Coretta Scott King
“There is abundant evidence of a major high level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband, Martin Luther King, Jr. And the civil court’s unanimous verdict has validated our belief. I wholeheartedly applaud the verdict of the jury and I feel that justice has been well served in their deliberations. This verdict is not only a great victory for my family, but also a great victory for America. It is a great victory for truth itself. . . . My husband once said, ‘The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ To-day, almost 32 years after my husband and the father of my four children was assassinated, I feel that the jury’s verdict clearly affirms this principle. With this faith, we can begin the 21st century and the new millennium with a new spirit of hope and healing.” http://www.thekingcenter.org/assassination-conspiracy-trial
Dexter Scott King, Vol. X of trial transcript
“If he had just talked about riding in the front of the bus, being able to sit down at lunch counters, that was not threatening. In fact, that expanded the economic base when there was integration. But the minute you start talking about redistribution of wealth and stopping a major conflict, which also has economic ramifications, and he understood the injustice and the disparity of African-American men fighting on the front lines in a disproportionate number, losing their lives with their white comrades but yet could not even come home and eat at the same lunch counter with their white comrades they just fought with in Vietnam or could not live in the same neighborhood or any number of things, he saw this was a major injustice and what it was doing to the black family, the way it was destroying families, all these young black men being sent away and dying in disproportionate numbers. . . .
“[T]ell me how he went from being public enemy number one in the 1960’s to a national hero with a holiday in the 1980’s. Explain that to me. Well, the point I’m making is that he can be relegated to I-have-a-dream land because he is not here. Certainly in death he can be martyred and put on a pedestal, but does America really want to deal with what he was fighting for, what he ultimately died for, in terms of solving the triple evils of poverty, racism, violence and war. . . .
“[H]e had to know that things had really gotten bad. He was on his way to Washington for the Poor People’s Campaign and March, which would bring together all of these forces from different walks of life, that this could no longer be relegated to minority status but Appalachian Whites, Chicano Mexican-Americans, Native Americans, African-Americans, all coming to the steps of the nation’s capitol to say we will not leave here until poverty is solved. That has not been addressed today. And because it was not addressed then, his voice had to be silenced.”
Yolanda King, Vol. VIII of trial transcript
“I always felt there was more information, there was much more to the facts than what had been reported and what had been concluded. And while I personally emotionally could not pursue it myself, I thought it was very important always that the full truth be known, that the actual truth be known. And so it has been actually for me personally a real sense of peace that this [trial] is happening, the fact that more and more of what actually happened will be revealed to the American people. . . . I think we [in the family] have all come to a very unified decision in terms of the importance of what is happening here, and the reason why it is so important and so significant.”