Seneca Scott, a relative of Martin Luther King Jr., believes the FBI’s alleged role in King’s assassination should be revisited by Democrats, even though they appear to support the bureau targeting conservatives.
Scott wrote an essay in Compact Magazine about the story of King’s murder by an individual gunman and whether the FBI was involved in the killing. He begins the piece with the FBI’s campaign against black civil rights activists and radicals under the COINTELPRO program to undermine subversive political movements before going into the details of King’s murder. (RELATED: FBI Tries To Honor MLK, Gets Dragged On Twitter)
Without TRUTH, there can be no reconciliation.
May we get justice for all the freedom fighters killed by the State. #MLK55 https://t.co/NmRBoSFOYD
— Seneca Scott (@SenecaSpeaks21) April 4, 2023
“So, at this point, are the FBI’s extensive attempts to defame and discredit Martin Luther King, Jr. More enigmatic but equally important are the questions that still surround Dr. King’s assassination,” Scott writes.
King’s relatives, led by his widow Coretta Scott King, were skeptical of the official story from the outset, Scott says. “According to Coretta and her children, the ‘high-level conspiracy’ to assassinate Martin Luther King involved the FBI, the Memphis Police Department, and the Marcello crime family of New Orleans, with James Earl Ray serving as a lone patsy.”
Scott goes through the official story of Ray stalking and later killing King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Ray fled the scene and later escaped to the United Kingdom before he was captured.
Scott details the FBI’s inability to match the bullet with Ray’s alleged rifle and identify his fingerprints in the room he shot King from. Ray’s claims about being a “patsy” were accepted by Coretta Scott King, who visited him in prison. Scott follows it up by laying out the holes in the official investigations of the murder and the FBI’s connection to the Memphis Police Department.
Multiple eyewitness accounts provided differed from the official narrative about the location of the shot and some witnesses said they spotted another man on the scene, according to Scott. The FBI assumed control of the murder investigation right away and never performed an autopsy, Scott writes.
“The Democratic Party never misses a chance to claim the mantle of the black freedom movement, but today it shows little to no interest in reining in the bureau that wiretapped and blackmailed King and may have even played a part in his murder,” Scott alleges. “That’s because this unaccountable organization is proving useful in persecuting the party’s enemies on the political right, which have been extensively targeted in recent years.”