re: #354 HappyWarrior

Yeah I can’t imagine MLK killing Ray in self defense would have worked as a defense in 1968 Memphis. Dana’s too obsessed with guns to care though.

If you want to read an interesting history of Memphis during the civil rights era, check out Respect Yourself: Stax Records and the Soul Explosion by Robert Gordon. At one point in the book, the banks have foreclosed on the Stax building and police have come to evict everyone, including Stax president Al Bell.

Just after Bell has stepped out of the building, one of the cops asks him to open up his brief case. He knows if he does this, someone will shout that he’s going for a gun and he will be a dead man.

He does something different, and lives to tell the story. It’s a great read about Memphis soul music and also about the civil rights movement in Memphis (with emphasis on the sanitation worker’s strike that led to King’s assassination.