Martin Luther King’s lesson for Obama

Martin Luther King Jr., America's best known black leader, was murdered 40 years ago today just after 6pm as he stood on a balcony of the Lorraine motel in Memphis, Tennessee. A single rifle bullet hit him in the jaw, then severed his spinal cord. James Earl Ray, a white man, was convicted of the killing and sentenced to 99 years.

There are credible theories of a conspiracy, possibly involving US Army intelligence, whose interest in the King family stretched back to 1917 when the War Department opened a file on King's maternal grandfather, first president of Atlanta's branch of the NAACP. King's father, Martin Sr., also entered Army intelligence files as a potential troublemaker, as did Martin Jr. in 1947 when he was 18.

King's famous denunciation of America's