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A common hypothesis for why he was assassinated is that it wasn't his fight against racism that "crossed the line", it was when he started fighting for the econ
by JohnFen 10mo ago
A common hypothesis for why he was assassinated is that it wasn't his fight against racism that "crossed the line", it was when he started fighting for the economically downtrodden across the board.
- pleonasticity 10mo agoI think the strongest hypothesis is that he combined the anti war movement and black freedom struggles. He was assassinated one year after his historic “beyond Vietnam” speech. https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksil...
- guywithahat 10mo agoJames Earl Ray shot him from his apartment across the street, presumably as an act of racial hatred. Maybe he had economic views but I don't think they're relevant, he was a convict and a bad person who acted alone.
- CharlesW 10mo agoMaybe, it's not quite that simple. https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/part-2b.html#stlouis https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-repor...
- wahern 10mo agoThere's some pretty compelling evidence that Ray's inception of the idea may have come from hearing about a bounty on MLK's head. See https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/12/martin-luther-king-mlk-fbi-files-murder-assassination.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/12/martin-luther-ki... If true I wouldn't consider Ray to have been acting on behalf of a conspiracy (even if the bounty itself was a conspiracy), but it's not quite acting alone, either. It's sort of like if someone got the idea for doing something from gossip on 4Chan. They may have already been primed to do something horrendous, but there's an element of but-for causation regarding the particulars and follow-through.