June 8 - BlackFacts.com Black History Minute

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BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 8.

James Earl Ray, the suspect in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, was captured.

On April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Martin Luther King Jr, was fatally wounded by a sniper’s bullet while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Motel Lorraine.

During the next several weeks, the rifle, eyewitness reports, and fingerprints on the weapon all implicated a single suspect: escaped convict James Earl Ray.

In May 1968, a massive manhunt for Ray began. The FBI eventually determined that he had obtained a Canadian passport under a false identity, which at the time was relatively easy.

On June 8, Scotland Yard investigators arrested Ray at a London airport. He was trying to fly to Belgium, with the eventual goal, he later admitted, of reaching Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

Extradited to the United States, Ray stood before a Memphis judge in March 1969 and pleaded guilty to King’s murder in order to avoid the electric chair. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison.

During the 1990s, the widow and children of Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke publicly in support of Ray and his claims, calling him innocent and speculating about an assassination conspiracy involving the U.S. government and military.

According to his family and friends, he was an outspoken racist who told them of his intent to kill King. Ray died in 1998.

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