Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the MLK Tapes, a production of I Heart
Radio and Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in
this podcast are solely those of the podcast author or
individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent those
of I Heart Media, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees. This
episode contains strong language. Listener discretion is advised. Now, Johnny
(00:28):
Barger was my partner. We were policemen together. He's the
one who introduced me to Frank Liberto. We used to
go there Cloud often. It was real good friends. Of course,
I got to be pretty good friends with Frank myself
because he could do you a lot of good in Memphis,
especially on the police department. As we heard once before,
(00:50):
this is a recreation of Lloyd Jowers telling Dexter King
how it was he came to be friends with a
guy named Frank Liberto. As Jowers says, if you were
a cop, Loberto could do you a lot of good.
And Jowers knew that firsthand because Loberto saved him from
being fired when he had been found drunk on the job.
Jowers would say on ABC Prime Time that the reason
(01:12):
Liberto was able to bring him into the plot against
King was because Jowers owed him Alberto don of a
large favor. Sowed in the favor I called the Union
Hall A says a matter of life and death. I said,
I think these people of planning to kill Dr King.
(01:35):
The authorities were parade. Oh, we found a gun that
James l Ray bought in Birmingham that killed Dr King.
Except it wasn't the gun that killed Dr King. James
l Ray was upon for the official story from My
Heart Radio in Tender for TV. The plan was to
(01:57):
get King to the city because they wanted it handled
in Memphis for dead in him could handle it. And
I have lived with it alone, monsieur, and they they
skiff for me. The Lord told me to not the word.
I've been wanting to tell it all my life. I'm
Bill Clayburg and this is the MLK tapes. As we
(02:25):
just heard. Lloyd Jowers on National TV said that Frank
Liberto was able to bring him into the plot to
kill King because he owed him a favor. But murder
seems a little beyond what you Owers should have owed.
If all Leberto had done was put in a good word,
so what was it? Bill Pepper thinks Liberto might have
removed and disposed of a man who Jowers killed because
(02:47):
he caught him in bed with Betty Spaces. Bill says
Betty told him about this, though I couldn't find it
on any tape. Of course, the debt may have been
something more common, because along with this problem with alcohol,
Jowers liked gamble. Apparently he old Liberto or we're still
Liberto's boss, a pile of money, more money than he
could repay. So for the moment, let's accept that as
(03:11):
the leverage. But what did Jowers have that Liberto wanted.
Here's what jowers attorney Lewis Garrison had to say. I
came down, we had someone to do assassination. He thought
Jowers would be the person who do it. So that's what. So,
according to Garrison, Frank Liberto picked Owers because he thought
(03:31):
he was the man who could do the job. I
have a good opinion of Lewis Garrison, but I think
he has this piece of the puzzle wrong. I think
Liberto picked ours because the back door to his grill
opened onto a brush covered yard directly across from the
Lorraine Motel. And Liberto, who knew about these things, apparently
assured Jowers that the police would not be a problem.
(03:54):
Here's what Jowers said about that again on ABC. He
said I wouldn't be there, so they won't be there
that night. Did he say there would be a decoy there? Yeah,
it'll be set up, but look like someone else done
the killing. So at this point, if we're following the signpost,
(04:15):
the plot goes back to a wholesale produce guy who
is more than a wholesale produce guy. So who can
tell us about Frank Leberto? This is just what Dexter
King and Andy Young wanted to know when they met
with Jowers and Garrison in some motel room out on
the highway, the same meeting we listened to in the
last episode, and Jowers told them about some woman named
(04:39):
Nevada Whitlock Addison, who Frank Leberto liked a lot and
who we saw frequently at the end of the day. Again,
for clarity, we are recreating Jowers words. Miss Whitlock owned
a restaurant out on Highland hots On Making Road. I believe,
I believe that's where it was. Frank used to stop
in there all the time. The fact is he tried
(05:01):
to go to bed with her all the time. Miss Whitlock.
He may have. I don't know. Anyway, he'd get old up,
get drunk up, and he'd do a lot of talk.
So what kind of talking did Frank Liberto do when
he was drunk up with Levada Addison? If we're talking
about the King murder, it wasn't much. But there was
one time. Here's a reading of a deposition Livada Addison
(05:25):
gave to Bill Pepper. I had a TV up in
the front part of the pizza parlor, and we were
sitting at a table and something came on the TV
about Martin Luther King. And I don't recall what it was,
but he said, in a low voice to me, he said,
I had Martin Luther King killed. I said, don't be
telling me anything like that. I don't want to hear it,
and I don't believe it anyway, and I got up
(05:47):
and walked away. Livada Addison ended the conversation when she
walked away, but it disturbed her enough that she told
her eighteen year old son, Nathan about it. Nathan had
his own relationship with a Toad or Mr Frank, as
he called him, a relationship he described from the witness
stand at the civil trial it's frashing myself with friends.
(06:10):
He would come to my mother's restaurant on the day
the basis, early the morning, late in the evening he'd
come back, and I spent most of my time, really,
even the evening time. At the time, I've been performing
in the lost days and I'm just Frank. He would
come in and drink beer a lot, and I knew
(06:32):
how to play a song, an Italian song on the
guitar of Manda Guenian, and I used to playing the
song and he used to like this what I'd playing,
and he would tit his money in and then he
got to where was Frank's I had a little small
breaks combo when he knew give me jobs. So that performing.
(06:54):
So Mr Frank and Nathan became friendly. But what did
they talk about? That's what Bill Pepper asked at the trial. Well,
I asked you some stuff that led up to him
telling me that he came. But uh, I've heard that
ans of mom, And I asked, you can see the money,
(07:16):
and he he didn't say yes to know, he answered me,
But I asked him myself, what is the month? Is
it a bunch of bad guys that sit around at
the table and scheme up something mean to do this. No,
it's a bunch of business men to take care of business.
Nathan wasn't sure what to make of that, but he
was upset when he learned that Liberto had bribed to
his mother about the killing of King. I would regularly
(07:39):
bright when he showed up to the Pitts poker and
this ad just Frank to kill Barnloke. The King glared
at me. He said, you can talk to your mother.
I said yeah. He said you wired. I didn't even
want to get to that. No, I'm not wired. I
thought he was talking about it not taking in feather,
mean bills were wired up. No, I'm not crazy. Uh
(08:03):
you know he said there he says is I don't
want to offend anybody about saying he told me. He said,
I didn't kill the nigger, but I had it done.
And I said, what about the other son of a
bitch out they're taking credit for He says, ah, he
wouldn't done what I trovelger from Assuri. He was a
(08:24):
front man, and I didn't know what that mean, because
front man me means something different than what he was
thinking about it. I said what he said, I set
up at me. I said, why did you kill the preacher? Forward?
He says, boy, you don't even need to be here
about this. He said, oh, to say nothing. He stood up.
He actbody's gonna slap me upside the head. So I
(08:46):
stood up there and me and they were looking at
each other, and he's got this glare and look on
his eye, and I can tell he was thinking about hit.
And by that time the phone ring, So I spoke
to the national phone and I'm busy with a pizza
stuff and I looked up. He's gone. He left his
spurs as everyone'll tell you what's ahead for. But there
(09:06):
was no damage done. Liberto was back the next day
and there was no further talk about King. Nathan. Whitlock
then told the court about something that happened at the
restaurant that for a brief moment, had Liberto and Nathan
talking about something that Liberto wanted him to do. Some
guy came in. He looked kind of like John went
to the big guy read Nick. Guy walked to my
(09:29):
mother's restaurant, bring the beer. Mom runs over to the
door and she says, you can't bring up beer in here,
but I said, and he just he says, I might
just buy this motherfucking place, and back came mam. When
he did, I walked around the counter, was a nastick
and I'm not fired from the tail and knock him
(09:50):
through the front door. Kid across here buzz the out
and real bad buzzetel Nathan Whitlock damn near killed the
guy and would have if someone hadn't intervened. And fortunately
for Nate, Liberto's friendship was enough to ensure there would
be no reprisal. But more than that, what Nathan had
done had made an impression on Mr Frank and the
(10:12):
next time they met, Loberto started poking around, asking Nate
if for money he might consider killing a few people
that needed killing. He said, to do it again. I said,
I guess also might come and bit a base party.
Boh my eyes and yeah turn up and he says,
just didn't gentile said to him? He said, multiples over around,
(10:36):
We're going to the bat there on the flat over
emotional over for and to do it with some length,
And I said, I was money. He said fire. Nathan
got out of the conversation without agreeing to anything, but
every now and then he felt the stomach turn as
he found himself thinking about it. Then a few weeks later,
(10:58):
the phone rang at the restaurant. It was Frank Liberto
and he asked to speak to Nathan. Loberto didn't never
call Nathan on the phone, and Nathan didn't know what
this could be about, but he knew what he hoped
it was not about. He said hello and heard Liberto's
deep voice. He said, I got a job for you tonight.
Nate felt his pulse quicken and he's thinking. Nate kept listening,
(11:27):
trying to understand what was being asked of him. Loberto
said something about meeting down at the Civic Center and
to bring his drummer friend. Suddenly it came to him,
he's about yea for Sheriff Bill Morris's Christo. So Nathan
(11:47):
Woodlock played at Sheriff Morris's Christmas party and Frank Loberto
never asked him then or later to kill anybody. The
next summer, Nathan went to Canada, and when he came back,
his mother told him that Frank Liberto had died. MH.
Solvada Addison and Nathan Whitlock were people who knew the
real Frank Liberto and Mr Frank really did kind of
(12:07):
tell him that he played a part in the killing
of King, but that was years after the fact, and
maybe he was just making it up. So is there
someone closer to the crime who we might consult about Liberto?
Turns out there is how close to the crime was
he about half an hour away. This man, by chance
(12:27):
happened to be standing near Liberto at a crucial time
and he heard a few things he was not supposed
to hear, and at that time he would badly relive
(12:57):
never been reached to be out of the book. It
was in the spraying of nineteen nine and doing it
spraying a nineteen nine on up until the summer, we
made a great effort to get Naples the Reggist to vote,
and doing it summer we've got a small number risik in.
(13:19):
On August twitter, nineteen fift nine, we had a primary
election and they refused to let us vote. The Democratic
committed refused to let us vote. That's the voice of
John McFerrin, who was raised in Fayette County, Tennessee, just
east of Memphis. As a young man, he served in
(13:40):
the Army during the Second World War, and, like many
other black men, his time in the service had brought
him to other places and shown him other things which
made him less able to accept what he had always
known in Fayette County, like being denied the right to vote.
As McFerrin just described, even after they'd gotten a small
number of blacks to register, they were still not out
to vote, and the reaction in the white community was swift.
(14:03):
The White Citizens Council came up with the idea that
any black person who tried to register or vote should
be thrown off their land. Most black farmers were sharecroppers,
so they didn't own the land they worked. And it
wasn't just a threat. The evictions began. They were making
them all moved. And they got together and see it,
(14:25):
and they was coming to us, what we're gonna do
with all these folks that make the move over the land,
and they got no where to go. Then the group
and myself come up with the idea of my intent
and we bought label lay aborted ten from level jumpyard
(14:46):
on Serious Street. There's armored teens and we put up
the armored tents and later we named ten City. That's
how Ten Cities started. In a year's time, city grew
to hold over three people, including children who had a
canvas roof over their heads, but no income and little
(15:07):
to eat. But that wasn't the end of it. The
leaders of the group were not allowed to buy food,
or gasoline or much of anything else, not only in
Fayette County, but in Memphis as well. John McFerrin had
a small store that sold to local blacks. It was
a service to the community, pretending to be a business.
And suddenly John McFerrin had access to nothing. Would it
(15:30):
sell us, no games, would sellers, no food? They didn't
say a none need roots. That was called leaves. They
had a list. There's this clop club, clan and citizen
council pay us to rank, and a list contain named
and called the trollmakers with ex is behind McFerrin was
(15:55):
one of those with an ex behind his name. But
he did find a few sources who would sell to
him on the sly, a guy with a bread truck
that would meet him out on the road, and a
few other people who would sell to him after hours.
But then a court order came down saying that blacks
had the right to vote, and a truce of sorts
was called. Because the harsh conditions of Tense City were
beginning to make Memphis look bad, and a lot of
(16:17):
land was lying fallow. So the farmers were allowed to
return and things died back to the not very nice
way they had been before. McFerrin went back to his
store and was able to purchase meat at Morrel Meat
Company and his vegetables from L n L Produce, a
wholesale market run by Frank Liberto, and that's where he
happened to be at on the day Martin Luther King
(16:40):
was shot. The following is from John McFerrin's testimony at
the civil trial, in answering questions put to him by
Bill Pepper, would you describe what the layout of the
place was? And once you did? When arrive on the
right side, there's a little small oafice. And when I
(17:05):
got intended feet of this office, by Latch was standing up.
James Latch was Luberto's partner and the other L and
L and L Produce, And McFerrin always tried to avoid him.
Mr lest he star around his neck like this, and
(17:26):
he'd always be in the dream. But Mr Pako was
always friend. I would let stay wee bumping good, and
then we're happy about the phone man. And when the
phone rang last Victor, that's it, that's him again. He
gave it from Mr Paco and mcquaio said, shooting in
(17:50):
the You can just say what he said, shoot design
is on the back well. At that time they need
to head noticed me and I was just standing up
a little close to them and looking. Then he looked
around and see me. Then he said, gone, get you
(18:10):
munch of that. I won't only ain't gotten munch of that.
Then when I was coming back out, the phone rang again.
Let's fixture go and give it to Mr Baker, and
Mr Baker told it go get brother and you all
(18:30):
and get his five dollar not At the time, McFerrin
couldn't make sense out of what he had heard, but
that changed quickly. And when I got home, my wife
called and said, do you know dr Game you gotta kill?
I said, I know it. It all come back to
me in my mind where I heard, he says, when
(18:53):
they're told, I knew. Mcferren couldn't forget what he heard,
but it frightened him, so he didn't say anything to anyone.
But the man who had been murdered was Martin Luther King,
and McFerrin knew that King deserved something more from him
than silence. So two days later, McFerrin called a white
Methodist minister he knew, the Reverend Baxton Bryant, and told
(19:16):
him that he had heard something about the King killing.
He said he was afraid to go to the police
and didn't know what to do. Reverend Bryant suggested that
they meet the next afternoon. Before we take you to
that meeting, it is important to understand who Reverend Bryant
was and why McFerrin trusted him. At the time of
(19:38):
the sanitation strike in Memphis, Reverend Bryant was the director
of the Tennessee Citizens Union, a group dedicated to improving
communication between the black and white communities. At that time,
they weren't having much luck. This is how Reverend Bryant
summed it up in an interview he gave at Rhodes
College just two months after King was killed. Nest had
(20:00):
taken a lot of pride. It was paternalist. They had
laid some games, but it was raised the racist to
the core is what Brian called it. And although he
was white, he knew what that looked like. He had
grown up dur poor and rural Arkansas, one of thirteen children,
and like most of the blacks there, they didn't own
(20:22):
their own land. He felt that the words of Jesus
and their promise applied to everyone, black or white, and
that made him a little different from a lot of
the other white preachers in the Deep South. After he
had moved to Memphis and became the director of the
Citizens Union, Bryant played the role of go between in
the tents stuttering negotiations between the city and the striking
(20:44):
sanitation workers. He won the respect of both sides by
not tiptoeing around. What follows is his account of rather
heated private conversation that he had with Mayor Loeb a
couple of weeks before King was killed. I found out
I could say anything in this world that I wanted
to Familior and continuous Prince. I guess I appealed to
(21:09):
him because the Minister and I pressing with him. You know,
he didn't wouldn't have to be the ordinary, you know,
or Patsy preaching. You know you what he would tell me, Baxton,
all I've got to give my kids is my name.
My old dad taught me to be honest, and I've
(21:30):
said I wouldn't do it, and that I give you
my word, it's my word. I'm not going but I've
said I wouldn't recognize it, evenion, I'm not going to
recognize the Reverend Bryant saw lope as hiding behind his
father and his kids, and he wasn't having it. Why
(21:50):
can't you see, Henry, that thing's man. They want to
be mean. They don't want you to do something far,
They want to do something for them, saying, do you
know what what happened? If you recognize the union in
every one of those thirteen, you know there'd be a
man said at the end of the table tonight. Now
(22:12):
this is the stuff, Henry, that you've got to have
to be at home. But Daniel, so don't you sit
there and tell me you ba this one, you big bone,
you rawhide bast don't look me in the ay until
the you're old day ever told you to destroy the
(22:34):
manhood and the guts and the integrity and the courage
and willed man down the pons. A couple of weeks later,
Bryant attended a memorable meeting of the white ministers and
Black ministers at the Episcopal Church in Memphis. Bryant walked
over to the meeting with the Reverend Ralph Jackson, an
(22:55):
outspoken leader in the sanitation strike. Bryant and Jackson sat
down together, and Rabbi Wax, speaking for the white ministers,
started things off, said I'm at bat. Wax got up
and opened the meeting and said, I think we ought
to limit this discussion to try to find out what
(23:16):
the issues are. Ralph Jackson came on. Ralph jumped up
and said, you trick. I fought a long laught my
white breath had decided to have. Therefore, black, you don't
(23:37):
want to take me in you and me that thing.
What we're going to discuss is what the insue gore
ll all of you b bastards and sat oh nor
act and not done a god damn thing. We've had
(24:00):
thirteen under dog, and that the issue. Reverend Jackson walked out,
but he had shaken the room, and by the end
of the meeting, the ministers had decided that they would
meet with Mayor Loeb as a group to see if
some compromise could be reached, but it was too late.
The very next day, Martin Luther King was shot and
(24:22):
killed at the Lorraine Motel. We've taken a few moments
to follow Reverend Bryant as he moved about in the
racial cauldron that was Memphis, Tennessee. We did this because
Bryant was the minister who John McFerrin approached when he
was afraid to go to the police. And I think
(24:42):
this choice demonstrates McFerrin's sincerity, which has constantly been challenged
over the years. He didn't just go to someone, He
went to a man with unquestioned moral credentials. Three days
after King was shot, John McFerrin went over to Reverend
Bryant's house. This is Bryant's recollection of what McFerrin reported
(25:04):
to him. He uh was doing some shopping, buying some things,
and as I understand it, walked into a place of
business and in another room, in a little office, he
heard quite an angry conversation between the man on the
phone and whoever he was talking to. Evidently the person
(25:28):
on the other on the phone was running some money,
and he said, you can't get your money till the
job is completed, and then the statements you can shoot
the s O beyond the balcony later in the conversation
indicated that he was not to return to this particular
business to pick up the money, but that he could
(25:51):
pick it up from his brother in New Orleans. This
pretty much was the substance of the conversation. McFerrin told
and Bryant that he was afraid to go to the police,
that they had never been anything but nasty and threatening
to him. After hearing his story, Bryan said he thought
McFerrin did need to talk to the authorities, but perhaps
(26:12):
the FBI might be the better place to start. Bryan
said he would make sure that McFerrin went there with
legal counsel, and he called his friend, attorney David Kwood,
and that evening McFerrin and Kwood went to see the FBI.
McFerrin told them what he had heard. I gave him
the same detailed lead with me to real a little
(26:33):
save that The next day more FBI came to McFerrin's
house and they stayed for hours, asking the same questions
over and over, seemingly frustrated that McFerrin's answers would not change.
But along the way something was added to the story,
because a day or two after the assassination, a police
sketch of the alleged assassin, who was said to be
(26:55):
one Eric Galt, was published in the local paper. The
sketch was to I from descriptions offered by a few
witnesses who claimed to have seen someone fleeing the scene,
a sketch that didn't look much like James Earl Ray.
After seeing it, McFerrin told the FBI he thought the
guy might be someone he had seen working at Liberto's
(27:16):
the previous year. McFerrin said the guy he remembered might
have been of Cuban or Mexican descent, not even close
to a description of James Earl Ray. Once it was
established that the police were really looking for Ray and
not some guy named Golf, and they had an actual
photo to work with, they returned to question McFerrin. The
(27:37):
Department of Justice report released in June of two thousand
tells us what happened now, Quoting the FBI, showed him
an array of six photographs which included Ray's picture. McFerrin
excluded Ray and instead tentatively identified three others who did
not resemble Ray as the man who had worked for
(27:58):
Liberto in any normal police lineup using photos, McFerrin's exclusion
of the photo of Ray had to mean that the
man McFerrin was remembering was not James Earl Ray or
someone who looked like him. Case closed. Beyond that, it's
not exactly clear how McFerrin could be said to be
claiming that three different men could be the man who
(28:21):
worked for Liberto. Best guess was that McFerrin said these
three were the ones who most resembled the guy. How
else do you make sense of that sentence? So McFerrin
remembered some guy who worked for Liberto who shared some
likeness to the police sketch of the missing assassin, and
the guy was certainly not James Earl Ray. Nevertheless, this
(28:45):
whole six photo game of whack amole would be termed
McFerrin's misidentification, and it would become the easy shorthand way
to dismiss McFerrin's story, which has been done ever since.
With McFerrin, there are basically three possibilities. Either he's telling
the truth, or he made up the story, or he
(29:06):
was somehow mistaken. I think because of who he was
and that he sought out Reverend Bryant to tell what
he heard, it is safe to say that McFerrin had
not invented his story. Is it possible that he didn't
hear what he thought he heard? Yes, it is possible,
but shoot the son of the bitch on the balcony
and get your money from my brother in New Orleans.
(29:29):
These are rather memorable declarations. Nevertheless, the FBI came to
a quick determination that McFerrin was not to be believed.
What did Reverend Bryant think about that? Last Wednesday morning?
The FBI told me they didn't believe the story related
in any way to the king's assassin and they were
(29:49):
through with it. So what what's your reaction to this?
How do you feel about this? Well, of course I'm
no detective and don't try to be one, but I
wasn't satisfied with it. It makes sense to me that
the man in the completeness of the story, I've heard
him tell it a number of times. He he doesn't
vary in the story, and there are other elements in
(30:10):
it that that my mind is not at peace at all,
that there's not not something here that needs to be
someone needs to take a deeper look at. So the
FBI told Reverend Bryant that McFerrin's story had nothing at
all to do with the killing of King. What a
strange thing to say. From that, I suppose we may
(30:32):
presume that someone else was to be shot on the balcony.
But it didn't much matter because after Ray was captured
and the lone assassin's story took cold, nobody much cared
about what a black store owner thought he heard. So
is there anyone else who can tell us about Frank Liberto?
Was he really just a produced guy? What was the
(31:09):
role of Frank Leberton? You know me, and you know
just rumors are like bottles. Everybody's going. The old man
was good to me. He set me up in the
cocaine business, and he just give me the melons and
in front of me the dope. This is Ronnie Lee Atkins,
remembering how Frank Liberto helped him start a business on
(31:32):
a street corner in Memphis, and how a judge who
was friendly with his father was quite certain that Ronnie
Lee sometimes called there wasn't out there selling dope, man.
I had it. I've wedged him out and butt the
baggas cocon there and we had watermelons for seven dollars,
and then we had watermelons for two hundred dollars. And
(31:55):
at its corner of summer in bergins and so I'm
selling these ellens and this Niche comes by and I
was setting him some mellons and he goes calls the law,
and so I go into this big star to get
Sherrian me a drink. And when I started back out
the door, looked the tax squad done his share. Well.
They had her with her legs wrapped around the front
(32:17):
tire and her arms wrapped around the front tire and
was holding a shotgun on her, going word bear, and
she's going, I don't know, I ain't seen that's on, bitch,
And she turned and she's looking at me coming out,
And so I just cut and went through the alley
and went on and went. In a matter of fact,
I went to the little house and climbed on top
of it there on one row, and I just lay
there until the heat was off. They just carried her
(32:38):
here to jail. You know. I told Mama call the bobsman,
and she called Blue Barren and Tyrone ended up calling
the judge and he said, bears awaity, and we'll let
her out and we'll take care of this later on.
You know, I can't that boy ain't after a little dope.
At this telling, these memories were decades old. It had
been more than forty years since king assassination, when Ronnie
(33:01):
Lee Atkins came from Texas back to Memphis to testify
about what he knew of the murder of Dr. Martin
Luther King, and Atkins knew a lot because, as he
would reveal, his entire family, his father, mother, older brother,
and ron himself played active roles in the killing of King.
(33:21):
His father, Russell Atkins, Sr. Was in charge of heavy
equipment for the Memphis Department of Public Works, but as
far reaching power came from his unique position in the community.
He was a thirty second degree Mason, active in the
clan and the unofficial head of the pervasive crime spree
in Memphis sometimes known as Dixie Mafia. He had helped
(33:44):
install Henry Loebe as mayor, brought in former FBI Area
Director Frank Holliman as the head of police and fire,
and if that were not enough, he had a personal
friendship with Clyde Toulson, Hoover's number two at the FBI.
If any one in Memphis needed to get something done,
Russell Atkins was the one to see, and for the
(34:05):
ten years leading up to the murder of King, Ronnie
Lee Atkins had a front row seat for it all.
I was born in in fifty two, and in sixty
I started getting privy to a lot of business. Of
course I could open my pile or say anything, you know,
but I was able to sit and listen. Lad I
(34:27):
was to bring the coffee and the donuts. If the
corn bread and butter milk was ready, I'd go in
there and get it and bring it out to them.
If the PM and the greens was ready, they'd put
it on plates and the women folk and I had
carried out to the little house, and then I'd burned
down and get the coffee. And you know, I learned
how to run a percolator probably when I was started
(34:47):
four years hold them. Atkins was giving this testimony in
two thousand nine by way of a deposition that would
be legally attached to the corporate seedings brought by Coretta
Scott King a decade earlier. In the room that looked
out at Memphis from the twentie floor was Atkins lawyer
Stephen Tolin, court reporter Brian Dominski, and Bill Pepper, the
(35:10):
attorney for Mrs King, all appropriately dressed for the occasion.
In their presence with his head scarf, white Beard and
T shirt tightly fit on a full body. Atkins looked
like a good natured, will fed biker. Pepper would ask
the questions this day, and Atkins would answer, you went
to high school here in Memphis, to several high schools.
(35:34):
You went to several high school went to team schools.
And I don't know tanners way of years. Okay, so
you had problems in the schools, sir, I'll just like
to five have no problems, you know, I'll tell his girls.
And you know, did you graduate from high school? You
(35:54):
dropped out of the school. How went back school? I
was playing football where Kingsbury and uh I went back
and and coach brought hey telling me to get out
and run some laps and stuff. And I didn't run.
You know, he wanted me to run. I wanted to
study and running, you know, little man. And you know,
so anyway he told me, he said catch hole. And
when I got up in there, I had a little
shorts home a little ten years and all that and
(36:16):
I've been over and you know, he wo my ass
went and boards within my holes in him and cut
me pretty good. And um, I asked, is done? He said, yeah,
I said, the last time you'll do that. And I
went home. Next day, I come back with a pistol
and him and uh, the high school principal, Mr Billingsley
was down there by the chow hall. And so I
(36:38):
come in the front door, and I had that his
little danger in my pocket with a handful of shells,
and I got off about four good shots and cleared
the home and a couple of holes of a sitting
and and uh then they jumped in. I ended up
that juvenile court. Ronnie Leeatkins had an unusual upbringing because
he was the son of sel Atkins. He got to
(37:01):
sit at an early age in the back of the
room during Mason and clan meetings, some of which were
held in his father's house, and others that were held
at the nearby Baptist church. When the rallies were held
upstairs at the church, they were referred to as prayer meetings.
Can you discuss your dad and his associates and did
(37:21):
their relationship with the clan? Were they active clan members?
And they are active? They were active clan members long
as I can remember, yes, Or was it a particular
chapter of the clan? Or was it with his tennessee?
Was it an invisible empire, you know, yes, sir, nights
of the ku Klos clan. And did they have regular
clan meetings? Yes, sir, Were you ever allowed to attend
(37:45):
any of those? They called him rallies this what they
call him, you know, or prairie meeting. We're going to
prayer meeting, you know. I mean they'd sit around and
you know, now I was a kid, Now I was
taking all of us in, and and uh, you know,
when you're kids, you pretty go boar at least I will,
I mean, you know, everybody else? Why not by Osbordy Guild.
(38:05):
Were the the clan members your father and other clan members?
Were they also Masons? Were they all Masons? I don't
load on. I'd say the majority of more they were members.
And which lodge did they belong Summer Avenue Lodge? How
far did your father go on the right second? He
went to the thirty second and both my grandfather's. The
(38:29):
Freemasons or Mason's are a secret society that date back
to the Stonemasons, who built the great cathedrals in Europe
in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Men of stature might
be secret members of the Masons and be guided by
high moral principles George Washington, for example, For most of
their history, the Masons were opposed by the Catholic Church.
(38:51):
An anti Catholic bias was surely present in the Memphis
Mason's in the nineteen sixties. To be a thirty second
degree Mason meant that you were at the very top
of this men only society. The meetings were highly ritualized,
with symbols and code, but an outsider might regard them
as simply as an excuse for men to gather, drink,
(39:12):
and engage in hocus pocus. But as Ronnie Lee would explain,
the clan and the Mason's while sharing some members, we're
not the same. Let me tell you how this clan
and masny deal works. Let's say we got some timber
we won't cut. Well, if you just don't care about
your land, you're gonna send the clan in there and say,
(39:32):
I want this timber cut out, clear out, just two acres. Well,
they ain't gonna lead nothing standing are. They're gonna cut
whatever they're gonna cut, they're gonna get it out, and
then they're gonna burn the rest of it. With the Masonics. Well,
they'd go in there and they measure the timber and
the size it up, and then they'd take out selective
groups and they drag them out, and then they'd leave
the rest going and growing harvest. So looks like a
(39:52):
return later to get some more timber. You see what
I'm like? Where where the clan that was more like
a pit bulldog that's just aggravated, as to the Masonics
would be more like a German shepherd that had been
raised halfway decent in a good command of How did
they interact with the organized crime in in this whole region?
(40:18):
How did they were organized crime? The old old hold
You know if you call them organized, but if you're
dealing with your dealing with some klansmen and who are Masons,
and then you're starting to get into, uh the organized
crime with Carlos Marcello, you know, the Libertos and people
(40:38):
like that. They're Italians obviously, well yeah, did he call
them wamps? Uh? You know? But but you know, Frank
was in so many meetings up there, so you know, uh,
Lomberto so you know, uh, Marcella's came up from meetings,
but elso did um Clyde Tolson Carlos Marcella was the
(41:01):
powerful mafia boss from New Orleans, and Clyde Toulson was
the number two men at the FBI, who we will
talk about later. We can't know if they were ever
present at the same time, but as a charming thought
to imagine them sitting together at a so called prayer
meeting at the Baptist church where nasty illegal things are
being planned. So Memphis guys, when they were just by themselves,
(41:24):
didn't like Italians and didn't like Catholics, but they were
fine doing business with them if there was something in
it for everyone. When we think about organized crime, we
might think about such things as the luf Hansa heist
at j f K and other big ticket scores. But
in the South in the fifties and sixties, times were
(41:44):
tough and piles of money weren't just laying around to
be stolen. So organized crime existed by creating small streams
of income, but many of them a small gambling operation
would pass money up, same with prostitution or drugs. I
went to mckillo Lake with Chess Butler, and we got
to the boat that we kept done and it was
(42:06):
filled with with marijuana that came up the Mississippi River
from New Orleans. And I know that came in from
mars Sellis because that was a direct deal that came
through Diddy. But Chess handled that for Daddy. Diddy didn't
get around that boat, and Chess Butler handled other things
for Russell Sr. And I have seen Chess do some
(42:26):
crazy stuff, you know what I mean. I say him
stab a guy. I don't know whether the guy died
or not. We call Daddy, seen him over it. Calls
a man owed him some money over doing something and
the guy didn't do it and kept the money. I
see him to take I aspected to a man out
there at rebellion was one night called Daddy, sent him
outside with it and give him nice pick to do it.
So with that charming image, we're going to move forward
(42:48):
in time. Ronnie Lee is thirteen or fourteen, but on
occasion he still carries coffee to some of the meetings,
and he just sits in on others and no one
cares because he's always been there. But in nineteen sixty
five and sixty six, Ronnie Lee notices a change in
the talk about killing King. It starts to become specific.
(43:10):
I mean they just started doing some planning, you know,
they just started putting it together. The main thing was
I remember Daddy was talking to Sam Chambers and Henry
Lobe of the House. Now this took place in garage.
Last Caren coffee out to him and I ended up
going up and Graham, give me the perculator and I
can an actual house coffee. I remember that Dona donta
(43:30):
dot dot dont dont dont find you know, when that
was on TV, and she said, here take us out there.
They were talking about how they were going to disrupt
the city. The plan was disrupt the city because they
was gonna get King to the city, because Tolson said
that they wanted it handled in Memphis for Daddie and
(43:53):
M could handle it. Where it's specifically Daddy and M
could handle it. The actual crisis that Kingdom Memphis, the
sanitation strike would come after Russell Atkins had died and
Tulson had been set back by a stroke. But the
plan was the same, get King to come to the
city and find a way to have him killed, and
(44:14):
then you had a crisis where the one or two
sanitation workers were killed. It was two in the truck itself,
they squashed him in the truck. And how did that happen?
Do you know how that happened? Somebody pulled a hammer
on the pulled the labor on the truck and mash
them up in there. And they were up in there
and trying to get out of the rain. That's what
(44:34):
they was doing. And somebody, who was it Jim Ryan, No,
I thought it was Holly. I think it was Holly.
I thought it was pulled the hammer and killed them deliberately.
He knew they was in there. When he did he
do and why did he do it? He didn't tell me, Pepper,
I don't know. You asked me a six or four
dollar question. You know, was a black was a part
(44:56):
of the guys calls in the trouble? What I'm saying, Yeah,
think they were trying to do to create more tension
in order to bring Martin King in. You know, I
believe so we've all talked about that, you know, we
we think that was the ticket that absolutely brought him
in and caused his death. Because that's when Frank said,
you know, I mean, you know this, you know, we
(45:17):
gotta get on with this, you know, we just we
gotta get on with it, Frank Colman. Yes, or At
this point Ronnie Lee Atkins was not only hearing things
about disrupting the city to bring King to Memphis, he
was also doing things, by his own admission, rather nasty things.
(45:39):
All right, now we're into nineteen the guest sanitation workers
strike hits. Yes, who's taken over the hustle junior in
Hollman So Russell Jr. Frank Colman are running as the
assassination effort. Yes, what was done, the best of your knowledge,
was done to provoke the sanitation workers strike and the
(46:03):
anger to the level that it rose where it became
a very serious crippling strike in Memphis. Low, explain what
what you believe Lobe did. I know what Lope did
enter His reaction to it was, you know, go burn
this down and go burn that down, and and that's
what we did. So you mean let that the mayor
(46:26):
set you about the business of of creating the word
was ours creating of committee arses And this was sanctioned
by the mayor. No on, he just told us to
go do it. Ronnie Lee Atkins was only sixteen when Dr.
King was shot. He witnessed the murder. He played a
(46:46):
role in it. He knew others who were involved, and
we will hear him talk about these things in a
future episode. But we will end this segment with Ronnie
Lee's answer to a question from Bill Pepper. Now, in retrospect,
looking back, how do you see the role of your
father in all of this. I think daddy was just daddy.
(47:10):
I think he was real low key. I think he
had a job and a couple of businesses, and I
think this was something that came down on him and
from on high and small boys asked him to take
care of something, and he was obligated to take care
of it. That's what I believe. I don't think my
daddy took a damn from the government to do this work.
(47:35):
I'm talking about. You know, here's five thousand millars. Go
kill us, guy, or take care of this, or go
move this from here to that. I don't think that
ever happened. It was more of a bartering. We're living
in the South. We've got a problem down here. I've
got men that wants to work, y'all trying to give
(47:56):
all jobs to the colors, you know, and and I've
some white bulls over here and needs some jobs. I've
heard daddy sleay niggering. I've heard him say coon, and
I've heard him say porche monkey, I've heard him say spook,
and you know, I've heard my daddy slay and you
know her pretty terrific stuff. But you know what, I've
said the same thing. It's all I knew at the time.
(48:19):
And then you know, in in two thousand, I got
educated a little bit so and I started changing my life,
and that's what help bring us here today. I mean,
it's about me turning around next time on the MLK TIS.
(48:42):
After several hours of questioning and cross examining, Ray told
him that there was no such person as Rael, and
he knew there was no such person as Rael. He
admitted that and told me that he had to invent
invent Rayol, because that's Hugh wanting. We met with the
(49:03):
Glenda Ray Bow and Rowing Ray. She first said, I mean,
they they're almost their ugly statement was we know the Ray,
but we don't know it's Ray or you're loving. This
story was so extraordinary that when I first heard him,
I had to say that I was profoundly scape um.
(49:23):
There was any pulps of the story that I could
get corroborational that a white people don't thank Gray someday
being sacrificed, all white people are gonna thank Ray someday
for being for being the sacrifice for us. Jacko kind
of bluffed and whipped out his BBC credentials and told
we're making a movie, and they gave him the information
(49:44):
so we had the name. Thanks for listening to The
MLK Tapes, a production of I Heart Radio intended for TV.
This podcast is not specifically endorsed by the King Family
or the King of State. The email K Tapes is
written and hosted by Bill Claiper. Matt Frederick and Alex
(50:05):
Williams are executive producers on behalf of I Heart Radio
with producers Trevor Young and ben Keebrick. Donald Albright and
Payne Lindsay are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV
with producers Jamie Albright and Meredith Stepman. Original music by
Makeup and Vanity Said. Cover art by Mr soul to
six with photography by Artemus Jenkins. Special thanks to Owen
(50:28):
Rosenbaum and Grace Royer at u t A, The Nord Group,
back Median Marketing, Envisioned Business Management and Station sixteen. If
you have questions, you can visit our website, the email
k tapes dot com. We posted photos and videos related
to the podcast on our social media accounts. You can
check them out at the email k Tapes. From our
(50:49):
podcasts from I Heart Radio and tender Foot TV, please
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,