Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. And the International Hunt for His Assassin

CHAPTER 35

THEN EASTER COMES

⁵⁵⁵ Coretta Scott King wore a bittersweet smile: My account of the April 8 march in Memphis is adapted primarily from page-one articles in the Memphis Press-Scimitar, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the New York Times, and the Atlanta Constitution. I also relied on newsreels in the Mississippi Valley Collection. See also Beifuss, At the River I Stand, pp. 340-43; Honey, Going Down Jericho Road, pp. 474-82; Abernathy, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, pp. 458-60; and Coretta Scott King, My Life with Martin Luther King Jr., pp. 327-29.

⁵⁵⁶ "The people were kind": Dexter Scott King, Growing Up King, p. 53.

⁵⁵⁷ "We gave Dr. King what he came here for": Memphis Commercial Appeal, April 9, 1968, p. 1.

⁵⁵⁸ "Each of you is on trial today": Flyer prepared by Lawson, quoted in Honey, Going Down Jericho Road, p. 476.

⁵⁵⁹ "once you reach Main Street": Ibid., p. 478.

⁵⁶⁰ "the spilling of one man's blood": Abernathy, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, p. 458.

⁵⁶¹ "I guess it was my mother": Memphis Commercial Appeal, April 11, 1968. See also Honey, Going Down Jericho Road, p. 475, and Beifuss, At the River I Stand, p. 341.

⁵⁶² Now the agents pulled their bureau sedan: This passage about the FBI's initial investigations at the New Rebel Motel is based largely on my own interview with the former FBI agent Stephen Darlington, May 15, 2009. I also relied on FD-302 reports of the interview Agents Darlington and Bauer conducted at the New Rebel on April 8, 1968, Hughes Collection.

⁵⁶³ made his way down to the offices: My depiction of Galt's efforts to gather aliases in the reading room of the Telegram is primarily adapted from Ray's own accounts in Tennessee Waltz, p. 84, and Who Killed Martin Luther King? p. 99. Other accounts suggest he actually visited the newspaper microfilm archives at a public library in Toronto. See also Posner, Killing the Dream, p. 240.

⁵⁶⁴ "I'd read somewhere": Ray, Who Killed Martin Luther King? p. 98.

⁵⁶⁵ "Teenagers are adopting": Royal Canadian Mounted Police Files, a compendium of police investigations into Galt's movements while in Toronto, Hughes Collection.

⁵⁶⁶ brief expeditionary detour: See Posner, Killing the Dream, p. 240.

⁵⁶⁷ "Until we have justice": Memphis Commercial Appeal, April 9, 1968, p. 10.

⁵⁶⁸ "Mayor Loeb will somehow be dragged": Reuther, quoted in Beifuss, At the River I Stand, p. 343.

⁵⁶⁹ "It's not the quantity": The entire text of Coretta Scott King's speech in Memphis is reprinted in her memoir, My Life with Martin Luther King Jr., pp. 344-47.

⁵⁷⁰ "If Mrs. King had cried": Honey, Going Down Jericho Road, p. 481.

⁵⁷¹ "When Good Friday": Coretta Scott King, My Life with Martin Luther King Jr., p. 345.

⁵⁷² Neil Shanahan and William Saucier: This passage is drawn from the FD-302 report of the April 8, 1968, interview that Shanahan and Saucier conducted with the rooming house proprietor, Peter Cherpes, Hughes Collection.