Gerald Posner's Killing The Dream

Gerald Posner’s Killing the Dream begins with a detailed description of Martin Luther King Jr.’s final days and the detailed movements of his killer. The author arranges his book into three pivotal sections: The Assassination, The Assassin, and the Search for the Truth. He begins the book with a detailed account of the events that caused King to even be in Memphis, the chaos surrounding the Memphis Sanitation Strike. The Memphis Sanitation strike began on February 12, 1968, because of poor treatment, dangerous working conditions, and the deaths of Echol Cole and Robert Walker, 1300 black sanitation workers walked off the job. At the time of Cole and Walker’s deaths, city rules forbade black employees from seeking shelter anywhere else but the
Posner offers the reader a full chapter on the misinformation provided about “Raoul” that led to problems for an innocent man and his family. The author ultimately sets his eyes on the theory that Pepper made in his book Orders to Kill, that there were Green Beret Snipers from the 20th Special Forces Group in Memphis at the time of the shooting. Posner closes the book with an outline of Ray’s supposed movements on the day of the assassination. He believed that if there was a conspiracy in order to kill King, that most likely the Ray brothers were involved and that there was no huge government cover-up occurring. Posner has done a remarkable job offering the motive, means and opportunity for James Earl Ray to kill King. He was able to find new information and sources to shed new light on a huge event in our
Including one reporter named William Bradford Hue, who wrote an article in a magazine that he stated why he believed that James Earl Ray was not the shooter, but had been drawn into the plot by a man named “Raoul”. The fact that the presiding judge over the case W. Preston Battle refused to question Ray about his conspiracy accusations lead to further theories coming into play. Posner wrote, “King had numerous enemies, any of whom might have sponsored a trigger man, Ray’s capture only fueled the speculation. Questions of how a career thief was suddenly transformed into a competent assassin were not answered by the Memphis plea agreement. And Ray’s 65 day odyssey after the killing, involving travel to three countries and the use of foreign passports, seemed far beyond the capability of the poor, uneducated hillbilly charged with the crime.” Posner makes two very important arguments, 1.) Ray has declared his innocence multiple times with unsubstantiated stories to go along with it, and 2.) Ray is a career criminal that even when caught could only offer ridiculous stories to get him out of trouble. “Ray, is excellent at incorporating bits of information he learns from one source and developing them into a cohesive story he spins to somebody else. “