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The year 2018 marked 50 years since Martin Luther King was assassinated. This landmark year saw an influx of multimedia, most debatable and some commendable, related to the MLK assassination.

James DiEugenio reviewed and recommended three MLK TV documentaries, describing them as the best documentaries in recent years.

Hope and Fury

NBC's Hope and Furycelebrates the legacy of Martin Luther King, showing how the civil rights leader was way ahead of his time, using print and television media to highlight racial discrimination.

The TV documentary shares never-before-seen videos and photographs revisiting the civil rights movement from fresh perspectives and interviews by civil rights leaders, reporters, and their contemporaries.

This documentary is a comparative analysis of sorts. It draws parallels between the civil rights movement facts then and today's Black Lives Matter movement, the racially-motivated murders of those times to the world we live in today, and likens traditional media to social media as a mass communication tool.

I am MLK Jr.

I am MLK Jr. is different from all the other MLK TV documentaries because it is less a biographical documentary and more an eye-opener for our modern generation. It tells them that the problems that plagued their country 50—now 55—years ago haven't gone anywhere. The documentary also reveals never-before-heard recordings and interviews by civil rights activists, politicians, writers, and King's comrades.

The message of this documentary, as described in this review, is that celebrating King's life is easy, but addressing the problems he faced requires a lot of work more than half a century after the fact.

King in the Wilderness

DiEugenio declares HBO's King in the Wilderness his favorite of the three MLK TV documentaries. It documents the last four years of King's life, from the Voting Rights Act in 1965 to his untimely demise in 1968; that is one of the aspects that DiEugenio believes makes this documentary different from all the rest.

Instead of condensing the 39 years of King's life, the documentary starts near the end of King's life and ends with his funeral. Unlike the other two TV documentaries, it doesn't feature interviews and opinions of so-called experts on the life and death of Martin Luther King.

On the contrary, the documentary features interviews by those who King considered nearest and dearest: his friends, colleagues, and comrades, including attorney Clarence Jones, Andrew Young, a colleague, Harry Belafonte, an actor and singer who King considered a friend, and many other public and not-so-public figures who knew King better than any other "expert" who never even came within two feet of the civil rights leader.

Keep reading the review to know the finer points of King in the Wilderness, but don't stop there. Browse Kennedys and King's articles, to tell the truth from the mistruths and lies concerning the political assassinations of the 1960s. Know which MLK TV documentaries to avoid and which ones to watch by following this tag.

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The format of Hector Tobar’s essay “The Assassin Next Door” is like One Night in Miami. It explores personal identity set within the wider context of major events. While an interesting concept, Kennedys and King’s Jeff Carter has reviewed Tobar’s essay and found it replete with assumptions.

Here are the assumptions that make this essay anything but a good resource when studying the assassination of Martin Luther King.

James Earl Ray Killed MLK

“The Assassin Next Door” loses any credibility from the title alone. Tobar assumes that James Earl Ray killed MLK when he calls him an assassin and compares his life trajectory with Ray’s.

Tobar discovered from reading Gerald Posner’s Killing the Dream (more on that later) that Ray lived in the same East Hollywood neighborhood as him and compared his upbringing to Ray’s, not even stopping to consider the evidence belying his innocence.

MLK’s Death was a Hate Crime

The short essay transitions into Ray’s motives, which Tobar also gets from Posner’s book. In this case, it was the “hatred of black people.” We, as many others, disagree with this motive because Ray was not racist, or at least not racist, to the point of wanting King dead.

Ray has categorically denied holding a racist perspective, as has his family and anyone else who visited him in prison. Unfortunately, Tobar uses the opposite as his basis, referencing uncorroborated statements and focusing on the wrong target to validate this highly invalid assumption.

Interval: The Person Behind Killing the Dream

Let’s now take a break from assumptions to explore Gerald Posner’s background. After all, it is what his essay “The Assassin Next Door” is based on.

Killing the Dream received rave reviews in The New York Times, Time, and other book critics. It was a raging success, but, as discussed in this essay, the person behind it is guilty of many misdemeanors.

Since this book’s publication, Posner has been accused of plagiarism, uncorroborated citations, bias, misinterpretation of available resources, and a lack of sourcing. This is the person Tobar uses as his primary resource in the essay.

Assumption (Lack Thereof)

Tobar isn’t fair in his assumptions. He assumes that Ray killed King because he was prejudiced but conveniently ignores the glaring reality of those times. Almost every echelon of the system, from the Memphis police to the intelligence, was racist.

They had as much motive to kill King as Ray allegedly did, so why does Tobar not consider them suspects in the Assassination of Martin Luther King?

Read Carter’s essay for further analysis and dissection of Tobar’s “The Assassin Next Door.” Once you’re done reading, click the MLK assassination tab to know what to read and what to avoid where this political murder is concerned.

Get in touch or contribute to help us unearth the truth behind the political assassinations of the 1960s.

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The US and, in turn, Kennedys and King has dedicated the month of February to celebrating and reminding people about the causes of the civil rights movement and the contributions of several African Americans who fought, often at the cost of their lives, for desegregation and equal rights.

This Black History Month, Kennedys and King would like to draw your attention to the following civil rights activists.

1. Rosa Parks

At 92, Rosa Parks was one of the longest-surviving civil rights activists in history, especially considering the notoriously short lifespans of civil rights leaders during the movement. Her activism began at 42 after being arrested for sitting on the front end of a segregated city bus and refusing to give up her seat.

Her little rebellion led to the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott organized by a young Martin Luther King Jr. The mass protest ended with a Supreme Court ruling declaring segregation in public buses unconstitutional.

2. Charles Hamilton Houston

To the non-discerning eye, Charles Hamilton Houston might appear to be a highly educated scholar and lawyer who trained civil rights advocates, thereby completely overlooking his key contribution. Kennedys and King’s James DiEugenio knows this forgotten civil rights activist well enough to claim that he, not Martin Luther King Jr. started the modern civil rights movement.

He decided his path during the First World War when he observed discrimination in the military. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he created his version of the institute at Howard School of Law, where he trained a generation of civil rights attorneys who spread across various major cities to reverse the damage created by a longstanding racist system.

3. Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. is synonymous with the Causes of Civil Rights Movement. He came from a long line of pastors in Atlanta, attended a segregated school during his formative years, graduated from the esteemed Morehouse College, and received a doctorate from Boston University in 1955.

King was one of the most dedicated civil rights activists and the youngest Nobel Peace Prize recipient. He dedicated the prize money to the movement and made the following contributions:

• Organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955.
• Supported the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.
• Participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery marches in 1965.

He also gave several notable speeches. His 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech marked a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement facts and is widely quoted today.

Black History and the Mainstream Media

You shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet about black history because, nine times out of ten, it will be distorted to fit a particular narrative. Kennedys and King is well aware of this fact and has continued to fight for the truth behind the political assassinations of the 1960s.

If there was ever a place to sort fact from fiction about the MLK and Malcolm X assassinations, it was Kennedys and King.

Contribute to the platform’s struggle for the truth and contact the moderators for feedback and updates.

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Martin Luther King Day might've come and gone, but we still have February, aka Black History Month, to remember all the places that shaped the civil rights leader's legacy. Click here to learn how to highlight the civil rights movement during this month.

Keep reading to explore the places most important to MLK.

1. Atlanta

Atlanta was the block of the intensely racist South where MLK was born and buried. The state capital is home to the Ebenezer Baptist Church, famous for being the place where MLK was baptized and pastored with his father in 1960.

The King Center is where MLK and Coretta Scott King, who inaugurated this center, were laid to rest. It's a great way to learn about Civil Rights Movement from the MLK lens and pay your respects at the King's tombs, as did a million people every year before the pandemic.

2. Birmingham

Birmingham was important to MLK and the overall Causes of Civil Rights Movement because it was the city that saw the most segregation and integration resistance. It was from a jail in Birmingham that MLK penned "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" in 1963 for all the white ministers speaking against nonviolent civil disobedience.

The physical door of his jail cell is still intact and on display at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, along with several documents related to the movement.

3. Memphis

The Lorraine Motel in Memphis was one of the few places where black travelers felt safe and welcome. Unfortunately, it attracted negative attention after becoming the site of the martin luther king assassination during the civil rights leader's visit to support sanitation workers in March 1968. Today, this motel is home to the National Civil Rights Museum, MLK's final motel room forever visible to the public eye. 

Apart from the motel-turned-museum, Memphis is also home to The Four Way, a restaurant frequented by King and serving many southern delicacies, including the activist's favorite, the lemon meringue pie.

4. Montgomery

Montgomery is important to MLK for many reasons, chief among them being the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This 13-month mass action that began when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to yield her seat to a white passenger ended with a Supreme Court ruling banning all segregation on public buses.

King played an important role in organizing the long movement in Montgomery, as it occurred in 1956, and King was pastoring at a church between 1954 and 1960. He resided at the Dexter Parsonage Museum, frequently bombed by opponents of the movement.

Learn more about the civil rights movement facts to explore possible motives behind the MLK assassination on Kennedys and King. Go through our resources, blogs, and multimedia, and contribute some of your own if it has anything to do with the political assassinations of the 1960s. 

Reach out to share your contributions and support for our movement.