Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. assassination. King had been targeted by COINTELPRO and had also been under surveillance by military intelligence agencies during the period leading up to his assassination under the code name Operation Lantern Spike. A church minister, Ronald Denton Wilson, claimed his father, Henry Clay Wilson, assassinated Martin Luther King Jr., not James Earl Ray. He stated, "It wasn't a racist thing; he thought Martin Luther King was connected with communism, and he wanted to get him out of the way." But Wilson had reportedly previously admitted his father was a member of the Ku Klux Klan. In 2004, Jesse Jackson, who
Martin Luther King Jr. Day Jr. Day is observed in the Japanese city of Hiroshima under mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, who holds a special banquet at the mayor's office as an act of unifying his city's call for peace with King's message of human rights. The City of Toronto, in Ontario, Canada, is another city that has officially recognized Martin Luther King Jr. Day, although not as a paid holiday: all government services and businesses remain open. In 1984, during a visit by the U.S. Sixth Fleet, Navy chaplain Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff conducted the first Israeli presidential ceremony in commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day,