Krishna
This strikes a balance between a narration in the thriller style (want an example? Read A Beautiful Mind, an excellent portrayal of the life of John Nash. – The movie was also wonderful.) and a detailed history (which adds some depth to the narration)
The story is definitely interesting. Authenticity? Yes, full marks for that. But the title is rather lame – I would not want to pick up a book that was vaguely titled like this, but having done so, I am glad I did.
Starts well, with the carefully planned escape of prisoner 416-J. Daringly he escaped from the prison in a bread box and went home to St Louis. In the meanwhile, the story moves back to the sixties in America – Memphis, where Cotton the hitherto king of crops is giving way to soya and this means loss of jobs for thousands of black workers (whose ancestors had come as slaves) who then flock to Memphis and take any job they can get – usually the lowest rung, given their lack of skills on anything but picking cotton that they were good at before.
The story shifts to King, where the people were growing impatient with his continued nonviolence and he was considered ‘past his peak’. He was under pressure to do something big to regain public notice.
Meanwhile Eric Gault arrives in a Mexican city. We guess that maybe this person is the person who escaped from the prison in the Prolog. We learn that we are right, but there are layers upon layers of obfuscation in the whole tale.
He befriends Manuela, a prostitute. Despite treating her well, he shows his violent side and also his hatred of the blacks, making her uncomfortable. Then he moves on to other women. Goes back from Mexico to the states. He himself is neat and dapper, always clean shaven, always in a well cleaned and pressed suit.
The paranoid and devout Edgar J Hoover, with a black bible at his desk as always, worried about the coming ‘black revolution’ under Martin Luther King. In old age, he had developed weird phobias about germs, flies, etc.
Everyone is appalled at the disturbingly loose morals of the pastor, Martin Luther King, including you if you are unaware of the fact. For a pastor, his serial affairs and a string of mistresses marred his reputation as the moralistic leader.
He hates King who he suspects has communist sympathies. Edgar was also racist in his life. George Wallace, an openly racist rabble rouser, stood for Presidency on an independent ticket and caused waves. He hated King with a passion as well.
Meanwhile Galt goes through life learning bar-tending, dance etc but everyone sees that he is emotionless, cold and has no social skills. He is an admirer of Wallace. Martin’s Beagle rally goes bad due to bad elements starting a riot and looting shops on the way.
Meanwhile Galt comes to Memphis where he spots a chance to get at King on his next visit. He buys a semi automated weapon with fake name and no ID shown and pays by cash, all of which was legal in that state.
They show in great detail how Eric managed to shoot (a single bullet is all he could manage in scrambling to get to the toilet which had a view to King’s balcony on time but that was enough) King, how he had to abandon his gun wrapped in a blanket nearby in full view of a shopkeeper and how he escaped in his Mustang, also in full view of the shopkeeper. When a Good Samaritan tried to stay on his tail, while talking to the cops on the CB radio, he was shot at and abandoned the chase.
Meanwhile Jesse Jackson, while others are trying to stay away from the media takes full credit for being at King’s side – according to other witnesses and the author’s narration of events he was nowhere close – and announces that King was dead and he, Jesse, was the last person King spoke to. He capitalizes on it shamelessly as others are mourning and are in shock.
The author follows Eric when he abandons the car (which is now the target of a manhunt) in an apartment building and tries to escape to Canada. His original aim was Rhodesia where Ian Smith, an unapologetic racist, ‘would welcome him as a hero’ and ‘provide him with all the honours he needs’. But realizes that the route to the South would be under intense scrutiny. So he takes a series of Greyhounds to Detroit and to Windsor, finally settling down in Ossington area in Toronto. He takes the identity of a man who lives in the suburbs (Scarborough).
The rest of the story is about how he is finally captured – after he had fled first to London and then to Portugal, on his quest to get to Rhodesia and how he escapes – for the second time – from a hugely high security prison where he was kept and what happens next.
The context of the peaceful protests fizzling out after King is no longer there to inspire and lead them, the frustrations of Ralph Abernathy where nothing goes right in the march despite his best efforts, and the upstaging of even Robert Kennedy’s death news deliberately by Hoover, who hated Bobby, by revealing the capture of the ‘killer of King’ at the most tasteless moment – all of these add multiple layers to the story to make it one of the better biographies to read.
Nice narration, copious details, good research – a fine book to read.
7/10
– – Krishna (September 2019)