They looked to George Wallace, the former Alabama governor who had blocked school integration in his state, to run as an independent presidential candidate. Confrontation, now seemed the name of the game. The federal government was after King, too. J. Edgar Hoover targeted him with wiretaps that recorded his private conversations, and after agents found evidence of extramarital affairs, the FBI director had an anonymous letter sent to King suggesting that if the civil rights leader failed to commit suicide, the tapes would be made public. White society is deeply implicated in the ghetto.
White institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.
This was the nation's mood when King spoke in Memphis on April 3, 1968. Joining striking black sanitation workers, King recalled the long civil rights struggle he fostered and led in the '50s and '60s. He noted the countless sit-ins, the freedom rides, the marches in Selma and Birmingham, and confrontations with police. And on that day in Memphis, King spoke of no longer fearing death because God had led him to the mountaintop. For weeks afterward, riots, arson and looting erupted around the country.