in
relationship to the assassination of Dr. King," Lawson said. "This had never
been done. Therefore, there is now a historical record - the transcript of
the whole proceedings."  

The jury found on Dec. 8 that King's slaying on April 4, 1968, was the
result of a conspiracy and that James Earl Ray, who died in prison for the
crime, did not act alone. Witnesses during the trial testified that people
associated with government agencies were among those involved.

The case had been brought by the King family against Memphis café owner Loyd
Jowers, 73, who had claimed on television that he was part of the
conspiracy. The King family sought only $100 in damages, saying that their
purpose in pursuing the case was to correct historical accounts. The jury of
six white and six black people found Jowers guilty of participation in the
plot.

Lawson, now pastor emeritus of Holman United Methodist Church in Los
Angeles, was pastor of Centenary Methodist Church in Memphis at the time of
the killing. From 1960 to 1972, he was also director of nonviolent education
for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). As chair of the
strategy committee for the sanitation workers' strike in Memphis, he was the
person who invited King to Memphis to mediate, and he worked with King on
the timing of follow-up visits.

Lowery, with King, was one of the founders of the SCLC and was its president
for 21 years beginning in 1977. King served as its first president until his
death in 1968.

"A couple of years ago, we tried to persuade the Memphis district attorney
to grant Loyd Jowers immunity," Lowery recalled.  Jowers "had said that if
he were granted immunity, he would tell everything. He admitted a role in
passing on money, but that's about all he would say" without the immunity
that Memphis officials refused to give him, Lowery said. The retired
minister attributed that refusal to the lack of a hunger or thirst for truth
in Memphis.

Jowers had owned Jim's Grill, a restaurant across from the Lorraine Motel,
where King was shot. In a 1993 television interview, Jowers stated that,
acting on behalf of a St. Louis merchant with Mafia connections, he hired a
Memphis police officer to kill King by shooting from the bushes near the
cafe. Jowers has also said that Ray rented an upstairs room. 

Lawson asserted that Ray was tortured and coerced into making a confession.
"When the plea bargaining went through, I became persuaded, basically, that
for some reason we did not have a trial because they really did not have a
case against James Earl Ray that would stand up to the light of
cross-examination in a courtroom."

Lawson said he is pleased that Ray recanted the plea bargain and obtained
new lawyers to manage his appeals. "I've appreciated those people back in
'69 and the early '70s who, under great duress, went ahead, quietly
investigated and tried to unpack what happened, and how, and why, because
their investigations were the foundation for the trial that concluded this
past week in Memphis."

Last year, Ray died in prison of liver disease, still maintaining that he
had been framed. Lawson, who had become his prison pastor over the years,
conducted the memorial service in Nashville, Tenn. 

Lawson had helped raise money for investigations and appeals, and he was one
of more than 70 witnesses who testified at the recent trial.

Some witnesses testified that neither the Memphis police nor the FBI
questioned them, Lawson said. He named the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who was
present when King was assassinated, as one of those who were never asked
what they saw or heard.

"There were at least three other people who were on the spot who were never
interrogated," Lawson reported. He added that one neighbor saw a white man
get into a car and drive along the motel and depart without being stopped,
even though police already had blocked the intersection by the motel. Lawson
said that after pondering why these and other omissions occurred, he
concluded that it was because the FBI already had a scenario in place.

"We had wanted a trial because we had hoped the American people would get to
read the evidence themselves and therefore make up their own minds, which I
think is an essential quality of democracy," he said. "I have no doubt if
that could have happened, the American people would be outraged.

"The King family did not want to do this for the sake of getting revenge or
for getting anyone to be prosecuted or punished," Lawson said. They wanted
to get the whole story into the public arena, he explained.

Lowery said he thinks "the verdict of the trial is useful whether it has any
legal, judicial power or not. I think it's useful for history, although I
doubt that many historians will consider it a legitimate expression of the
judicial system. 

"But I think it's useful in that at least for the first time 12 people heard
evidence and reached a conclusion that most of us (in SCLC) have always
held, and that is that James Earl Ray had neither the mental nor fiscal
resources to plot, plan, stalk, kill and flee as it transpired."

Lowery asks who in 1968 had the technology to provide very creditable
passports and other credentials in other identities. Ray did not, Lowery
said. He doubted that Ray could even spell "computer," he said.

Ray "could never have pulled it off by himself," Lowery said. Killing King
with one shot at that distance required a sharpshooter, and sharpshooters
were in Memphis that day, he said. Lowery also noted that the police had
conflicting reports of a white Ford Mustang fleeing in all directions at
once. And, he said, police protection had been removed from the vicinity
before the shooting.

"We have reason to believe that there were figures in the FBI, in the
military and in the underworld" that were involved, Lowery said. The FBI had
been stalking King, he said. He also accused agents of dirty tricks that
included sending the fire department to a secluded apartment where King was
trying to write a paper and sending threats to his wife, Coretta.

Lowery said he thinks Ray was involved in the conspiracy but probably did
not pull the trigger. On this point, Lowery disagrees with the King family,
who has maintained that Ray was innocent. 

Lowery also believes that there were people in government who knew about the
assassination before it happened. "Oh, I don't think the president knew
about it," he said. "I doubt very much that {FBI Director) J. Edgar Hoover
did not know about it. I think he had to know. He hated Martin. ... He was
obsessed with his desire to destroy Martin." 

"Now there's a court transcript ... that gives a tremendous amount of
evidence that few people know anything about and names names," Lawson said.
"Even the chairman of the House (of Representatives) committee on the King
assassination, former Congressman Walter Fauntroy, came to the trial and
testified that the committee had been duped by the staff of the FBI and
others." 

Lawson said he knows of at least one congressman at the time who was
threatened with death if he did not go along with certain findings of the
investigation

"In the '60s because of the urban explosions that black people engaged in
out of their rage and anger - and not as a part of the movement, which some
people tried to pretend - great repression took place, and there were a lot
of killings that were officially done by various police departments, FBI and
perhaps military intelligence and CIA," Lawson declared.

As an example, he cited killings of Black Panthers all across the country in
so-called "police raids" in which officers said they were fired upon by
Panthers. In Southeast Asia, many Buddhist leaders, labor leaders,
non-Communists and others were being killed for opposing U.S. policy, he
said. 

"I'm just simply saying that the American people have to recognize that a
lot of covert killing has gone on," Lawson insisted.

"I think pursuing the murder of Dr. King is so important because we, the
American people, if we are going to make changes in our society, have to
have the right of peaceful assembly and peaceful protest and peaceful
redress without covert governmental organizations spying on us and turning
us into their enemies and demonizing us," he said.

"What they did in the '60s, in my judgment, has put the possibility of a
democratic society in real jeopardy. You have now what Martin King called
'chaos.'" As an example, Lawson said there are armed militias in 35 states
who do war games and "think many of us are enemies."

"There's no hunger or thirst for truth in the Justice Department around this
issue" of King's assassination, Lowery said. "It might come if President
Clinton decides to appoint a commission that has all the resources it needs
to deal with this." 

Lowery would also like Jowers to be granted immunity. "I still think Loyd
Jowers may know more than he is willing to say under the present
circumstances. He's afraid they'll indict him." 

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United Methodist News Service
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