[2 articles]
Book tells story of 'Hellhound' on MLK's trail
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/05/07/entertainment/e031249D17.DTL
By CHRIS TALBOTT
May 7, 2010
Author Hampton Sides wasn't sure about the guy who said he had an
interesting archive all about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
And amateur archivist Vince Hughes thought Sides might be just
another one of those wing nuts with a conspiracy theory to shop.
Sides was already well into his research for a book, using all the
usual historical sources when he finally called Hughes. He found an
astounding collection that helped turn his new book, "Hellhound on
His Trail," into something special. Though King's life and death are
well-tilled soil for historians, Sides took a new approach, crafting
a compelling and unique narrative history of the stalking of King and
the ensuing manhunt for his killer.
It's as much thriller as history book and the compulsive story races
along like a fugitive on the lam. And the book is rapidly climbing
best-seller lists, debuting next week at No. 6 on The New York Times
list of best sellers, according to publisher Doubleday.
Hughes' collection was a mostly unmined vein of historical detail
that truly brought his book and the petty-criminal-turned-assassin
James Earl Ray to life.
Take, for example, the roll of film Hughes had from the evening of
April 4, 1968, the day King was shot at the Lorraine Motel in
Memphis. The iconic picture of King's entourage pointing in the
direction of the bullet is memorable, but the rest of the roll had
never been published.
The first picture shot by a South African photographer covering
King's visit was of the Nobel Peace Prize winner and civil rights
leader as he steps onto the balcony. The next 12 minutes play out
frame by frame.
"Then, finally, you get to the picture of all the guys pointing,"
Sides said. "So you can almost reconstruct the narrative of what was
going on. You can see firemen coming in from the fire station,
jumping over the retaining wall. You can see the weather. You can see
puddles of rain. You can see all these little gritty details that
come out in the book."
There was so much new material in the archive Hughes estimates he
has 20,000 documents, recordings, photographs and other material
Sides was overwhelmed. The pair eventually agreed that the author
would continue writing his book at his home in Santa Fe, N.M., and
call Hughes for help along the way.
When Sides needed more information about Ray's attempts to secure a
false identity while on the run in Toronto, he asked Hughes, "Do you
have anything on that?"
And Hughes replied: "Have I ever! Here's the picture that was taken
at this photographic studio. Here's the other photograph that wasn't
used. Look at what he's wearing. Look at those glasses. Those are
fake glasses, those horn-rimmed glasses. He's trying out a new look.'"
Hughes said Sides took all those loose details and turned them into
something that feels real.
"He actually takes you and puts you in the middle of it," Hughes
said. "When you're reading the book you're there. ... You really feel
as though it's surrounding you. I'm kind of proud some of that
material came from my collection. I take a little sense of pride."
King's life is among the most examined. The life of Ray, however,
remains murky. Ray lied a lot, Sides said, and enjoyed leading
authorities down false trails.
Sides' goal was to put aside opinion and tell the story of how Ray
arrived at that rooming house across from King's balcony, then how he
eluded one of the largest manhunts surrounding a single crime in U.S. history.
"The King assassination literature tends to be dominated by books
that either advance or try to debunk various conspiracy theories,"
Sides said. "I think that's the trap that much of the literature
falls into. Did he do it? Did he not do it? Was the FBI involved?
Just kind of sifting the charges and the countercharges. But there
are no pure narratives about what happened with James Earl Ray and
this event that I know of. You're just telling the story."
It was a story Sides knew well. The assassination of King and the
aftermath was one of Sides' most prominent childhood memories growing
up in Memphis. His father was a lawyer at the firm that represented
King in his fight to put on a march in support of the city's striking
garbage workers.
During a recent interview near the Lorraine on South Main Street, the
busy road Ray used to make his getaway, Sides pointed out historical
spots in the neighborhood and talked about a city he clearly loves.
It was a dark time and even at 6 Sides could feel the fear in Memphis.
"I do remember this feeling that the city might rip apart," Sides
said. "So as a historian, someone who's become a narrative historian,
it was only natural that I would want to come back to this time and
this place where I first became aware of history."
Hughes also experienced that history. He was a Memphis Police
Department dispatcher on duty when King was killed. He kept a copy of
the radio tape from that night as a curio. In time, he decided to
transfer it to CD to preserve it. A friend heard about what he was doing.
"He gave me what he had and I started crawling through people's
attics and going down to locations here, there and yon, gathering all
sorts of documents and trying to bring all the investigative material
to one place," Hughes said.
He has a set of the nearly unredacted FBI case file, as well as those
for investigations by Scotland Yard and the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police. Many pieces in the collection can be found nowhere else.
And the best part for Sides was that almost no one had seen the
archive. Hughes, a history buff, is protective of his collection.
"You can probably count the number of people on both hands maybe,"
Hughes said. "I'm really trying to stay away from the folks that are
looking for conspiracy and those kind of things. ... But serious
researchers I'm happy to make it available to them."
--
On the Net:
Book site: www.hellhoundonhistrail.com
Hampton Sides: www.hamptonsides.com
--------
'Hellhound on His Trail,' by Hampton Sides
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/05/07/RVUJ1DA35I.DTL
Steve Weinberg, Special to The Chronicle
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Hellhound on His Trail
The Stalking of Martin Luther King Jr. and the International Hunt for
His Assassin
By Hampton Sides
(Doubleday; 459 pages; $28.95)
At first, the news from Hampton Sides' extraordinary book might seem
like no news at all: When James Earl Ray assassinated Martin Luther
King Jr. in Memphis 42 years ago, the rifle-wielding escaped convict
acted alone. Ray was not part of a racist conspiracy to murder the
most prominent black civil rights leader in the nation.
Sure, plenty of books have posited a conspiracy theory, and some have
preceded Sides' book in stating that Ray performed solo. (I have read
a few of the books in each category.) Sides' account, however, is
special for at least four reasons.
First, his reporting on Ray's difficult-to-unearth, squalid life
constitutes remarkable journalism.
Second, Sides' brand of literary journalism makes the saga
compulsively readable.
Third, Sides' re-creation of the effort to capture Ray - which begins
on Page 168 of a book topping 450 pages - provides a law enforcement
angle that feels fresh.
Fourth, Sides is a Memphis native, so he writes about the killing
staining his city with a passion that resonates. He was 6 when the
assassination occurred.
Although Sides eventually looks at Ray's life from the beginning, the
book opens on April 23, 1967, about a year before Ray murdered King.
The site is a prison in Jefferson City, Mo., where Ray, nearing age
40, is serving time. A man with a sociopathic personality,
above-average intelligence and a fierce desire to escape from every
prison that interfered with his freedom, Ray departed from prison
inside a breadbox being hauled by a bakery delivery truck. (The
details of the escape are so remarkable that I do not want to spoil
the rest for those who will read Sides' book.)
Ray's crimes had not involved violence. So, even though law
enforcement agencies wanted to capture the escapee, probably nobody
could have surmised that he would become an assassin. Furthermore,
Ray had blended in so well during his years in prison that not even
all the correctional officers could put his name and face together
after learning of the escape. Ray had simply been Prisoner #00416-J,
a slender, fair-skinned white guy with gray-flecked raven hair and a
mild demeanor.
Growing up in semirural Illinois across the Mississippi River from
St. Louis, Ray and many of his family members had developed a hatred
of minorities, especially blacks, for no apparent reason. After his
escape from prison, Ray - using a variety of aliases and invented
backgrounds - became involved in the racist presidential campaign of
George Wallace, Alabama's governor. Ray kept his obsession with King
mostly to himself.
King, while alive and after his death, has been the subject of many,
many books. Sides wisely does not attempt a detailed biography of the
Atlanta minister. Sides does, however, offer a character sketch that
avoids portraying King as a plaster saint. Yes, King was brilliant
and inspirational and sincere and courageous. But he was also a
womanizer - a trait that figures in the plot - and a frequently
absentee father. J. Edgar Hoover, the once-pure but by 1968 corrupt
director at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, despised King.
Hoover's hatred stemmed partly from racism and partly from a
delusional belief that King was serving the Soviet brand of communism
and thus needed to be viewed as an enemy of the United States.
Sides awards Hoover and a few of his FBI underlings significant roles
in the saga.
It turns out that the FBI acted admirably in the manhunt for Ray,
partly because Hoover's underlings wanted to show the world that the
agency's unconscionable surveillance of King would not compromise the
effort to capture his assassin.
Immediately after the assassination, law enforcers had no clear idea
whom they were seeking as the murderer. Nobody staffing the manhunt
knew the name James Earl Ray because Ray had successful transformed
himself into Eric S. Galt, among other assumed identities.
How the Memphis law enforcement bureaucracy, the FBI and other law
enforcement agencies finally determined the killer's true identity
makes for a compelling police procedural. Before his capture, Ray
slipped out of the United States, obtained a fraudulent Canadian
passport, then lived in Portugal and England. The "hellhound"
appellation in the book's title takes on special meaning as the story
reaches its crescendo. A year before his death, King had said,
"Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at Negroes in every waking
moment of their lives."
Little did he know that the near-anonymous Ray would become his
personal hellhound. And little did Ray (who died in prison in 1998
after one final escape) know that he would become society's hellhound
for all time.
.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Sixties-L" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en.
