Smithsonian Channel to air Original MLK Assassination Footage

NEW YORK (AP) — Some forward-looking college professors enabled television’s Smithsonian Channel to offer a look at the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. from the time in which it occurred.

The network said Wednesday it will air a documentary in February culled primarily from local news footage in Memphis, Tennessee, where the civil rights leader was murdered on April 4, 1968. Most of the footage hasn’t been seen on television since it originally aired.

Many such moments are lost since local television stations usually taped over old broadcasts or threw away film reels, said David Royle, executive producer at the Smithsonian Channel. But some University of Memphis professors sensed in March 1968 that civil rights history was happening with a strike of local sanitation workers, the event that drew King to Memphis, and they collected footage of the events through King’s murder and its aftermath.

“What they were doing was absolutely visionary — and very unusual,” Royle said.

It enabled the production of a documentary with a vivid, “you-are-there” feel and the uncovering of some fascinating moments.

Royle said he was drawn, for instance, to coverage of King’s famed “mountaintop” speech at the Mason Temple the night before the assassination. Cameras followed King after the speech to where he slumped in a chair, and viewers could sense the man’s fragility.

The producer said he recognized how the existence of such film was unusual when he researched an older documentary on Sam Ervin, the North Carolina senator who chaired the Watergate investigative committee in the 1970s. Royle said he traveled across North Carolina and could find only a minute and a half of tape of Ervin in his home state.

Another stroke of luck for Tom Jennings, who produced “MLK: The Assassination Tapes,” was finding Vince Hughes, who was a 20-year-old Memphis police dispatcher on his second day of work when King was killed. Hughes kept audiotapes of police calls on that day and crime scene photos from where King was shot, and the material was made available for the film.

Jennings also went to radio station WDIA to collect interviews from black Memphis residents at the time. The white-owned and operated TV stations at the time had little such material, Royle said.

“This (documentary) plunges you into the immediacy of the period and allows you to absorb it the way people at the time absorbed it,” Royle said. “There’s something that’s electric about that. It gets you to sit up and pay attention.”

MLK TV Special - The MLK Assassination Tapes

MLK: The Assassination Tapes premiers on February 12, 2012 at 9:00 o'clock on The Smithsonian Channel.

The Raw, Real-Time Story of an American Tragedy

MLK: THE ASSASSINATION TAPES

PREMIERES SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2012 AT 9PM ET/PT

On Smithsonian Channel

Story of Last Days of Dr. Martin Luther King Told Through Rare Television and Radio News Accounts, Many

Not Seen or Heard Since 1968

New York, NY – December 7, 2011 – The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968, on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, is one of the defining moments in American history. The new Smithsonian Channel one-hour documentary, MLK: THE ASSASSINATION TAPES, premiering during Black History Month on Sunday, February 12 at 9 p.m. ET/PT, is a chilling, immersive experience of those historic events, created almost entirely through the use of television and radio news footage from the weeks leading up to Dr. King’s visits to Memphis through the aftermath of his murder.

It is a rare accomplishment when a filmmaker can recreate the past from contemporary news reports. It was standard practice for most local stations to re-use their tapes and wipe out history, and very few local television and radio stations in Memphis preserved their footage.

But MLK: THE ASSASSINATION TAPES draws extensively from the unique materials at the Special Collections Division at The University of Memphis. When Memphis’s mostly black sanitation workers went on strike on February 11, 1968, several University faculty members, believing this was a seminal moment in the civil rights movement, began collecting every piece of media they could find – television, radio and print. When Dr. King arrived in town to lend his voice to their cause, the team from the University was already gathering material in full-force. The process continued throughout both of Dr. King’s visits – and after his killing. Much of the footage has never been seen by the public since it was first gathered in 1968…until now.

Compiling the events from authentic accounts was a difficult and painstaking task. With no narrator and with no interviews - other than those conducted by journalists at the time - producer Tom Jennings (“The Lost JFK Tapes: The Assassination”) weaves a powerful account of the events leading up to Dr. King’s murder, the shocking moment itself, and the aftermath.  MLK: THE ASSASSINATION TAPES captures the roiling emotions of the Civil Rights era, when long-simmering anger on both sides of the racial divide reached a boiling point.

What led Dr. King to Memphis began when the cities’ sanitation workers went on strike to protest their poverty level wages and dangerous working conditions that led to two workers being crushed to death by a garbage compacter. From the start, Memphis city officials refused to negotiate, insisting the workers had no right to go on strike.

In March, Dr. King decided to take time off from planning his “Poverty March on Washington” to travel to Memphis to lend his voice to the sanitation workers. Unfortunately, a second visit turned into a disaster when a march through the city turned violent, with businesses being burned and looted. Dr. King was whisked out of the city over fears for his safety. The march was one of the most humiliating moments in his career. A week later, against the strong advice from his closest aides and confidantes, Dr. King returned, arguing that that if his message of non-violence didn’t work in Memphis, it would not work anywhere.

On April 3, at Mason Temple in Memphis, he gave his famous “Mountaintop” speech that cited the threats and foreshadowed his death: “I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.” The next day he was shot.

MLK: THE ASSASSINATION TAPES captures the frantic manhunt for MLK’s assassin, the riots that erupted across the country, and the desperate pleas for peace from President Lyndon Johnson and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. It includes poignant footage of Coretta Scott King and her children marching in Memphis just days after King’s death, in support of the striking workers.

MLK: THE ASSASSINATION TAPES is produced by Tom Jennings of Tom Jennings Productions. Executive producers for Smithsonian Channel are David Royle and Charles Poe.

Quote of the Day

I'm re-reading Harold Weisberg's book on the MLK case "Frame-Up." and came across a passage that could apply to so many other things that have happened since the assassinations of the 1960's.

“Behind the pretense of strict adherence to the proprieties, by what it did and said and what it leaked and inspired, the government was successful in capturing the public mind with endless newstories the other side could neither answer nor refute. This did amount to propaganda.” Frame-Up p. 22

Stuart Wexler and the MLK assassination

FYI, about Stuart Wexler and the MLK assassination.  Stu is working on a book with Larry Hancock which is going to say that yes, James Earl Ray shot Dr. King all on his own because he heard about some scheme the KKK had.  The KKK was offering a big sum of money, $100,000, if only someone would kill Dr. King for them.  Ray heard this in prison and that's why he broke out, to kill King, and to collect the bounty.  The book was previously going to be called "Seeking Armageddon: The Effort to Kill Martin Luther King Jr."  Now it's got a new title "The Awful Grace of God: Racial Terrorism and the Unsolved Murder of Martin Luther King Jr." 

It should be called, "Aw For [ Deleted] Sake: Two Buffoons 

Promote a Lone Nut Story That Even Posner Wouldn't Peddle." 

Don't believe me? Check these out: 

Could James Earl Ray, who pleaded guilty to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., have made contact with the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi?

Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock, co-authors of the upcoming book, Seeking Armageddon: The Effort to Kill Martin Luther King Jr, are investigating that possibility.

Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock, authors of an upcoming book, "Seeking Armageddon: The Effort to Kill Martin Luther King Jr.," are exploring evidence that members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi were involved.

FBI records show fingerprints found after King’s killing were checked against thousands of people, but Wexler said he has yet to find documents that show the FBI checked to see if these fingerprints matched any members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi, which reportedly had a $100,000 bounty on King.

Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock, authors of an upcoming book,Seeking Armageddon: The Effort to Kill Martin Luther King Jr., are exploring evidence related to the White Knights.

An interesting site

I came across an interesting site with thought provoking analysis of exactly where witnesses may actually be pointing to in the immediate aftermath of Dr. King's assassination.

It's called Martin Luther King - The Fatal Shot Came from a Different Direction

Now there are rather a lot of annoying animated and blinking ads at the top. Scroll down.  It gets better.

This iconic and haunting photo taken moments after Dr, King was shot shows Andrew Young and others pointing in the direction they believe the shot came from.  But, what exactly are they pointing at? The federal government believes they are pointing at the back of Bessie Brewer's rooming house, from a window they say James Earl Ray shot from.  Researcher Ted Wilburn believes they are pointing towards the Gattis building.

A petition to release files on Dr. King

The White House has a website where you can create a petition and if there are enough people who sign onto it it will be brought to the attention of President Obama.  The petition has been created to release all governmental files relating to the surveillance on Dr. King,  his assassination, and the investigation into his assassination.  It needs 25,000 people to sign it.  I am supporting this.

The petition can be found here - http://wh.gov/2fh

You do need to create an account.  The White House site will send you an email back, and then you do what it says.  Then you have an account.  Then you can sign the petition.  

I was the 15th person to sign it.  We need you to sign this and please ask your friends to sign it too.

Thank you.  

Okay, what the hell is going on? Is it Spring cleaning at the Lone Nut Archives or something?

This is getting exhausting trying to keep up with this.  "The Kennedys" mini-series ends this weekend.  New Sirhan documents show up.  New Ray stuff, and more new Ray stuff.

I really miss Phil Melanson, and I wonder what he would think of this stuff.

James Earl Ray

Documents underscore theory that James Earl Ray was paid off - That sounds like the Commercial Appeal is acknowledging there was a conspiracy.  You see if you're paid off then there's someone giving money and someone receiving money, 2 people.