On SATURDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2011 at his Justice for JFK blog
http://justiceforkennedy.blogspot.com/2011/10/stuart-wexler-and-mlk-assassination.html
Joe Backes gave us a head's-up on a new MLK book when he posted:
Stuart Wexler and the MLK assassination
FYI, about Stuart Wexler and the MLK assassination. Stu is working on a book with Larry Hancock which is going to say that yes, James Earl Ray shot Dr. King all on his own because he heard about some scheme the KKK had. The KKK was offering a big sum of money, $100,000, if only someone would kill Dr. King for them. Ray heard this in prison and that's why he broke out, to kill King, and to collect the bounty. The book was previously going to be called "Seeking Armageddon: The Effort to Kill Martin Luther King Jr." Now it's got a new title "The Awful Grace of God: Racial Terrorism and the Unsolved Murder of Martin Luther King Jr."
It should be called, "Aw For Fuck's Sake: Two Buffoons Promote a Lone Nut Story That Even Posner Wouldn't Peddle."
POSTED BY JOSEPH BACKES
Don't believe me? Check these out:
"Could James Earl Ray, who pleaded guilty to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., have made contact with the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi? Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock, co-authors of the upcoming book, Seeking Armageddon: The Effort to Kill Martin Luther King Jr, are investigating that possibility."
"Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock, authors of an upcoming book, "Seeking Armageddon: The Effort to Kill Martin Luther King Jr.," are exploring evidence that members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi were involved. FBI records show fingerprints found after King’s killing were checked against thousands of people, but Wexler said he has yet to find documents that show the FBI checked to see if these fingerprints matched any members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi, which reportedly had a $100,000 bounty on King."
"Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock, authors of an upcoming book, Seeking Armageddon: The Effort to Kill Martin Luther King Jr., are exploring evidence related to the White Knights".
Larry Hancock responds: “We really won't be able to say anything further until the book is out, other than it is a conspiracy book, not a lone nut book and is based in a series of facts that simply have not been explored before. Arguing its content with anyone who has not reviewed those facts and our analysis would be fruitless. It is a bit upsetting to face what Oliver Stone faced (even in a minor way) which is a total condemnation of your work before its even out, but appaently when you are seen to or even suspected of "breaking rank" in any fashion that's the way it goes.”
In a joint statement in response to Joe Backe’s blog notce Larry and Stu say:
“It is always interesting to find people who tell you what your book is about before they read it. Judging by the number of factual errors, and errors of nuance, in the above posting, I think Joe is someone who has made up his mind, facts be damned. It would be nice if Joe were to bother to write us and ask us-- he does know how to contact both of us-- before he wrote this. He would have realized the following: (1) We don't commit to Ray as a shooter (2) We don't say Ray broke out of prison to pursue a King bounty (3) We don't say Ray was a lone nut.”
“Kind of kills the entire essence of his post. Do we favor Joe's pet theory, informed perhaps by the uncritical acceptance of work done by people who support his preconceived political agenda? I guess we will have to wait for the book to come out. What we will say is that anyone who bases their view of the King assassination on the reliability of James Earl Ray is displaying the same degree of critical skepticism as those who believe David Phillips testimony before the HSCA. We will be more than happy to engage in a serious debate once the actual book is out.” -Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock
The Awful Grace of God; Racial Terrorism and the Unsolved Murder of Martin Luther King Jr.by: Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock
ISBN: 9781582438306 | 1582438307
Format: Trade Book
Publisher: Counterpoint
Pub. Date: 4/10/2012
Summary
Awful Grace chronicles a multi-year effort to kill Martin Luther King Jr. by a group of the nation’s most violent right-wing extremists. Impeccably researched and thoroughly documented, this examines figures like Sam Bowers, head of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi, responsible for more than three hundred separate acts of violence in Mississippi alone; J.B. Stoner, who ran an organization that the California attorney general said was more active and dangerous than any other ultra-right organization; and Reverend Wesley Swift, a religious demagogue who inspired two generations of violent extremists. United in a holy cause to kill King, this network of racist militants were the likely culprits behind James Earl Ray and King’s assassination in Memphis on April 4th, 1968. King would be their ultimate prize a symbolic figure whose assassination could foment an apocalypse that would usher in their Kingdom of God, a racially “pure” white world. Hancock and Wexler have sifted through thousands of pages of declassified and never-before-released law enforcement files on the King murder, conducted dozens of interviews with figures of the period, and re-examined information from several recent cold case investigations. Their study reveals a terrorist network never before described in contemporary history. They have unearthed data that was unavailable to congressional investigators and used new data-mining techniques to extend the investigation begun by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Awful Grace offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date study of the King assassination and presents a roadmap for future investigation.
T. Carter of COPA has also come out with a new book about the MLK assassination, published by Trinday, who had previously considered Larry and Stu's book, but they couldn't publish competing books. I will review T. Carter's book as soon as I read it.
Since Larry Hancock is one of the main organizers of the annual JFK Lancer Conference in Dallas, which competes with the annual regional COPA conference, there is bad blood between these two organizations. Nevertheless, these two books should present new and valuable information about the assassination of MLK and such petty bickering should not prevent each of them from being read and given a proper hearing and honest review.
Larry Hancock has earned his stripes in researching and writing Someone Would Have Talked (JFKLancer, 2010), one of the best and most important books on the assassination of President Kennedy, which has been updated and will be re-released again this year.
1 comment:
Sadly enough, a pivotal moment of American History currently runs the risk of being self-servingly distorted. Specifically, I’m referring to the writing duo of Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock and their collaborative hodge-podge of a book titled, The Awful Grace of God: Religious Terrorism, White Supremacy and the Unsolved Murder of Martin Luther King.
Surfing the Net, I stumbled upon an article by Jerry Mitchell, an investigative reporter for the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger newspaper. In an article titled “Justice,” and dated March 11, 2010, Mitchell wrote:
“On the back roads taken by James Earl Ray prior to killing Martin Luther
King Jr., a number of calls were made from pay phones to Mississippi, FBI records show.
“Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock, authors of a new book, Seeking
Armageddon: The Effort to Kill Martin Luther King Jr., found the Documents in a search through FBI files.
“Records detail the FBI’s exhaustive investigation of every pay phone call
made on the route that Ray and his pal, Charles Stein, took from Los Angeles to New Orleans in mid-December 1967.
“So far the authors haven’t been able to track down two phone calls made
to Mississippi . Each number was unlisted.
“One was to south Jackson [MS]: (601) 372-3537.
“The other was to Laurel [MS]: (601) 428-8829.
“In those days, Laurel was the headquarters of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi and the home of Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers. The number here doesn’t match the one for Bowers’ business, Sambo Amusement.
“FBI records mention the White Knights’ offer of a $100,000 bounty to kill King—a bounty Ray may have believed he would get of he killed King.”
So, what we have, here, is this: When James Earl Ray and Charlie Stein made the roundtrip from L.A. to New Orleans in mid-December 1967, the FBI was able to track down the “exact route” they traveled?!I doubt either Ray or Stein could’ve retraced that exact same journey with precision. Still, the FBI was able to identify every pay phone call made on the many roads and highways of that trip?! Remember, the FBI are mere human beings; nothing short of a Divinely-inspired magician could’ve identified the “exact” route Ray and Stein traveled and, also, have located ALL the pay phones on that same route, much less have tracked down ALL the calls made from ALL the pay phones!
There is NOT one single thread of credible evidence to support the theory that James Earl Ray ever made any call, at any time, from a pay phone to ANYONE in Laurel, Mississippi, much less to KKK Imperial Grand Wizard Sam Bowers. The mere implication of such—voiced by Wexler & Hancock, and, worrisomely, perpetuated by investigative journalist Jerry Mitchell—is so lame that it hints of coming from someone who has been clinically diagnosed as “mentally challenged.” It is comparable to the following scenario:
There is a serial killer on the loose in Seattle ,Washington . You live in Jacksonville , Florida , and, over a period of time, you’ve made a few calls from your home in Jacksonville to several numbers in Seattle . Wexler and Hancock are researching for a book on this Seattle serial killer, and they conclude that since you made some calls to Seattle , you might be in cahoots with the serial killer.
I did attempt to read Wexler & Hancock’s The Awful Grace of God, but it was so full of flimsy suppositions and so lacking in substance that it proved to be one of the more arduous tasks I’ve undertaken in a long time. However, regarding this book, I did find one aspect to be quite phenomenal: That Wexler & Hancock did manage to bamboozle a publishing house into buying off on this colossal miscarriage of historical justice and get it into print!
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