ROADS TO MEMPHIS:
AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

“We were never concerned with who killed Martin Luther King, but what killed Martin Luther King,” says former King aide Andrew Young in this film, which tells the wildly disparate yet fatefully entwined stories of an assassin, James Earl Ray, and his target, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., against the backdrop of the seething and turbulent forces in American society that led these two men to their violent and tragic collision in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. Based on a forthcoming book by Hampton Sides (Ghost Soldiers), the program relies on eyewitness testimony from King’s inner circle and the officials involved in Ray’s capture and prosecution following an intense two-month international manhunt. Airs March 3, 2010 at 9 p.m. on PBS.