AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

Roads to Memphis

MONDAY, MAY 3 @ 7:00PM & 10:00PM

On April 4, 1968, escaped convict James Earl Ray shot and killed Dr. Martin Luther King while he lingered on a motel balcony. Roads to Memphis is the fateful narrative of this killer and his prey, set against the seething, turbulent forces in American society at that time.

James Earl Ray, a career criminal with a history of small-scale robberies and scattered stints in jail, grew up in a poor section of Illinois. Ray dropped out of school at the age of 15 and served only two years in the army before he was dismissed for “ineptness and lack of adaptability”. While in the Missouri State Penitentiary in 1966, Ray followed Martin Luther King’s growing popularity and power, nursing his own hatred of the civil rights leader and his gnawing desire to escape from prison. In April 1967 Ray smuggled himself out of the penitentiary by hiding in a bakery cart. Hoping his escape would inspire a widely publicized manhunt, Ray was disappointed in the police’s lackluster response, and he began searching even more desperately for something to make him infamous.
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