Klandestine

March 30, 2015
Journalist McMichael digs deep into the racial violence of mid-20th-century America with this brutal but sometimes confusing account of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. McMichael claims newly released documents and his own research definitively prove that 40-year-old escaped convict James Earl Ray singlehandedly murdered King on April 4, 1969, pulling the trigger of a Remington .243-caliber rifle from the window of a Memphis rooming house and killing King on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. Media reports said Ray was framed, but the author, a finalist for the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists, disagrees. McMichael argues that Ku Klux Klan lawyer Arthur Hanes and William Bradford Huie, a corrupt journalist who placed more value on money than truth, helped Ray perpetuate a conspiracy theory with links to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy five years earlier. Does McMichael prove beyond a doubt that Ray, who died in 1998, was the sole perpetrator? That's debatable. But historians will appreciate the timely connection to the 50th anniversary of Alabama's Selma to Montgomery marches, and McMichael's thorough research provides context for readers unfamiliar with how thoroughly race divided the country in the 1950s and 1960s.

February 1, 2015
Journalist McMichael reveals far-reaching deceptions in his examination of coverups in the case of James Earl Ray (1928-1998), accused of killing Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis in 1968.The author extensively covers King's shooting, Ray's capture and the 30-year period following his subsequent guilty plea in 1969. McMichael notes that, astonishingly, Ray's attorney Arthur Hanes was a committed anti-segregationist; in 1961, his slogan for his successful campaign for mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, was "Never"-and also served as a Ku Klux Klan "Klonsel" (trial defense lawyer) and consulted with Klan leaders over several years before and after the Ray case. Accompanying Hanes was William Huie, a crusading journalist for Look magazine who was against racial injustice and was also an opportunistic, profit-seeking author and magazine writer. McMichael reveals how Huie lost millions with Ray's guilty plea; Italian producer Carlo Ponti killed the movie deal following the plea because "he understood that the masses weren't interested in a story about a petty criminal from Missouri; they wanted the dark heart of conspiracy." Incomplete congressional investigations of the deaths of both King and President John F. Kennedy fanned the flames of outrage of an increasingly skeptical, distrustful nation. Indeed, both assassinations were later said to have "likely resulted from well-executed conspiracies involving politically-motivated criminals"-in Ray's case, "a Cuban gun-running conspiracy." Furthermore, neither civil rights activist Jesse Jackson nor King's widow believed Ray was culpable, and a mock trial on HBO in 1993 found Ray not guilty. Because such true stories about government smoke screens and unanswered cries for justice have echoes in the 21st-century American criminal justice system, the author's narrative remains topical and relevant. McMichael ably leads readers to the conclusion that, in this case, no one's hands were clean.

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March 1, 2015

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, TN, by James Earl Ray. Journalist McMichael (journalism, Georgia Coll.) describes how Arthur J. Hanes, a Klan lawyer and former mayor of Birmingham, AL, and "checkbook journalist" (one who pays the subject of the work for the right to publish their story) William Bradford Huie helped Ray perpetuate his claim that the mysterious "Raoul," a seaman with deep connections to the underworld, framed him for King's death. Ray exploited Hanes and Huie to bring "Raoul" to life to demonstrate that there was a conspiracy behind King's assassination. McMichael convincingly shows that there was no conspiracy and that Ray was simply a racist who killed King on his own accord. Authoritative accounts of King's death, such as Gerold Frank's An American Death, Gerald Posner's Killing the Dream, and Hampton Sides's Hellbound on His Trail, proved Ray's guilt and motivation, but it is McMichael who shows Ray's real motive--racial hatred. This work is well written and well researched in assembling the time line of Ray's life after the assassination. He is really the secondary story here, though, as Hanes and Huie are the key figures in trying to get Ray's claim of a conspiracy taken seriously. McMichael does an excellent job in telling the story about segregation and the civil rights movement while intertwining the story of King and Ray. VERDICT A great book for those who want to understand the background of Ray's trial and proof of his motivations. For academic and public libraries.--Michael Sawyer, Pine Bluff, AR

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2015
On April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray, an escaped convict, shot and killed Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. Those facts, author McMichael wants you to know, are not in dispute here. This is not one of those conspiracy books that posits a secret cabal operating in the shadows behind Ray, manipulating him like a puppet on a string. But here's the thing: for a while, until his guilty plea in 1969, that's pretty much exactly what Ray was claiming: that he was a dupe, framed for a crime someone else (the mysterious and wholly fictional Raoul ) was behind. This is a compelling book, a detailed and well-documented story about a killer, a racist lawyer, and an avaricious journalistthree men who, under ordinary circumstances, would never have come togetherwho created a fictional conspiracy that even to this day, even though Ray pleaded guilty to King's murder, has its believers. A worthwhile contribution to most civil rights collections. Pair this with Hampton Sides' Hellhound on His Trail (2010), which follows the FBI's hunt for Ray.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)