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. Outpatient Center was broken on the hospital in April 1968. It was originally named the Los Angeles County Southeast General Hospital but was soon renamed Martin Luther King Jr. General Hospital, days after the namesake's assassination. After a dedication in February, it opened on March 27, 1972 as a full-service medical center. The facility changed its name again, to Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, when it became the teaching hospital of the adjacent Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. In 1981 the hospital expanded into psychiatric care by opening the Augustus F. Hawkins Mental Health Center. In 1998 it