Posted on 04/02/2018 10:39:08 AM PDT by Red Badger
Rhonda James (Source: WMC Action News 5)
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
MEMPHIS, TN (WMC) -
Rhonda James has been living with a painful secret for 50 years.
"It was just what my mother wanted, my parents wanted for us. She wanted us to go on and go to school and go to college and have a regular life."
James is a grandmother who has lived in Memphis her whole life.
She was 8 years old in 1968 when the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to Memphis to support the Memphis sanitation workers in their strike for higher wages and better working conditions.
She has never before shared publicly what she experienced on the night of April 4, 1968.
"It's a special thing for me. It's something that has been secretly tucked."
For her, thinking back on that time brings back bad memories.
"It is PTSD, because it was a traumatic experience."
James is the daughter of saxophone player Ben Branch.
Branch loaded James and her 11-year-old brother into his car and drove them to Mason Temple for a sound check and the opportunity to meet the famous civil rights leader.
"We knew he was going to play Precious Lord for Dr. King that night," James recalled. "He said, 'You guys want to go with me?' We said, 'Yeah!'"
"Take My Hand, Precious Lord" was King's favorite gospel song. Branch was scheduled to play it during a rally for sanitation workers later that night.
After the sound check, James said she remembers getting into the car with her father and following King to the Lorraine Motel.
It would be the last time she'd go to the Lorraine Motel for 50 years.
"They went upstairs and as they went upstairs, we were sitting in the car, me and my brother, we were just looking. We were excited," James recalled.
She and her brother were sitting in the back seat of their grandmother's car, which was parked beneath room 306 at the motel.
"Dr. King hollered down to my father. He said, 'Ben.' My dad had the car door open. We were looking up at his face and all of the gentlemen were standing up there. 'I want you to play Precious Lord like you've never played it before. Play it real pretty.'"
Those were the last word's King would ever say.
A bullet fired from a Remington Model 760 rifle that was pointed out of a second story window at a rooming house across the street from the motel stuck King.
"Everybody pointed and we looked, you know, we were little kids. We were in the car. We looked back," James said. "It was traumatic, because when he got shot, lying on that concrete and seeing all that blood and everybody was over him."
James said she and her brother sat traumatized in their grandmother's car for six hours.
"We couldn't move. They were around us with flashlights and everything and the police were investigating what had happened in the scene, and we were little kids. My dad kept coming to the car asking, 'You alright?' Trying to keep us comfortable. He couldn't leave because they were, you know, talking to him."
James remembers never feeling hungry, never needing to use the restroom. She said she can still recall the stench of garbage in her nostrils--garbage that hadn't been picked up in weeks because of the sanitation strike.
"When we left here the National Guard had to take us home, because the streets were shut down and garbage was everywhere...but you just imagine going through every stop point, and we had to stop and check in with those police to let them know where my father was taking us."
James and her brother didn't go to school for two days.
"The day I got back to school, they took me in the office, and I cried like a baby," James recalled. "I cried for the first 10-15 years [when] I heard Precious Lord. I couldn't deal with it for a long time. Even sometimes now it makes me sad, because you've got to think about [it], that was the last request for my father."
Branch's saxophone is now part of a new exhibit inside the National Civil Rights Museum.
As for James, her first time back to Lorraine Motel was to commemorate the 50th anniversary of that night.
"Just so many emotions. Right now it's like (holds stomach), I'm like turning right now. Just to bear thoughts of what it was," James said during an interview at the motel.
There's no official record--just as her mother wanted--of James or her brother being there during the assassination, only a photo of her father talking with police.
James reflects on her mother's decision to hide their presence with gratitude.
"I'm grateful, because I had a chance to live my life. I've had a chance to do what I need to do in life."
I was 13 at the time, and lived 70 miles from Memphis.
I have been to the Lorraine Motel...................
“The KGB certainly had a motive to go after Hoover after the FBI nabbed a bunch of their agents and gelded the Communist Party. But for this, and for rolling up the Axis spy rings during WWII, he remains a hero to me.”
Well said.
Powerful story. Very sad.
Maybe the FBI told him.
JFK....blown away... Rock solid integrity my buttocks.
Are you claiming the FBI arranged the assassination of Kennedy? Even assuming his murder was a conspiracy and that Oswald was a fall guy, what evidence is there to assume FBI involvement?
http://www.thekingcenter.org/assassination-conspiracy-trial
There was a civil lawsuit filed by MLK Estate:
“The jury was clearly convinced by the extensive evidence that was presented during the trial that, in addition to Mr. Jowers, the conspiracy of the Mafia, local, state and federal government agencies, were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband.
The jury also affirmed overwhelming evidence that identified someone else, not James Earl Ray, as the shooter, and that Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame.”
More info available at the link.
Not sure if that is the person you are talking about or not though. 8>)
Lot #372 - This car was used by James Earl Ray to follow Dr. Martin Luther King, leading up to Dr. King's assignation in Memphis, TN. Car has been documented by the FBI in a full report to the jury that sentenced James Earl Ray. A large amount of FBI and court documentation goes with the car. Official court letters and FBI Report. **SOLD ON BILL OF SALE ONLY**
Mahalia Jackson Precious Lord Take My Hand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=as1rsZenwNc
But I kept waiting for the "secret". I thought it was going to be something along the line that they witnessed hookers visiting the reverend King. But the "secret" was really just an untold part of their witnesses to history, untold but very interesting nonetheless.
He always hired a lot of Mormons.
Wow. God bless her, what an awful thing for her, her brother and father to live with. Can’t imagine.
FBI/CIA/Organized crime, all of them had a hand. The cover-up went all the way to the White House. LBJ had what he called his “trigger man” Malcolm Wallace who had killed LBJ’s sisters lover, and received a 5 year suspended sentence for it. LBJ was neck deep into organized crime, the FBI and the CIA both hated Kennedy. All of the above had the means, motive and opportunity to assassinate the President. Are you one of the few who actually believes the LHO lone nut story concocted by the Deep state?
As reported in the New York Times in 2002.
A Minister Says His Father, Now Dead, Killed Dr. King
By DANA CANEDY APRIL 5, 2002
Saying he could no longer keep his dead father’s secret, a minister is contending that his father — not James Earl Ray — fatally shot the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at a Memphis motel in 1968.
The man, the Rev. Ronald Denton Wilson, said in an interview today that his father, Henry Clay Wilson, led a group of three conspirators responsible for Dr. King’s death.
‘’My father was the main guy,’’ said Mr. Wilson, 61, of Keystone Heights, north of Gainesville. ‘’It wasn’t a racist thing. He thought Martin Luther King was connected with communism, and he wanted to get him out of the way.’’
George Wallace announced his candidacy for the Democrat nomination a week before the Kennedy assassination.
A Wallace-Kennedy fight would have given Nelson Rockefeller the presidency. Wallace probably would have beaten Kennedy. Wallace, a folk hero, would have beaten the oily Johnson too.
If Johnson ever was to be president, Nov. 22, 1963 was the day.
He almost got away with it. His plan was to fly to Rhodesia where he believed he would be treated as a hero by the Apartheid gov't of Ian Smith (in truth, they would've likely extradited Ray back to the United States).
Excellent page-turner of a book about the King assassination and ensuing manhunt:
went to Atlanta and then to Canada and England before being arrested in July 1968.
He was actually arrested in June of 1968. I recall the news breaking during the televised train trip of Robert Kennedys body preceding his funeral
But that doesn’t necessarily mean the FBI was involved in any aspect of the conspiracy. And it is not impossible the killers were tied to the KGB and/or Castro.
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