Memphis wgbh

The madam of a local brothel, Annie Cook, helped out by converting her place of business to a hospital, where she nursed the stricken. She died from the disease in September. By the end of the year, more than 5, were confirmed dead in Memphis. The New Orleans health board listed "not less than 4," dead. The Mississippi Valley experienced , cases of yellow fever, with 20, deaths.

The Aftermath In New Orleans, the city's Medical and Surgical Association argued for improved drainage and sanitary measures to quell future yellow fever outbreaks. Such efforts, though they were undertaken to eliminate germs, helped to remove the breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and New Orleans never again experienced the scope of the epidemic.

The federal government convened a commission to investigate the outbreak and established the National Board of Health in In a report to Congress shortly before the national agency was created, John Woodworth, the Marine Hospital Service surgeon general, emphasized the gravity of the situation: "Yellow fever should be dealt with as an enemy which imperils life and cripples commerce and industry. To no other great nation of the earth is yellow fever so calamitous as to the United States of America.

Discover the fascinating story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, the groundbreaking cryptanalyst who helped bring down gangsters and break up a Nazi spy ring in South America.

Her work helped lay the foundation for modern codebreaking today. I n the summer of , hundreds of wildfires raged across the Northern Rockies. If King comes on to the balcony and spends any time there, what Ray knows he has to do is grab that rifle, go into the bathroom and hope no one's there.

Lock that door and try to take the shot. Samuel Kyles, Memphis Minister: That night, dinner was to be served at my home. And so I went to the motel to get him, about a quarter of six. I said, "Guys, we got to go. Right there, on the balcony. Gerald Posner, Writer: He has the chance right there, he's only bought the gun five days earlier. He doesn't have to stalk him for the next month, this could be it.

Now he has to take that rifle, get into the bathroom down the hallway, have nobody see him, get into the tub, which he has to do, and set up to take the shot and hope that when he does that, King hasn't left.

Samuel Kyles, Memphis Minister: He was greeting people down in the courtyard. He saw Jesse Jackson. Said, "Jesse, you're not dressed for dinner. That's all I need. Gerald Posner, Writer: Ray goes down the hallway, nobody sees him. He gets into the tub. King is still there. Ray sets up his , and the window ledge becomes the brace that gives him the sturdiness that he needs on a rifle. He doesn't have to hold this up in the air.

Samuel Kyles, Memphis Minister: So I turned to go to the stairs to go down, and Martin was leaning over the balcony on the railing, talking to Jesse and Ben. Gerald Posner, Writer: Ray looks through the 07 power scope and King becomes large. Most of the scope would be taken up with King's face at that point.

You couldn't get a better shot. A deadly shot. Martin Luther King: It never occurred to me that it was a bullet until I looked up and didn't see him. And I ran up the stairs and there saw him laying down in a pool of blood.

And I knew then immediately it was all over. Samuel Kyles, Memphis Minister: There was so much blood. Blood was everywhere. He never spoke a word. We have information that King has been shot at the Loraine. Gerald Posner, Writer: After the shot was fired, Ray knew that he would have to make a fast get away. So he had made a bundle he'd take with him: the rifle his binoculars everything else. The adrenaline has to be absolutely pounding because now it's time to escape.

Ray would have to get to his car with nobody seeing him. And he gets outside, and he turned left to go to his car. Half a block away are two police cars, and Ray couldn't tell if somebody is in the police car, or if the cars are empty. Ray has to make an immediate decision, if he is caught with the murder weapon, game's over, that's it, might as well give it up.

He's the assassin. If he's caught without the weapon, he might be able to talk himself out of the reason that he's there. He decides to dump it. He dumps it into a recessed doorway next door to the flophouse, then goes to the Mustang and drives away.

Memphis Police Radio archival : There is a weapon in front of and the subject ran south on Main Street. Memphis Police Radio archival : Not to touch the weapon, the weapon is not to be touched. And suddenly, over the radio, Dr. King has been shot at the Lorraine. Very, very quickly we had the Lorraine Motel just flooded with police officers. Martin Luther King: All of the police came running toward us when the shot came from behind them, and we were urging them to go back that way to see who did the shooting, but they were coming over to see what happened.

Hampton Sides, Writer: The police started asking people in the vicinity, "What did you see? Venson Hughes, Memphis Police Department: At that point in time, we maintained the security ring around the crime scene and around the building where the shot was fired, and we started broadcasting a description. Memphis police report they have just confirmed that Reverend Martin Luther King has been shot. Reverend Jesse Jackson archival : The pathology and the sickness and the neurosis of Memphis and of this racist society in which we live is that they really pulled the trigger.

To some extent Dr. King has been a buffer the last two years between the black community and white community. The white people do not know it, but the white people's best friend is dead. Gerald Posner, Writer: King's assassination is like striking a match and it hits the gasoline and in cities from Detroit to Newark, in Watts, in Los Angeles, in major black neighborhoods across the country there are riots, dozens dead, thousands wounded, thousands arrested.

Walter Cronkite, CBS News Anchor archival : Late today, the president declared a state of emergency and regular army troops moved into the nation's capital to protect strategic locations Dan Rather, Anchorman: He's hearing on the radio, Dr.

Martin Luther King has been shot. Martin Luther King has been killed. And that the police are fanning out trying to find suspects. Hampton Sides, Writer: I think it begins to dawn on him the magnitude of what he's done, that he's not going to be celebrated by the powers that be and that he's a wanted criminal.

So he knew he had to stay just ahead of this amazing turmoil that was coming out of Memphis and he just, sort of just got out in the nick of time. Dan Rather, Anchorman: We can only imagine the farther he gets away, the more he is breathing a sigh of relief. And he's thinking, "Man, I think I made it. They didn't get me. I outsmarted those sons of bitches once again. Woman on the street archival : We have lost a great man. I respected him and I always looked up to him.

Man on the street archival : Well I don't feel sad, no. He was a professional colored man and perhaps he got what he deserved. Woman on the street archival : Well what can you say, you know, it's a sick society we're in. Woman on the street archival : History of the American people, giving way to the prejudices, their ignorance.

You have tremendous violence that this triggered. You have a movement that basically now doesn't have a leader. How are they going to react? You have the government now that's worried about, "Is this going to continue to spiral out of control, how are we going to give people confidence that we're going to be able to get the right person and bring him to justice.

That this person will get justice And whether he'll ever be found. Where is he? Hampton Sides, Writer: The day after the assassination, Ramsey Clark and FBI representatives come to Memphis and try to assure the nation that every effort will be expended to find King's killer. It very quickly became the largest, the costliest, the most ambitious manhunt in American history. Thousands of agents were involved and there's really never been anything like it.

Hoover had presented himself in connection with Martin Luther King, he had to He was afraid people were going to say he did it, you know. Edgar Hoover were these people who had tried to ruin King's life, was the very agency, that was assigned the task of finding King's killer.

Ramsey Clark, US Attorney General: And you could feel and particularly at the nerve center, they were very anxious to solve this case. Gerald Posner, Writer: The manhunt that takes place in the King assassination is frenzied, but it takes place in guess where? The U. Ray knows that's going to happen. He's on his way to Canada. He's smart enough to drive not on freeways, he goes on back roads.

Goes to Atlanta, parks his Mustang. He wipes it clean of prints and he abandons it. He takes a bus up to Detroit. Takes a taxi and crosses into the Canadian border. Where everybody's looking for the assassin in America, he's up there trying to get a Canadian passport. He wanted to go to a place that he felt like he would be embraced as a hero. Hampton Sides, Writer: Rhodesia was a white supremacist, segregated country that I think he viewed as a place of refuge.

Dan Rather, Anchorman: Once he became convinced that his immediate getaway was successful, I think he had to be thinking, "There are a lot of big money, powerful people who wanted this to happen and I made it happen. And I'll get my just rewards for that, if I can just stay on the lam long enough.

For a Willard or a Lowmeyer or a Galt, all names Ray had used. He moves into a flophouse with one name then he buys the gun with one name. They're not quite sure of who they're looking for. Hampton Sides, Writer: And they're beginning to think this is probably a conspiracy of these three guys. Then they begin to sift through some of the other evidence and the picture gets a little more complicated. Ray left that bundle near the scene of the crime and so it's a big puzzle that it's just all right there in one place.

There's binoculars and there's this transistor radio and these various clothing items that have laundry tags on them. They somehow trace this tag all the way back to Los Angeles. The whole thing is wide open. The gun was bought in Birmingham, of course the crime happened in Memphis, this guy was obviously living at some point in Los Angeles, and so investigators are kind of all over this and going in all different directions. They do it methodically. Hampton Sides, Writer: They find these latent fingerprints on the scope, on the rifle, on a can of Schlitz beer.

They begin to realize that you know the Hoover has the idea that why don't we compare this print to the fingerprints of every known fugitive in the country. So they basically have to get these fingerprints experts to analyze these things by hand, you know comparing one at a time, one at a time. Gerald Posner, Writer: They have over 50,, 53, different fingerprint cards that they have to go through.

It's going to take them months to get through, but they get lucky. On the tth, they suddenly realize the person they're looking for is an escaped felon called James Earl Ray.

What they don't know is that he's not in America any longer. News Report archival : Prime suspect in the assassination of Dr. The most wanted criminal in the country. Everybody knows James Earl Ray. Everybody's looking for James Earl Ray.

All of a sudden, he has become the celebrity that he always wanted to be. He was public enemy number one, he made the list. Wayne Flynt, Historian: There never seems to be anything more irrational than that one person should have chosen to create a life for himself by murdering another human being.

It's just an act of pure violence, an act of insanity. Well, that's from the standpoint of a rational person. It's not the world of a loner who has no recognition. And for whom that one act of violence is a transcendent moment in his existence. At the heart of James Earl Ray is just the desire to say, "Somebody look at me. Hampton Sides, Writer: He must be ecstatic because he knows that he has done something that's sent out these shockwaves. Back in America, people are talking about him.

At the same time, it must have been terrifying because he recognized that they were onto him. He knew that his time was short in Canada. That he had to get out of there as quickly as possible. Venson Hughes, Memphis Police Department: Not only did he get a passport out of Canada, but he bought an airplane ticket and flew to London. Then down to Portugal. He was looking to be a mercenary in Africa, and he had heard that you could make contacts in Portugal.

Gerald Posner, Writer: He tries to get a ship that's going down to Rhodesia, but he misses it by two days. So he's got enough money to go back to London, where he sits for the next month and he starts to run out of money. He robs a jewelry store at one point to keep going. Finally on June 8th, Ray goes to Heathrow. He's trying to get over to white Africa. So he's traveling under an alias Ramon Sneyd.

And that happens to be on the watch list. Venson Hughes, Memphis Police Department: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police went through, one by one, every passport that had been issued following the assassination until they made a match on the bartending school photograph and a passport photograph out of Canada.

Hampton Sides, Writer: So Ray goes to the desk and this agent, he looks down at a little list that had been prepared for him and saw the name, Ramon Sneyd. Now this John Campbell, Assistant District Attorney: And it didn't take long to figure out that this is the person everybody in the world has been looking for. Arthur Hanes, Attorney: He was wearing a Leg shackles. Nobody knew who he was.

Whether he was part of an international conspiracy. Whether he was leading a vast revolutionary army. He was a mystery man. I'm no longer a loser. I did something, I did something big. I made the FBI's top ten. I gave them a good, long chase. And I come back to Memphis, yeah, I come back in a straitjacket, but you know forevermore, I'm somebody, I slew the dreamer. Harris Wofford, Special Assistant to President Kennedy: I think all kinds of people thought that Ray was probably part of some kind of a group, a plot.

There's a rational reason to think that there was motive in thousands of thousands of people to kill King. There was hatred of a degree can't say anything other than it was an invitation to violence. Therefore, it's not irrational to try to see if there was a conspiracy.

Dan Rather, Anchorman archival : There is no shortage of other suspected plotters and planners of the assassination. First, unnamed money interests. To prevent Dr.

King from leading his scheduled Poor People's March on Washington. Two, white racists. Their motive for wanting to get rid of Dr. American Experience: Billy Graham. One of the best-known and most influential religious leaders of the 20th century.

April 19, American Experience: American Oz. The life and times of L. March 30, How a horrific incident of racial violence became catalyst for the civil rights movement. I n the summer of , hundreds of wildfires raged across the Northern Rockies. By the time it was all over, more than three million acres had burned and at least 78 firefighters were dead.

It was the largest fire in American history.