Welcome to the MLK Tapes, a production of I Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV.

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This episode contains strong language.

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Now, Johnny 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, 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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.

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, 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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.

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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.

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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.

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, 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, 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 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?

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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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 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 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 Rosenbaum and Grace Royer at u t A, The Nord Group, back Median Marketing, Envisioned Business Management and Station sixteen.

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