9 January 2018 CHASING KING’S KILLER: THE HUNT FOR MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR’S ASSASSIN by James L. Swanson, Scholastic Press, January 2018, 384p., ISBN: 978-0-545-72333-6

“Rockets, moon shots

Spend it on the have nots

Money, we make it

Fore we see it you take it

Oh, make you wanna holler

The way they do my life”

-- Marvin Gaye, “Inner City Blues” (1971)

“Donald Trump blamed a faulty earpiece Monday for his repeated refusals to disavow the support of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke during a weekend interview.”

--David M. Jackson, USA Today, February 29, 2016

“Hillary Clinton said Trump embraced a ‘racist lie’ and it demonstrated a pattern that carried over from his business practices.

‘Donald started his career back in 1973 being sued by the Justice Department for racial discrimination because he would not rent apartments in one of his developments to African-Americans,’ she said.

That’s quite the charge, but is it true?

Yes. It turns out he was.”

--Steve Contorno, PolitiFact  September 27. 2016

“President Trump defended the white nationalists who protested in Charlottesville on Tuesday, saying they included ‘some very fine people,’ while expressing sympathy for their demonstration against the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee...Trump defended his slowness to condemn white nationalists and neo-Nazis after the melee in central Virginia, which ended in the death of one woman and injuries to dozens of others, and compared the tearing down of Confederate monuments to the hypothetical removal of monuments to the Founding Fathers.”

--Rosie Gray, The Atlantic, August 17, 2017

“‘What?’ Tonni squeals. ‘Don’t be tellin’ me this isn’t about black or white. It’s always about black or white, and if you don’t think so, it’s because you’re white.”

--James Howe, The Misfits (2001)

I can’t believe that eight years have passed since the publication of James L. Swanson’s memorable CHASING LINCOLN’S KILLER. In 2009, I wrote about that book:

“In the process of reading about the flight and pursuit of Booth and his co-conspirators, we get a great feel for how people lived 140+ years ago: the author fills the fast-moving story with enlightening details about technology, medicine, communications, transportation, politics, and administration of justice...CHASING LINCOLN'S KILLER will have readers asking, ‘Why can't all history books be this exciting?’"

All of those attributes that made CHASING LINCOLN’S KILLER a great read are present in CHASING KING’S KILLER.

CHASING KING’S KILLER begins with the story of the civil rights movement and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s rise to prominence. The author then turns his focus toward the assassin, James Earl Ray, a career criminal who had successfully escaped from a Missouri state penitentiary a year before he murdered Dr. King.

The book tells the minute-by-minute story of how King’s and Ray’s paths converged in 1968 Memphis.,  As the moment approaches, you just want to scream at everyone to get Dr. King off of that damned balcony!

After murdering Dr. King, James Earl Ray was on the run for two months before finally being captured in London. Details from the early part of the book, which tells about Dr. King and the Movement, help us grasp the roots of the tension that built up between President Johnson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and Dr. King’s close associates. Day after day, week after week, as the country impatiently awaited a capture, literally half of the FBI’s agents struggled unsuccessfully to make progress on identifying and tracking down Dr. King’s assassin.

Interestingly, the contrast in law enforcement technology--between 1968 and 2017--that the author depicts in CHASING KING’S KILLER frequently feels like more of a contrast than the difference--between 1865 and 2009--that Swanson portrayed in CHASING LINCOLN’S KILLER. It really highlights the technology of today to which we’ve so quickly become accustomed.

CHASING KING’S KILLER: THE HUNT FOR MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR’S ASSASSIN is, foremost, a riveting true story about the murder of a national hero and the subsequent manhunt for his killer. But below the surface is the story of the racism in America that just won’t die.

“I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

--Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King fought that racism and died from it. His work was far from complete and, fifty years later, economic justice for people of color in America is still sorely lacking. I hated the years of personal attacks against President Obama, and believe that the 2016 election was, in good measure, a backlash against those eight years of having a black man in the White House.

As we approach what would have been Dr. King’s 89th birthday, it’s appropriate to ask: When will America finally solve its racial problems? CHASING KING’S KILLER: THE HUNT FOR MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR’S ASSASSIN is a great read and an outstanding resource for young people of all colors to learn how we got here.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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