Klandestine: How a Klan Lawyer and a Checkbook Journalist Helped James Earl Ray Cover Up His Crime

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. (Apr.)