Bibliograph

Hellhound on his trail, the stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the international hunt for his assassin, Hampton Sides

Type

Label

Hellhound on his trail, the stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the international hunt for his assassin, Hampton Sides

Language

eng

Bibliography note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [683]-699)

resource.biographical

contains biographical information

Index

no index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Hellhound on his trail

Nature of contents

bibliography

Oclc number

436030181

Responsibility statement

Hampton Sides

Sub title

the stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the international hunt for his assassin

Summary

On April 23, 1967, Prisoner #416J, an inmate at the notorious Missouri State Penitentiary, escaped in a breadbox. Fashioning himself Eric Galt, this nondescript thief and con man-whose real name was James Earl Ray, drifted through the South, into Mexico, and then Los Angeles, where he was galvanized by George Wallace's racist presidential campaign. On February 1, 1968, two Memphis garbage men were crushed to death in their hydraulic truck, provoking the exclusively African American workforce to go on strike. Hoping to resuscitate his faltering crusade, King joined the sanitation workers? cause, but their march down Beale Street, the historic avenue of the blues, turned violent. Humiliated, King fatefully vowed to return to Memphis in April. With relentless storytelling drive, Sides follows Galt and King as they crisscross the country, one stalking the other, until the crushing moment at the Lorraine Motel when the drifter catches up with his prey. Against the backdrop of the resulting nationwide riots and the pathos of King's funeral, Sides gives us a riveting cross-cut narrative of the assassin's flight and the sixty-five-day search that led investigators to Canada, Portugal, and England, a massive manhunt ironically led by Hoover's FBI

Target audience

general

Classification