William F. Pepper's "Orders to Kill"

It is telling that Pepper says the final exam decision to assassinate King was made "about a week after the Detroit riots" (511), suggesting that the conspirators fe ared the unrest which King could have inspired, oddly with his decision to protest the Vietnam war as rise up as economic and civilised rights injustices.

Perhaps Pepper is wrong on some of the details of the show window. Perhaps he does not last convince the reader that the people who he believes did the shooting very did the shooting. However, the appropriate is thorough and full of details, and the credentials of the germ are impressive, and this reader now believes after reading the book that in that location was a conspiracy to kill King and to frame Ray.

The book is specifically a study of one murder case in 1968, plainly it is also a fib of a particular era of the United States which was full of violence, uncertainty and often political and social activism. The book inevitably deals with much of that convulsion as related to King and the character assassination, and his examination of the local and federal official institutions tortuous in some way in the assassination and the cover-up make the reader begin to fear his avow regime. This reader found it difficult to read the book as merely a history of a distant time, for if the government could murder a major n

This is not to say that Pepper is wrong, about these details having to do with the actual shooting, or about the larger facts of the conspiracy and the cover-up, especially the framing of Ray for the crime. However, again, when the charges are of such extraordinary load and scope, and when the case itself is of such monumental significance not notwithstanding for the history of the country but for its present reality, then every(prenominal) statement in the book which is not marked as speculation or possibility must be exhaustively cited.

Pepper was involved in the investigation of the assassination for eighteen years, beginning in 1978 when he interviewed James Earl Ray in prison and began to believe that Ray did not commit the murder, but was instead framed for the crime.

Not only was Pepper Ray's lawyer for years, but he is an attorney who has practiced international, civil rights and thorough law, having attended the London School of Economics and Political Science, and having have from Columbia University, the University of Massachusetts, and Boston College. His association with the case preceded his interview with Ray, for he was an associate of King himself in the year before the civil rights leader's murder. Therefore, he is qualified to write the book on both a personal and a professional basis.

It is difficult to work out the lightness and accuracy of the book in regard to its details, because of the paucity of citations. Pepper does provide a Glossary and a constitute of the "Principal Players" in the case, but these additions do not gourmandize the gap left by the inadequacy of footnoting, as well as the absence of a bibliography. A defender of the book, of the author, and of the claims of the author might argue that the book must be fair and accurate because those whom the author names as being involved have not taken him to court in fiat to sue him. However much this may be true, is history to judge the fairness and accuracy of as book ground on such a measuring stick? In
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