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 Sr. King delivered the invocation at the 1976 and 1980 Democratic National Conventions. King was also a member of Omega Psi Phi. King Sr.'s wife and King Jr.'s mother, Alberta, was murdered by Marcus Wayne Chenault on Sunday, June 30, 1974, at the Ebenezer Baptist Church during Sunday services. Chenault was a 23-year-old black man from Ohio who stood up and yelled, "You are serving a false God", and began to fire from two pistols while Alberta was playing "The Lord's Prayer" on the church organ. Upon capture, the assassin disclosed that his intended target was Martin Luther King Sr., who