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Hellhound on His Trail
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Hellhound on His Trail (2010) (edit title/settings)

The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin

by Hampton Sides (Author) (edit contributors)

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From the acclaimed bestselling author of Ghost Soldiers and Blood and Thunder , a taut, intense narrative about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the largest manhunt in American history. Magnificent in scope, drawing on a wealth of previously unpublished material, this... read more

Summary edit see section history

On April 23, 1967, Prisoner #416J, an inmate at the notorious Missouri State Penitentiary, escaped in a breadbox. Fashioning himself Eric Galt, this nondescript thief and con man—whose real name was James Earl Ray—drifted through the South, into Mexico, and then Los Angeles, where he was... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

On April 23, 1967, Prisoner #416J, an inmate at the notorious Missouri State Penitentiary, escaped in a breadbox. Fashioning himself Eric Galt, this nondescript thief and con man—whose real name was James Earl Ray—drifted through the South, into Mexico, and then Los Angeles, where he was galvanized by George Wallace’s racist presidential campaign. On February 1, 1968, two Memphis garbage men were crushed to death in their hydraulic truck, provoking the exclusively African American workforce to go on strike. Hoping to resuscitate his faltering crusade, King joined the sanitation workers’ cause, but their march down Beale Street, the historic avenue of the blues, turned violent. Humiliated, King fatefully vowed to return to Memphis in April. With relentless storytelling drive, Sides follows Galt and King as they crisscross the country, one stalking the other, until the crushing moment at the Lorraine Motel when the drifter catches up with his prey. Against the backdrop of the resulting nationwide riots and the pathos of King’s funeral, Sides gives us a riveting cross-cut narrative of the assassin’s flight and the sixty-five-day search that led investigators to Canada, Portugal, and England—a massive manhunt ironically led by Hoover’s FBI.

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “Cotton cotton cotton. Memphis couldn’t get enough of it. Cotton was still king. It would always be king.”
  • “It was a city that, since its very inception, had been perched on the racial fault line.”
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”
    Highlighted by 68 Kindle customers
  • “The good and just society,”31 he said, “is neither the thesis of capitalism nor the antithesis of communism, but a socially conscious democracy which reconciles the truths of individualism and collectivism.”
    Highlighted by 54 Kindle customers
  • “We must learn to live together as brothers,” he said, “or we will perish together as fools.”
    Highlighted by 48 Kindle customers
  • Clark wrote a few years later. “For poverty is miserable. It is ugly, disorganized, rowdy, sick, uneducated, violent, afflicted with crime. Poverty demeans human dignity. The demanding tone, the inarticulateness, the implied violence deeply offended us. We didn’t want to see it on our sacred monumental grounds. We wanted it out of sight and out of mind.”
    Highlighted by 40 Kindle customers
  • “The moment the triggerman fired, Martin Luther King was the free man. The white killer was the slave—a slave to fear, a slave to his own sense of inferiority, a slave to hatred, a slave to all the bloody instincts that surge in a brain when a human being decides to become a beast.”
    Highlighted by 36 Kindle customers
  • The president was almost philosophical. “What did you expect?” he later told one adviser. “I don’t know why we’re so surprised. When you put your foot on a man’s neck and hold him down for three hundred years, and then you let him up, what’s he going to do? He’s going to knock your block off.”
    Highlighted by 32 Kindle customers
  • “Each of us is two selves,”155 he once told his congregation. The “great burden of life is to always try to keep that higher self in command.”
    Highlighted by 29 Kindle customers
  • King genuinely feared the country might slip into a race war that would lead, ultimately, to a right-wing takeover and a kind of fascist police state.
    Highlighted by 25 Kindle customers
  • krewes20—from the Mystic Society of the
    Highlighted by 11 Kindle customers
  • thanatopsis, exploring different angles of his own mortality. He recalled the time a decade earlier when a deranged black woman plunged a letter opener into his chest at a book signing in a Harlem department store, and how the blade nearly punctured his aorta. The doctor told him that if he had sneezed, he would have ruptured his artery and drowned in his own blood. King went on to reminisce about the glorious events that had happened since 1958—Birmingham, Selma, the March on
    Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers
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Setting & Locations edit see section history

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Organizations edit see section history

  • FBI: J. Edgar Hoover's FBI hunted down and captured James Earl Ray.

First Sentence edit see section history

In early May 1967, three hundred miles downstream from St. Louis, the citizens of Memphis stood along the cobblestoned banks, enjoying the musky coolness of the river.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This book is in Time Magazine's Top 10 Nonfiction Books of 2010. (authoritative list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Hampton Sides (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Doubleday
Country: USA
Publication Date: April 2010
ISBN: 978-0385523929
Page Count: 480

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Adults

Non-fiction book discusses the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the criminal life of his assassin, James Earl Ray.

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

  • Random House: Publisher includes an audio clip and other information about the book.

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • Ghost Soldiers
  • The Last Stand
  • Get Capone: The Secret Plot That Captured America's Most Wanted Gangster
  • Matterhorn
  • The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron
  • Blood and Thunder
  • Americana: Dispatches from the New Frontier

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history

   
  • Martin Luther King, Jr. (Penguin Lives Biographies (Paperback))
  • Killing the Dream : James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • Truth At Last: The Untold Story Behind James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
  • Who Killed Martin Luther King Jr.?: The True Story by the Alleged Assassin
  • James Earl Ray: The Last Days of Inmate # 65477
  • A Racial Crime: James Earl Ray And The Murder Of Martin Luther King Jr.

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