Target: Martin Luther King

Beyond the black community, Martin Luther King Day (which falls this year on Monday, Jan. 20) is a rote commemoration. There are speeches to report and civic lessons to be taught, but that's where the impact of this occasion ends. King is what you might call an empty icon. His beliefs have been stripped of their materiality, so that he stands for an abstract ideal of brotherhood -- not the sort of thing to inspire the show-me young. Yet, in an era when money talks and the military walks, King's politics are more important than his persona. He was that rare thing in America today, a radical reformer who believed the system could be changed and saved.

Though he had his doubts, especially near the end, King held to the conviction that justice would come through a new consciousness rooted in empathy. If this dream reeks of '60s naïveté, it did even then to militants who regarded King as a fool, at best. Unfortunately their thinking prevailed. No wonder contempt for King has such currency now, since a generation has grown up without a leader who embodies his visionary politics. It's hard to imagine a moment when such thinking mobilized millions. But as we verge on another imperial war at the cost of social progress, there's no more vital time to remember the real King. And as we return to a policy of officially sanctioned whacking, there's no better reason to revisit the most unresolved assassination in modern American history.

We never talked about assassination," says William Pepper, who worked with King during the last year of his life. Though black activists were being murdered in growing numbers, King's colleagues didn't connect the dots. "We never put together what had happened in Vietnam, Cuba, and the Congo [where CIA-supported assassination plots succeeded, except in Castro's case]. We couldn't apply that to us. It's a lament of mine that we were not more aware."

By 1978, Pepper was in a very different place. He'd become an attorney representing the man convicted of killing King, James Earl Ray. Ray always claimed he'd been framed, and the King family came to believe him. With their approval, Pepper fought for a retrial, but the state of Tennessee successfully blocked the proceeding, and in 1998 Ray died, still protesting his innocence. A year later, Pepper was back in court pursuing the only option left: a civil suit. The jury concurred with his case, and their verdict cited "government agencies" as "parties to this conspiracy." The Justice Department launched an investigation in 2000 but found no basis for the jury's judgment. The official explanation remains what it was at Ray's conviction: that he acted alone.

Now Pepper has written a book about the case that dominated his life for more than 20 years. "An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King" is being published just in time for the annual testimonials to the fallen leader. This year, the King family will try to break through the ritual by publicizing the book.

The facts, as Pepper presents them, are these. King was the victim of a contract taken out by mobsters already doing business with the government (e.g., laundering money for the CIA). Ray was their patsy, framed by the Memphis police, who also tampered with the crime scene and manipulated evidence. Military units under the auspices of the Special Forces surrounded the motel where King was staying, serving as a backup unit in case the hit man failed. The FBI, which had planted stories deriding King for staying in white hotels, drew him to the black-owned Lorraine, and his secluded room was changed to one with a very visible balcony. Armed black activists who had stationed themselves in a rooming house overlooking the motel were told to leave just before the killing, as were black officers and firefighters.