| The
Awful Grace of God 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 book examines figurers
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. |
The
Awful Grace of God opens by reminding us of exactly
what happened in America with the onset of the Civil Rights
Movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s and moves through that
period with a focus on violence targeting Dr. King, who had
emerged as the symbol of peaceful protest. |
| 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. |
King would
be their ultimate prize
|
|
" the book is most convincing
in arguing that a Civil Rights Cold Case unit should investigate
King’s murder, and that all files pertaining to the investigation
should become publicly available."
NEWSWEEK:
THE DAILY BEAST
"The best book to date on the MLK Assassination
Peter D. Scott
The two authors are meticulous about facts and sources.
They clear away a lot of false stories about the King assassination,
and also point to where a new investigation should begin.
It is most heartening to see such a great new book. |
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