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The format of Hector Tobar’s essay “The Assassin Next Door” is like One Night in Miami. It explores personal identity set within the wider context of major events. While an interesting concept, Kennedys and King’s Jeff Carter has reviewed Tobar’s essay and found it replete with assumptions.

Here are the assumptions that make this essay anything but a good resource when studying the assassination of Martin Luther King.

James Earl Ray Killed MLK

“The Assassin Next Door” loses any credibility from the title alone. Tobar assumes that James Earl Ray killed MLK when he calls him an assassin and compares his life trajectory with Ray’s.

Tobar discovered from reading Gerald Posner’s Killing the Dream (more on that later) that Ray lived in the same East Hollywood neighborhood as him and compared his upbringing to Ray’s, not even stopping to consider the evidence belying his innocence.

MLK’s Death was a Hate Crime

The short essay transitions into Ray’s motives, which Tobar also gets from Posner’s book. In this case, it was the “hatred of black people.” We, as many others, disagree with this motive because Ray was not racist, or at least not racist, to the point of wanting King dead.

Ray has categorically denied holding a racist perspective, as has his family and anyone else who visited him in prison. Unfortunately, Tobar uses the opposite as his basis, referencing uncorroborated statements and focusing on the wrong target to validate this highly invalid assumption.

Interval: The Person Behind Killing the Dream

Let’s now take a break from assumptions to explore Gerald Posner’s background. After all, it is what his essay “The Assassin Next Door” is based on.

Killing the Dream received rave reviews in The New York Times, Time, and other book critics. It was a raging success, but, as discussed in this essay, the person behind it is guilty of many misdemeanors.

Since this book’s publication, Posner has been accused of plagiarism, uncorroborated citations, bias, misinterpretation of available resources, and a lack of sourcing. This is the person Tobar uses as his primary resource in the essay.

Assumption (Lack Thereof)

Tobar isn’t fair in his assumptions. He assumes that Ray killed King because he was prejudiced but conveniently ignores the glaring reality of those times. Almost every echelon of the system, from the Memphis police to the intelligence, was racist.

They had as much motive to kill King as Ray allegedly did, so why does Tobar not consider them suspects in the Assassination of Martin Luther King?

Read Carter’s essay for further analysis and dissection of Tobar’s “The Assassin Next Door.” Once you’re done reading, click the MLK assassination tab to know what to read and what to avoid where this political murder is concerned.

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The US and, in turn, Kennedys and King has dedicated the month of February to celebrating and reminding people about the causes of the civil rights movement and the contributions of several African Americans who fought, often at the cost of their lives, for desegregation and equal rights.

This Black History Month, Kennedys and King would like to draw your attention to the following civil rights activists.

1. Rosa Parks

At 92, Rosa Parks was one of the longest-surviving civil rights activists in history, especially considering the notoriously short lifespans of civil rights leaders during the movement. Her activism began at 42 after being arrested for sitting on the front end of a segregated city bus and refusing to give up her seat.

Her little rebellion led to the 381-day Montgomery Bus Boycott organized by a young Martin Luther King Jr. The mass protest ended with a Supreme Court ruling declaring segregation in public buses unconstitutional.

2. Charles Hamilton Houston

To the non-discerning eye, Charles Hamilton Houston might appear to be a highly educated scholar and lawyer who trained civil rights advocates, thereby completely overlooking his key contribution. Kennedys and King’s James DiEugenio knows this forgotten civil rights activist well enough to claim that he, not Martin Luther King Jr. started the modern civil rights movement.

He decided his path during the First World War when he observed discrimination in the military. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he created his version of the institute at Howard School of Law, where he trained a generation of civil rights attorneys who spread across various major cities to reverse the damage created by a longstanding racist system.

3. Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. is synonymous with the Causes of Civil Rights Movement. He came from a long line of pastors in Atlanta, attended a segregated school during his formative years, graduated from the esteemed Morehouse College, and received a doctorate from Boston University in 1955.

King was one of the most dedicated civil rights activists and the youngest Nobel Peace Prize recipient. He dedicated the prize money to the movement and made the following contributions:

• Organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955.
• Supported the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963.
• Participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery marches in 1965.

He also gave several notable speeches. His 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech marked a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement facts and is widely quoted today.

Black History and the Mainstream Media

You shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet about black history because, nine times out of ten, it will be distorted to fit a particular narrative. Kennedys and King is well aware of this fact and has continued to fight for the truth behind the political assassinations of the 1960s.

If there was ever a place to sort fact from fiction about the MLK and Malcolm X assassinations, it was Kennedys and King.

Contribute to the platform’s struggle for the truth and contact the moderators for feedback and updates.

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Martin Luther King Day might've come and gone, but we still have February, aka Black History Month, to remember all the places that shaped the civil rights leader's legacy. Click here to learn how to highlight the civil rights movement during this month.

Keep reading to explore the places most important to MLK.

1. Atlanta

Atlanta was the block of the intensely racist South where MLK was born and buried. The state capital is home to the Ebenezer Baptist Church, famous for being the place where MLK was baptized and pastored with his father in 1960.

The King Center is where MLK and Coretta Scott King, who inaugurated this center, were laid to rest. It's a great way to learn about Civil Rights Movement from the MLK lens and pay your respects at the King's tombs, as did a million people every year before the pandemic.

2. Birmingham

Birmingham was important to MLK and the overall Causes of Civil Rights Movement because it was the city that saw the most segregation and integration resistance. It was from a jail in Birmingham that MLK penned "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" in 1963 for all the white ministers speaking against nonviolent civil disobedience.

The physical door of his jail cell is still intact and on display at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, along with several documents related to the movement.

3. Memphis

The Lorraine Motel in Memphis was one of the few places where black travelers felt safe and welcome. Unfortunately, it attracted negative attention after becoming the site of the martin luther king assassination during the civil rights leader's visit to support sanitation workers in March 1968. Today, this motel is home to the National Civil Rights Museum, MLK's final motel room forever visible to the public eye. 

Apart from the motel-turned-museum, Memphis is also home to The Four Way, a restaurant frequented by King and serving many southern delicacies, including the activist's favorite, the lemon meringue pie.

4. Montgomery

Montgomery is important to MLK for many reasons, chief among them being the Montgomery Bus Boycott. This 13-month mass action that began when Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to yield her seat to a white passenger ended with a Supreme Court ruling banning all segregation on public buses.

King played an important role in organizing the long movement in Montgomery, as it occurred in 1956, and King was pastoring at a church between 1954 and 1960. He resided at the Dexter Parsonage Museum, frequently bombed by opponents of the movement.

Learn more about the civil rights movement facts to explore possible motives behind the MLK assassination on Kennedys and King. Go through our resources, blogs, and multimedia, and contribute some of your own if it has anything to do with the political assassinations of the 1960s. 

Reach out to share your contributions and support for our movement.

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Mel Ayton has made it his life’s purpose to discredit any opinion that’s not his by writing it off as a conspiracy theory. At least, that’s what appears to be the case in his latest hardcover—a total waste of trees, if you ask us—book, The Kennedy Assassinations:JFK and Bobby Kennedy.

Find our complete review of the book here and some highlights from the article below.

100 Pages of Nothing

James DiEugenio criticizes the 100 pages dedicated to the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy case for omitting Dr. Thomas Noguchi, mentioning DeWayne Wolfer while quoting someone else, and not expanding upon the findings of Judge Robert Wenke’s Panel.

The Kennedys and King writer and founder criticizes Ayton for referring to the works of controversial authors, like Godfrey Hansen and Robert Blair Kaiser, who admittedly fall prey to conspiracy theories in trying to prove the point that anything that attests to Sirhan’s innocence is a conspiracy theory. Ayton goes as far as misrepresenting the shooting to achieve this feat while ignoring the other side of the argument entirely.

Michael McCowan: A Member of Sirhan’s Defense Team

Ayton refers to the word of Michael McCowan as gospel, forgetting or willfully omitting the details of his sketchy background. McCowan was a member of Sirhan’s defense team who never believed in his client’s innocence.

McCowan was a suspected criminal, but his crimes against Sirhan knew no bounds. If working without compensation isn’t suspicious enough, how about the fact that he once tried to portray Sirhan as a communist? Or that he coerced Sirhan into following his defense team’s strategy come what may?

McCowan wasn’t just an incompetent team player. He knew exactly what he was doing when he stopped Sandra Serrano-Sewell from taking the stand. This is the kind of person that Ayton uses to prove his propaganda.

The Refusal to See McCowan as an LAPD Plant

Ayton refuses to consider the possibility that McCowan might have been an insider. He wants his readers to have the same perspective by conveniently leaving out anything about his sketchy dealings leading up to the case in The Kennedy Assassinations.

He doesn’t even portray the man as incompetent because he agrees with the overall narrative and wants his contemporaries to buy into it.

That this narrative and Sirhan’s alleged confession don’t match the autopsy report drawn up by Dr. Noguchi doesn’t matter. Dr. Noguchi’s autopsy report clearly states that Senator Kennedy was shot at close range “from behind and at extreme upward angles.” That doesn’t match Sirhan’s alleged confession of firing the shots as he stood facing him.

Be sure to check out the full review of The Kennedy Assassinations and other pieces discredited and deemed credible by James DiEugenio and the other contributors at Kennedys and King, a platform committed to uncovering the truth behind the political assassinations of the 1960s.

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