Given all the talk about "minor details" just now, this seems like a weird place to start, right? The family of the most famous civil rights leader of all time suing the federal government for conspiring to murder him is no small thing. So why has history treated it that way? For example, did you know it happened? Not a single person I've asked so far had even the slightest idea, and I've asked a lot of people.
It did happen, though, back in 1999. Even more interestingly, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s family not only sued the federal government, but also the man they suspected of being the actual killer ... Loyd Jowers. You'll note that doesn't even sort of read like "James Earl Ray," which you might recognize as the name of the man who was eventually convicted of killing Dr. King. He always maintained that he was innocent and that his confession was coerced.
Do cops really do that kind of thing?
Over the years, a number of conspiracy theories popped up that made that very same claim. There's nothing unusual about that -- almost every assassination has a slew of accompanying conspiracy theories to go along with it. What makes this one different is that even King's family thought there might be some truth to the story that James Earl Ray was framed. In fact, they believed it enough to hold a joint press conference with the accused killer to publicly state their belief that he was innocent.
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