Page 20 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • January 13, 2010 then be the wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla.” Marxism demands atheism and extols Darwinism. Dr. King’s witness was Judeo-Christian and Constitutional, and whatever “socialism” he sought to introduce came from the Old Testament Jubilee when slaves were freed and debts forgiven, and the New Testament Acts of the Apostles, the writings of Paul, and the Book of James, where Christians are taught to treat all men and women as brothers and sisters and to help and respect the poor. For all that, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover decided that the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had been infiltrated and was dominated by communists: a belief that was marginally true of the belated Roosevelt administration Hoover himself had once served, but not of Dr. King’s group. Hoover set out to “get” King, by blackmail if possible and by tacit opposition to his work. Enter James Earl Ray, a career criminal from Illinois, pushed out of the U.S. Army for disciplinary offenses. A vagrant, burglar, and armed robber, Ray had also committed mail fraud – the ultimate badge of stupidity among professional criminals because the sentencing is so stiff and the prosecution is federal and effective. Ray appears to have liked prison life most of the time. A prison psychologist said of him, “He apparently lacks foresight, or is afraid of the future, as he absolutely refuses to look forward. He claims that he can do his time better if he doesn’t think. He apparently is enjoying his present situation.” Ray was also an avowed racist who refused to take part in an honors program while in prison because the program was integrated. Facing a lifetime in prison because he was a four-time loser, perhaps uncomfortable as prisons moved toward inmate integration, Ray escaped folded up and hidden inside a breadbox and made his way to Montreal, where he attempted and failed to get Canadian seaman’s papers and leave North America. Here, according to his own story, he met a man with dyed red hair known as Raoul, who asked him to do some lucrative small-time drug smuggling and, in 1968, to buy a high-powered hunting rifle with a telescopic sight. Dr. King had been called to Memphis, Tennessee, to head off violence by hot-headed young blacks during a garbage strike. As usual, he appealed to both sides to remain calm, recognize one another’s humanity, and work constructively for change. As he was coming out of the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968, Dr. King was shot in the face with a single rifle bullet that struck his jaw and shattered his spine. A young white man was seen running from a nearby building where the shot had come from and dropped a high-powered rifle with a scope. The rifle had James Earl Ray’s fingerprints on it. Ray, incredibly, eluded arrest for more than two months, fled the country, and was arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport while trying to leave the United Kingdom on a false Canadian passport. He was extradited to Tennessee. Ray confessed to King’s murder on March 10, 1969, recanted three days later, and was offered a guilty plea in return for being spared the death penalty. Nobody thought Ray was a total innocent or a good citizen, but nobody positively identified him as the man they saw fleeing the scene, and a ballistic test on the rifle proved inconclusive. Ray took the guilty plea and got 99 years in prison instead of the chair. Ray escaped from prison again in 1977, and was recaptured three days later. Another year was added to his sentence for an even 100 years. However, Ray then testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations that he had not shot Dr. King, though he admitted to being part of the conspiracy to kill him – “partially responsible without knowing it.” Dr. King’s son Dexter met Ray in 1997 and, after speaking with him, said he and the King family did not believe Ray was the killer. Many of the younger, somewhat angrier civil rights leaders agreed with Dexter King. They believed that the federal government, Hoover in particular, was somehow complicit. The King family asked for a new trial. They never got one. Ray died of complications of kidney disease and liver failure brought on by hepatitis on April 23, 1998, claiming until he lost consciousness that he was not the triggerman in the murder of Dr. King. People who have studied the case in detail are split over whether Ray was the killer. A man like Ray would have been capable of lying on his deathbed, but since he was neither a Klansman nor a neo-Nazi, he lacked the kind of motivation to have carried out the attack on his own. He may have been a hired gun, or he may have been a “fall guy” dragged in to give the authorities a guilty culprit and lead the investigation away from whoever planned and paid for the murder. We do not know who killed Dr. Martin Luther King, and we do not know who paid to have him killed. His Christian and Constitutional plans to overcome the institutional racism that flourished during his own lifetime and for a half-century before would have been acceptable to all men and women of good will. The plans would have been unacceptable to those on the Far Right who wanted blacks held down so they would provide an endless source of cheap labor, and to those on the Far Left who wanted a violent revolution. For Americans in the middle, the murder of Dr. King was an epic tragedy. For suspects, we have to look to the extremes on either side before we put this case to rest and simply honor his memory. Last year, I was helping a student with a tough college course in writing about other people’s essays. One essay had to do with a big sister cheering up her younger brother after a sex-change operation that she attributed to the fact that their abusive, macho father led a secret life as a transvestite. Another story was three views of a shark: live and scary in an aquarium, dead in a vat of formaldehyde, and stuffed at a museum. These stories were supposed to help readers expand their perspective. They encouraged me to skip lunch. Amid all this exceptionally awful writing, I discovered something that was easily the best thing in the collection: Dr. Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. The letter was written to explain to conservative AfricanAmerican clergymen the need to support non-violent civil rights demonstrations for basic rights. Dr. King’s perspective was distinctly Christian. Dr. King said openly that the recent church had become weak in demanding civil rights – the abolitionists of the Civil War era had virtually all been serious Christians – and that white moderates were a disappointment. He also deplored the rhetoric of black extremists who concluded that “the white man is a devil.” He supported the young people who risked beatings and jail to demand rights that were theirs based on simple human decency, and had been constitutionally established since the 1860s – only to be ignored until the 1950s because both parties needed reactionary southern votes to carry national elections, and southerners to serve as soldiers. King’s message was not that white Southerners had to be punished, but that they had to be taught to view black people as entirely human and as brothers in the religious context. That was no easy task given the racist conformity of the era. “Some day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values of our Judeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug down deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence…Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.” Dr. King believed in Christianity and in the Constitution. He most certainly did not believe in Marxism, which embodies slavery for everybody and rejects all religious values. Marx, like Hitler, was an admirer of Darwin, and Darwin was an explicit racist. In “The Descent of Man,” written in 1871 after the United States had finally abolished slavery, Darwin wrote: “At some future period…the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time, the anthropomorphous apes…will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will Who killed Dr. Martin Luther King? Letters to the Editor Dear Editor: In your Nov. 25 issue of Villadom TIMES, you featured an article about a beaver colony in Franklin Lakes, and the intention of the town to have them trapped and killed. As someone who lives on the water, I can understand the frustration of the neighbors who live on the perimeter of the town swamp. However, killing is rarely the answer, and there is a far more humane and educationally positive way to deal with this lovely little family. Franklin Lakes has prided itself on its abundance of fresh water areas. With these natural areas, come responsibilities and challenges, as they need to be preserved and cherished for the next generation. According to various beaver experts, there is only one way in which the water table should be dealt with, and that’s with a Beaver Flow device. These devices have been in place in some states for as long as 20 years, and have been successful. According to the Humane Society, positive results were achieved and 94 percent of the people said that they would recommend it to other towns. Flow device success rates were observed at 97 percent for culvert devices. Trapping and killing had a failure rate of 84 percent due to the fact that the sites were re-colonized, some within one-year of intervention. Beavers are considered keystone species because they create a habitat that is beneficial to many other areas in the affected ecosystem. Their dams act as a filter as it slows the water flow, which allows sediment and toxic materials to filter through the pond bed. This is not only beneficial to the aquatic environment, but one is looking at a tremendous educational tool for the local students. Very few stu- Has solution for beaver problem dents have the ability to study these industrious families and learn from them in their own backyards. This is an opportunity for the entire town, to experience nature at its finest. These animals should be valued and protected; not killed. Dave Mallet wrote some great lyrics about the environment, including: “Some will still weep when the gifts we are given are gone.” This family is a gift, and Franklin Lakes needs to protect them for the future of Franklin Lakes. Elizabeth Butler Rumson Dear Editor: How great is the Greener Wyckoff 2010 calendar? An exhaustive amount of research went into this along with creative ideas. We hope every resident takes it to heart. Thank you for telling us: The U.S. is home to five percent of the world’s population and generates 40 percent of its waste. Most of that waste can be recycled, but is not. Reuse plastic water bottles. Think of a water bottle filled with oil to see what is needed to make it. How good to know that our no longer needed household items can go to the VFW, Salvation Army, or Star of Hope? We can save money and reduce our carbon footprint by turning the key to be idle free, Washington School’s excellent contribution to environmental awareness. We hope everyone will institute at least a few of these excellent suggestions. Tom and Mary Bugel Wyckoff Applauds ‘Greener Wyckoff’