Legacy of Secrecy (98 page)

Zimbabwe) as soon as possible. In testimony, Ray said that “as a con, he

knew phony passports were generally available for about a thousand

dollars.” Instead, the fugitive Ray used the money to purchase the car

and remain in the US, when he could have bought a fake passport and

still had enough money to leave North America. Ray would remain in

Birmingham, apparently “on ice,” waiting for his next assignment for

more than a month.

Chapter Thirty-nine

Alabama remained a bastion of segregation in 1967, but neighboring

states like Georgia were undergoing a transformation that mirrored

America’s troubled, sometimes violent progress on issues of race.

Advances in the struggle for civil rights were used by some politicians

and other leaders to polarize large segments of the population along

racial lines, laying the groundwork for more violence. The two national

leaders who were the focus of the most extreme emotions on the issue

of civil rights were Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

By the summer of 1967, Bobby Kennedy had recovered from the con-

troversies that had dogged him earlier in the year, and was once again

ahead of President Lyndon B. Johnson in polls for the 1968 presidential

race. However, Bobby continued to publicly support LBJ while resist-

ing pressure from his friends and advisors to enter the race. Despite

his growing differences with LBJ on Vietnam and the need for faster

progress on programs to help the poor, Bobby was unable to explain

clearly to advisors why he was unwilling to run against LBJ. He couldn’t

tell them that while Jack Anderson’s revelations about his 1963 Cuban

operations had stopped, Bobby didn’t know what other information

about him LBJ might have turned up in their aftermath. Bobby was

reluctant to find out by running against LBJ and potentially stirring up

the matter again.1

However, Bobby’s increasing focus on civil rights and poverty in the

wake of his Mississippi trip was slowly increasing his popularity, not

just among minorities but also with poor whites and even liberals, who

had long viewed Bobby with suspicion. Bobby’s determination to aid

the poor only increased when the New York senator found appalling

poverty among migrant laborers in his own state. Since 1966, Bobby had

championed the cause of California migrant leader Cesar Chavez, devel-

oping with Chavez the type of personal rapport and friendship Bobby

had with Harry Williams. While Bobby’s meetings with Cesar Chavez

in California garnered headlines and resentment from conservative farm

488

LEGACY OF SECRECY

owners, Bobby’s little-publicized discovery of horrible conditions in

New York showed him that the plight of the poor was a national problem

that needed national solutions. To Bobby, migrant-worker issues, civil

rights, poverty, and even Vietnam were all one cause—that of standing

up for the less fortunate who were held down by laws or force.2 Though

Bobby was not yet willing to challenge LBJ openly for the presidency,

he could use his considerable powers of publicity to draw attention to

the issues he cared about.

However, Bobby’s growing public status as a champion of the down-

trodden only fueled the hatred directed at him by the far Right and

extreme conservatives. These hardliners still had roles in mainstream

politics and large corporations, not only in the South, but also in other

regions of the country. Developments in the summer of 1967 gave them

new ammunition to use in stoking the racial fear and anger that they

frequently directed toward Bobby Kennedy and civil rights leaders like

Martin Luther King. LBJ appointed Thurgood Marshall, a key player in

the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision against segregated schools,

to be the first black member of the court. Activist groups like the Black

Panthers became more prominent, and the images of gun-toting black

militants rattled segments of the white population. Young black men in

the inner cities felt increasingly impatient for change after promises of

Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” antipoverty programs, and they were

often receptive to more radical leaders like H. Rap Brown, the new head

of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Brown turned his

back on Dr. King’s nonviolence, reportedly telling a Black Power confer-

ence that blacks should “wage guerilla war on the honkie white man”

and declaring, “I love violence.”3

For a variety of reasons, violence exploded in many of the nation’s

inner cities in the summer of 1967, most prominently in Newark and in

Detroit, site of the most deadly race riot in US history until that point,

with a death toll of thirty-eight and damage estimated at half a billion

dollars. According to one account, “racial strife . . . erupted in 70 cities,

including Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia, Birmingham, New York, [and]

Cincinnati.”4 Often overlooked are the race riots that summer in Tampa,

Florida (in June), and in Memphis (on July 20)—along with those in

Atlanta, they would have unexpected consequences for Martin Luther

King.

For Georgia white supremacist Joseph Milteer, the summer 1967 race

riots would have been both a blessing and a curse. In the short term,

they might have boosted contributions from his supporters. While the

racial troubles in Atlanta in the summer of 1967 didn’t rise to the level of

full-scale race riots (as the city had experienced the previous summer),

riots in neighboring states like Tennessee, North Carolina, and Florida

would have worried the white, blue-collar workers Milteer targeted, a

fear he would have been able to exploit.

On the other hand, the riots would have increased the pressure on

Milteer from his most extremist longtime contributors, who wanted

to see Martin Luther King killed. Though Dr. King received a steady

stream of death threats, there had been no recent public attempts on his

life—nothing that Milteer could claim credit for. Milteer was sixty-five

years old, and the money he collected for his anti-King, anti–civil rights

efforts supplemented his slowly dwindling inheritance. The money

Milteer had accumulated, plus his interest in the land his associates

had purchased just across the Georgia border in North Carolina, would

give him a financial cushion in his old age. By all accounts, Milteer was

a true believer who wasn’t just pushing his brand of racial hatred for

money, but his golden years would be a nightmare if his most faithful

contributors came to feel he’d bilked them. Some of his supporters were

members of violent groups like the Klan, and Milteer knew what could

happen to the targets of their wrath.

Before examining the steps taken by Milteer and his associates that led

to King’s death, it’s important to put their actions in context by taking a

snapshot of the racial politics of the time. Race relations and civil rights

underwent a rapid transformation in the 1960s, with some racial condi-

tions affecting the nation as a whole, while others were specific to parts

of the South, like New Orleans, Atlanta, and Memphis. What happened

in those cities in 1967 and early 1968 would cause Dr. King’s assassina-

tion to be planned at that particular time and place.

In 1967, the majority of the country—even well-educated people

and authority figures—held views that are considered racist today. On

June 12, 1967, the day before LBJ appointed Thurgood Marshall to the

Supreme Court, the court finally struck down laws in sixteen states

barring interracial marriage. Many people today might be surprised

to learn that as recently as 1967, three-fourths of the American public

was against interracial marriage. The language of the Virginia Supreme

Court justices, whose decision upholding the ban was reversed by the US

Supreme Court, sounds shocking in hindsight. The supposedly distin-

guished Virginia justices said the ban was needed to stop “the corruption

490

LEGACY OF SECRECY

of blood” that might create “a mongrel breed of citizens” resulting in

“the obliteration of racial pride” for the white race.5

Attitudes like that among mainstream leaders make it easy to see

why the civil rights stands of Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, LBJ,

and JFK were considered so groundbreaking—and, by some, danger-

ous. The anti–civil rights John Birch Society had begun a slow decline

after Barry Goldwater sought its support prior to his landslide loss in

the 1964 presidential election, but many prominent citizens in the South

and elsewhere were still members of groups like the loosely organized

White Citizens’ Councils. By 1967, some chapters were calling them-

selves simply Citizens’ Councils, but their anti–civil rights, anti–Martin

Luther King stance remained. The White Citizens’ Councils have been

described as “the Klan in suits and ties,” and David Halberstam said

their “members are respectable citizens of the community.” That was

especially true in the Deep South, where the Klan took on an increasingly

blue-collar bent as its membership declined in the 1960s. Membership

in the White Citizens’ Councils also declined after its peak in the 1950s,

but to a lesser extent, and it remained acceptable in many cities for

prominent professionals and officials to be members.6

Though Halberstam points out that while the Councils gave the

appearance of a “civic luncheon club [with] speakers from the ministry

and the universities,” their essential message was often similar to

Stoner’s and the Klan’s. An Atlanta Citizens’ Council member stated

that Jews were responsible for the Holocaust and a synagogue bomb-

ing because they worshipped “the Baal of Socialism and Communism,”

while a Memphis member said, “The NAACP is the worst organization

to come along since the one that crucified Christ.”7

Most White Citizens’ Council chapters, Birchers, and the Klan were

avid supporters of former Alabama governor George Wallace, who in

1967 was gearing up for a presidential run the following year. While

Wallace didn’t think he could win, he thought he might be able to gain

enough electoral votes to throw the election to the House of Representa-

tives, where his block of votes could allow him to be a kingmaker.8

However, Wallace and his supporters present a more complex pic-

ture than appears on the surface. Most people don’t realize that the

NAACP supported Wallace when he first ran for governor—and lost.

He switched his position, sought the support of the Klan and other

racist groups, and won. Thus, Wallace’s racist policies may have been

more pragmatic pandering than his sincere beliefs. This notion raises an

important point in the story of King’s murder: Many professional racists

also had a strong profit motive.9

According to one survey of the time, a quarter of Wallace’s supporters

had an unexpected second choice for president: Bobby Kennedy. Those

people were supporting Wallace not necessarily because he espoused

racism, but because he was an alternative to a political and economic

system they felt had failed them. Their attitude resulted from seeing

political and business leaders use racism to distract working families

and the rural populace from issues like better schools, unions, improved

access to medical care, and decent housing. For decades, those people

were taught to blame black people, instead of unresponsive leaders, for

their problems, but now a quarter of them were finally receptive to a

solution beyond racism—hence their admiration for Bobby Kennedy.10

While it was openly acceptable to be a Wallace supporter in most parts

of the country, Joseph Milteer aligned himself with a gamut of groups,

including some that advocated more extreme forms of racism and vio-

lence. Like the prominent lawyer and the dentist who were his partners

in the auto workers’ scam and the King plot, Milteer belonged to the

Atlanta White Citizens’ Council, considered almost respectable in the

city (it
was
respectable in most other Southern towns). Yet Milteer also

served as a recruiter for the racist and anti-Semitic National States Rights

Party of J. B. Stoner, an organization shunned by polite society.11

Stoner, who would later be convicted for the 1958 bombing of a black

church, had caused whites to riot against blacks in 1964 in St. Augus-

tine, Florida, following an appearance by Martin Luther King. After

Dr. King’s murder, Stoner would be James Earl Ray’s third attorney

and would employ one of Ray’s brothers for a time. The FBI and Con-

gressional investigators looked at Stoner in King’s assassination, but

no evidence ever surfaced that connected him to the murder. However,

Stoner was in the perfect position to be used by Joseph Milteer after

King’s murder, as a conduit of instructions and information.

Joseph Milteer also had associates in the higher levels of the various

Klan groups, which were responsible for most of the racial violence in