Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. - Allegations of Conspiracy

Allegations of Conspiracy

The King family and others believe that the assassination was carried out by a conspiracy involving the US government, and that James Earl Ray was a scapegoat. This conclusion was affirmed by a jury in a 1999 civil trial.

In 2004, Jesse Jackson, who was with King at the time of his death, noted:

The fact is there were saboteurs to disrupt the march. within our own organization, we found a very key person who was on the government payroll. So infiltration within, saboteurs from without and the press attacks. …I will never believe that James Earl Ray had the motive, the money and the mobility to have done it himself. Our government was very involved in setting the stage for and I think the escape route for James Earl Ray.

According to biographer Taylor Branch, King's friend and colleague James Bevel put it more bluntly: "here is no way a ten-cent white boy could develop a plan to kill a million-dollar black man."

The impending occupation of Washington D.C. by the Poor People's Campaign is suggested as a primary motive for a federal assassination. Reverend James Lawson also noted during the civil trial that King alienated President Johnson and other powerful government actors when he repudiated the Vietnam War on April 4, 1967—exactly one year before the assassination.