Agent 500 (nonfiction)
Agent 500 (nonfiction) ...
Salon article
Chances are, you can’t name the person kneeling down next to Martin Luther King, Jr. in the iconic photo taken just after the civil rights leader was gunned down on April 4, 1968. That’s because nobody there knew who he was, not really. He was “Agent 500,” spying on Dr. King for the Memphis police department’s intelligence division and the FBI.
But no one knew that at the time. Nor did they know that James Harrison, also in King’s group, was an FBI agent proper, whose intelligence work joined with Agent 500 in the days before King’s assassination to give the Feds disturbingly detailed information on King’s every move, writes Taylor Branch in his exhaustive biography of the civil rights hero.
Nor did they know that on the day of the assassination Detective Ed Redditt kept “clear view over the motel parking lot to King’s room 306,” papering over a window and cutting out two holes for binoculars, writes Branch.
No one knew how the place was swarming with agents of the state.
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Fiction cross-reference
Nonfiction cross-reference
- Loyd Jowers trial @ Wikipedia
External links
- [ The MLK murder mystery: How slain leader's death became a true crime whodunit] - When Coretta Scott King alleged the feds' involvement in her husband's death, the scary truth was she was right - By Matthew Pulver (5 April 2015)
- The Assassination of MLK and Agent 500 @ Winter Watch
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- [] @ Wikipedia