The War Over King's Legacy

THE SUN WAS ABOUT TO SET. On Thursday, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. had retreated to room 306 of the Lorraine Motel, worrying about a sanitation strike in Memphis and working on his sermon for Sunday. Its title: ""Why America May Go to Hell.'' For King, whose focus had shifted from civil rights to antiwar agitation and populist economics, the Dream was turning dark. He had been depressed, sleeping little and suffering from migraines. In Washington, his plans for a massive Poor People's Campaign were in disarray. In Memphis, King's first march with striking garbagemen had degenerated into riot when young black radicals--not, as in the glory days, angry state troopers--broke King's nonviolent ranks. By 5 p.m. he was hungry and looked forward to a soul-food supper. Always fastidious-- a prince of the church--King shaved, splashed on cologne and stepped onto the balcony. He paused; a .30-06 rifle shot slammed King back against the wall, his arms stretched out to his sides as if he were being crucified.

The Passion was complete. As he lay dying, the popular beatification was already underway: Martin Luther King Jr., general and martyr to the greatest moral crusade on the nation's racial battlefield. For most Americans the story seems so straightforward. He was a prophet, our own Gandhi, who led the nation out of the darkness of Jim Crow. His Promised Land was the one he conjured on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, a place where his ""four little children . . . will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.''

Now, 30 years after his assassination, that legend is under fresh assault--from King's own family and many of his aging lieutenants. His widow, Coretta, and his heirs are on the front lines of a quiet but pitched battle over the manner of his death and the meaning of his life. They believe James Earl Ray, King's convicted assassin, is innocent and that history has forgotten the real Martin Luther King.

To his family, King was murdered because he was no longer the King of the March on Washington, simply asking for the WHITES ONLY signs to come down. He had grown radical: the King of 1968 was trying to build an interracial coalition to end the war in Vietnam and force major economic reforms--starting with guaranteed annual incomes for all. They charge that the government, probably with Lyndon Johnson's knowledge, feared King might topple the ""power structure'' and had him assassinated. ""The economic movement was why he was killed, frankly,'' Martin Luther King III told NEWSWEEK. ""That was frightening to the powers that be.'' They allege there were political reasons, too. ""RFK was considering him as a vice presidential candidate,'' says Dexter, King's third child. ""It's not widely known or discussed, [but] obviously those surveilling him knew of it. They [Kennedy and King] were both considered powerful and influential in terms of bringing together a multiracial coalition.''

So who was the real Martin Luther King Jr.--the integrationist preacher of the summer of 1963 or the leftist activist of the spring of 1968? The question is not just academic. Its competing answers shed light on enduring--and urgent--tensions between white and black America over race, class and conspiracy. Most whites want King to be a warm civic memory, an example of the triumph of good over evil. For many African-Americans, however, the sanitizing of King's legacy, and suspicions about a plot to kill him, are yet another example of how larger forces--including the government that so long enslaved them-- hijack their history and conspire against them. In a strange way, the war over King's legacy is a sepia-toned O.J. trial, and what you believe depends on who you are.

The Kings, a family still struggling to find its footing personally and politically, are understandably attracted to the grander theories about King's life and death. A government conspiracy to kill a revolutionary on the rise is more commensurate with the greatness of the target than a hater hitting a leader who may have been on the cool side of the mountain. The truth, as always, is more complicated than legend. People who were around Robert Kennedy say it is highly unlikely that there was serious consideration of an RFK-King ticket. ""I never heard Kennedy talk about any vice presidential possibilities,'' says historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a Kennedy aide. And though there was almost certainly some kind of small-time plot to kill King, 30 years of speculation and investigation has produced no convincing proof that James Earl Ray was part of a government-led conspiracy.