This year from Jan. 20-24 “King Week” was celebrated with interfaith prayer breakfasts, parades, exhibits, school poems, plays, recitations and panel discussions on equality and civil rights for all. But the real struggle for justice for Dr. King, bringing those responsible for his murder to justice, languishes, said Mr. Kambon.
His organization wants letters, calls and e-mails sent to the Justice Department and White House to demand that Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama open a grand jury investigation into Dr. King’s murder.
It is widely known that Dr. King was under continuous surveillance by the F.B.I. under the orders of then-Director J. Edgar Hoover with the approval of U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
“We now know, from the documents released by the FBI, an FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, who had a pathological hatred of Martin Luther King, so much so that he directed his own agents to break the law repeatedly in going after King and taping King and having illegal surveillance on King,” journalist Gerald Posner said on PBS American Experience’s Roads to Memphis in an excerpt broadcast Jan. 20 on Democracy Now.
Some original FBI surveillance recordings of Dr. King are under seal by court order until 2027 based on a 1977 court case brought by King associate Bernard Lee.
James Earl Ray was arrested, pleaded guilty and was convicted of first-degree murder of Dr. King in 1969. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison. However, Mr. Ray soon recanted, saying he did not kill Dr. King and had years of unsuccessful attempts to get a new trial. He died April 23, 1998 at age 70 stemming from complications of Hepatitis C.