"Roads to Memphis" review

The DVD, Roads to Memphis, an episode of the spectacular PBS series, American Experience, traces the steps taken by Martin Luther King, Jr. and James Earl Ray leading to the fatal moment when Ray shot King to death on the balcony of a Memphis hotel more than 40 years ago.

King was in Memphis to support the city’s striking sanitation workers. By 1968, many of the seemingly insurmountable aims of Civil Rights movement been achieved. Yet, while federal legislation had been enacted to protect African-Americans from discrimination, economic disparities remained, leaving many shut out from the mainstream of society. King was broadening his activism to fight poverty. The tragic irony in this is that is that King was killed, just as he was poised to help people like Ray

Roads to Memphis reveals how Ray and his brothers were raised in a shack and often deprived of necessities, such as food and heating. Their father was in and out of jail, their mother was a prostitute and the boys were looked down upon in school. The Ray family was at the bottom of the heap, ostracized even by poor people in the community who still had more than they did.

At 40 years-old, Ray was a career criminal and escaped fugitive from prison still craving respect and recognition. “Roads to Memphis” is fascinating in the way it reveals how Ray’s state of mind would propel him to kill the leading figure in the Civil Rights struggle. Like many others, Ray killed for the notoriety. He deluded himself with the false belief that killing King would make him a hero. Ray became absorbed in the racist rhetoric of third party presidential candidate and firebrand segregationist George Wallace. The documentary correctly refers to King’s assassination as the “last spasm” of the segregationist south. Historians commented on how Ray believed that by assassinating King, he would help Wallace, reclaim southern tradition and be lauded as a hero.

Today, King is a revered figure whose birthday is a national holiday. He has rightfully gained mainstream acceptance as a historical figure studied in school by kids of all races. However, this normalization tends to leave a watered down view of history that obscures the volatility that gripped American during the 1960s. Roads to Memphis brings back the intensity and turmoil of an era that is growing steadily hazier. Vivid film images of inner city race riots and African Americans, bloody from being beaten by police batons, captures the mood of the country at that time.

The most unsettling thing about this view of the past, however, is not how it differs from today, but how it is the same. Oh sure, King is today looked upon as a hero. There’s even a black president, which would have unheard of 40 years ago. But one only has to see the old film coverage of men in gray Civil War era uniforms unfurling the Confederate flag at a George Wallace rally suffused with rabble-rousing, race-baiting fervor to recognize the parallels with America in 2010.

Today’s ultra conservative politicians and talking heads aren’t attacking African-Americans. Not directly at least. It’s not fashionable today to make African-Americans the enemy; today’s smear artists have new scapegoats -- Mexicans, Muslims and homosexuals. It is chilling to hear historians talk in Roads to Memphis about how southern whites feared racial equality for blacks would mean the loss of their jobs and an end to their way of life.

Racism against African-Americans is not as out in the open as it was 40 or 50 years ago, but isn’t it interesting how the stars and bars and glorification of Confederate soldiers and “southern tradition” occasionally pop up in hyper-conservative pockets, hostile to the Obama presidency? In the tea party movement, opposition to healthcare reform is just a convenient veil to legitimize the underlying racism that becomes more expressive in the sign slogans and crude caricatures of Barack Obama at their rallies.

King laid down his life for people who, for too long, had been kept down by the system. Advocating for the sanitation workers -- their rights to a living wage, safe working conditions and to be treated with dignity – was part of a broader human rights issue. King was on the side of progress and encountered backlash for it. It’s the same deal today. People who push for economic and social justice are scorned by right wing extremists.

Roads to Memphis illustrates how the loaded hate speech of demagogues helped lodge the bullets inside the chamber of the Remington rifle that would cut down the life of a man, for whom non-violence was a way of life. Given the toxic level of rancor polluting the airwaves today, it is something to think about.

People today are being misled into sabatoging their own interests, just as they were 40 years ago. As disenfranchised groups, African-Americans and poor southern whites would have been formidable allies, but such a natural union would have been heretical to the crowds enflamed with white supremacist vituperation. The ruling class had a vested interest in keeping it that way. As long as these two groups were enemies, they were no threat to them.

Gateway film: I Am a Man. Elmore Nickelberry and Leslie Moore -- Memphis sanitation workers who took part in the strike more than 40 years ago --- talked about the tumultuous period in Roads to Memphis. The documentary, I Am a Man, approximately 30 minutes in length focuses on their story. The film can be accessed on-line at http://www.iamamanthemovie.com/.

Gateway Literature: Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign by Michael K. Honey. This book by a labor historian gives a detailed account of the strikers’ plight and King’s efforts to help them.