The Faulkner Book

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The Transcription of the King Family Press Conference on the
MLK Assassination Trial Verdict
December 9, 1999
Atlanta, GA

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. It is important to know that this was a SWIFT verdict, delivered after about an hour of jury deliberation. The jury was clearly convinced by the extensive evidence that was presented during the trial that, in addition to Mr. Jowers, the conspiracy of the Mafia, local, state and federal government agencies, were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband. The jury also affirmed overwhelming evidence that identified someone else, not James Earl Ray, as the shooter, and that Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame. I want to make it clear that my family has no interest in retribution. Instead, our sole concern has been that the full truth of the assassination has been revealed and adjudicated in a court of law. As we pursued this case, some wondered why we would spend the time and energy addressing such a painful part of the past. For both our family and the nation, the short answer is that we had to get involved because the system did not work. Those who are responsible for the assassination were not held to account for their involvement. This verdict, therefore, is a great victory for justice and truth. It has been a difficult and painful experience to revisit this tragedy, but we felt we had an obligation to do everything in our power to seek the truth. Not only for the peace of mind of our family but to also bring closure and healing to the nation. We have done what we can to reveal the truth, and we now urge you as members of the media, and we call upon elected officials, and other persons of influence to do what they can to share the revelation of this case to the widest possible audience. I know that this has been a difficult case for everyone involved. I thank the jury and Judge Swearington for their commitment to reach a just verdict, I want to also thank our attorneys, Dr. William Pepper and his associates for their hard work and tireless dedication in bringing this case to justice. Dr. Pepper has put many years of his life, as well as his financial resources, into this case. He has made significant personal sacrifices to pursue the search for the truth about my husband's assassination.

I want to thank my son Dexter, who showed great courage and perseverance and who took a lot of unmerited and personal attacks so we could get to the truth about the assassination. And I want to thank my other children, Yolanda, Martin and Bernice who have kept the faith, refused to become embittered and have remained steadfast in their efforts to pursue the truth of their father's assassination. My husband once said, "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Today, 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.

See www.thekingcenter.org for the entire transcript of a mock conspiracy trial that resulted in an exoneration of James Earl Ray.

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Little Frankie went down to the barroom, she asked for a glass of beer
She said, "Hey, bartender, has my Johnny been here?"
"He's my man but he's done me wrong"

The bartender said "Frankie, ya know I won't tell ya no lie"
"He left here about a minute ago with a gal named Alice Fry"
"He's your man, but he's doin' you wrong"

Frankie was a good little woman, surely everybody knows
She paid one hundred dollars for Johnny's new suit of clothes
She loved her man but he done her wrong

Well then Frankie went down Broadway with a razor in her hand
She said "Stand back, all you women, I'm here for my cheatin' man"
"Yes, he's my man but he's done me wrong"

It was on a Friday mornin' about a ha'past nine o'clock
Frankie pulled her 44 and fired three fatal shots
She shot her man 'cause he done her wrong

(Why dontcha run, Frankie?) they said (Frankie why don't you run?)
'cause here come the Chief Of Police with the 44 smokeless gun
You killed your man, we know he done you wrong

- Sam Cooke (with regards to Leadbelly, Taj Mahal, Bob Dylan, et al.)

According to jazz pianist, composer and music critic Leonard Feather a version of this song was sung at The Siege of Vicksburg.

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Still stands the forest primeval; but far away from its shadow,
Side by side, in their nameless graves, the lovers are sleeping.
Under the humble walls of the little Catholic churchyard,
In the heart of the city, they lie, unknown and unnoticed;
Daily the tides of life go ebbing and flowing beside them,
Thousands of throbbing hearts, where theirs are at rest and forever,
Thousands of aching brains, where theirs no longer are busy,
Thousands of toiling hands, where theirs have ceased from their labors,
Thousands of weary feet, where theirs have completed their journey!
Still stands the forest primeval; but under the shade of its branches
Dwells another race, with other customs and language.
Only along the shore of the mournful and misty Atlantic
Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fathers from exile
Wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom;
In the fisherman's cot the wheel and the loom are still busy;
Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun,
And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story,
While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.
- from Longfellow's Evangeline

My grandparents used to take Tommy and me to St. Martinville, Louisiana every summer. We would stand beneath the great oak tree, the Spanish moss dripping down around our heads, and my grandmother would tell us the story of Evangeline. The beautiful Cajun maiden expelled from her home in Acadia by the British, shipped like chattel to the far-away swamps of Louisiana, who waited, waited, waited for her beloved underneath the very same oak tree shading us from the heat. As a child Longfellow's epic poem and the accompanying history lessons filled me with terror.

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Organizing anecdote(s)

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When I was nine years old my parents took my brother and me to visit Mark Twain's childhood home in Hannibal, Missouri. The small town is something of a shrine to the greatest American writer and there are plenty of Twainish activities for parents to foist upon their children. Eat a meal at Becky Thatcher's Diner. Paint a fence white, etc. The Mississippi River idles past Hannibal and steamboats pilot tourists up and down a swath of the river every hour. As there is no sight quite so evocative and pleasing to the Southern eye as a steamboat on the Mississippi River my father insisted that we go aboard. Over and over a high school tour guide explained the etymology of Twain. The July heat was relentless and my brother and I buckled down with comic books in the air conditioned lounge on board the boat. Our father lured us out onto the deck with drinks ordered from the concession stand. Chocolate shakes in tall hurricane glasses topped off with whipped cream and cherries were pressed into our hands as we headed out to watch the Mississippi part in front of us. We passed Lover's Leap. We saw frogs and fish and cranes and as quickly as I drank my syrupy drink the landscape started to blur. The drinks were loaded with peppermint schnapps. Too late for me. My brother's was taken by my mother. I sat down on deck; everything slow was fast and the soft, drawling lilt of my mother's voice sounded as if it were coming from under water. Years and years later I recognized the slowing down of landscape and the underwater intonations of voice in Benjy Compson. Everything is disjointed. Only Caddy is constant, but Benjy and I exist in a historical moment and the whole of the South exists in every action and reaction.

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What is The Faulkner Book?

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The Faulkner Book is an artist book that attempts to illustrate The Sound and the Fury by writing the entire text out by hand, layering drawings based on civil rights movement photographs with confederate currency, Reconstruction-era propaganda and images from Southern folklore.

A few days ago my oldest friend Mark Peikert, a fellow Southerner living here in New York City, and I were talking about our favorite authors; about how they are all Southerners. Truman Capote, Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor, John Kennedy Toole, Mark Twain and William Faulkner. "The thing is that I can put a face from home on every character ever created by Flannery O'Connor," Mark commented. And so it may seem odd to introduce a project about William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury with a passage from Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding but the great genius of Welty is also that of Faulkner; tragicomic characters who, in their profound isolation, embody the odd and anachronistic nature of the South. In this passage, Robbie, a woman who has married into the Fairchild family, an old aristocratic Mississippi family, feels herself a stranger to her husband and, by extension, a larger history.

She could not follow. Sometimes she thought when he was so out of reach, so far away is his mind, that she could blame everything on some old story... For he evidently felt that old stories, family stories, Mississippi stories, were the same as very holy or very passionate, if stories could be those things. He looked out at the world, at her, sometimes, with that essence of the remote, proud, over-innocent Fairchild look that she suspected , as if an old story had taken hold of him -- entered his flesh. And she did not know the story.

There are stories that enter our flesh. Stories that define our circumstance and determine our character. The Faulkner Book is an experiment in illustrating the inarticulation of the rising, falling and stagnation of the Compson Family in The Sound and the Fury.