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March 15, 1969 - Image 3

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Publication:
The Michigan Daily, 1969-03-15

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Saturday, March 151 1969

THE MICHIGAN DAILY

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Saturday, March 1 5, 1969 THE MICHIGAN DAILY

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University of Michigan
DANCE
CONCERT
DANCE STUDIO
BARBOUR GYMNASIUM
Fri., March 21-8 P.M.
Sat., Mar. 22-2:30 P.M., 8 P.M.
Sun., March 23-2:30 P.M.
Eves.-$2.00 Matinees-$1.50
Tickets at Barbour Gym 1-4 P.M.
or Reserve by Mail: Mr. Adamson,
Barbour Gym,'U.M..

1i

QUESTIONS UNANSWERED
King's widow calls killing a conspiracy

the
news today
by The Associa/ed Press and Collce Press Ser ic

I

.....

mm

DIAL 5-6290
(haplinesque.
"Robertson. displays a
flair for humor."
-TIME
Leller Perfec.. .
"CHARLY is a sensitive,
intelligent film."
CARROLL, NEWS
ACADEMY AWARD
NOMINEE
BEST ACTOR-
CLIFF ROBERTSON

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (P) - The
widow of Martin Luther King
Jr., says his assassination was
the work of more than one per-
son and is still on the con-
science of the nation despite the
sentencing of James Earl Ray.
to 99 years in prison.
The Rev. Ralph Davi4 Aber-
nathy, who took over leadership
of Dr. King's civil rights organ-
ization, says he is convinced by
Ray's admission of guilt itself
that the murder was part of a
conspiracy.
"There are the unanswered
questions," comments author
William Bradford Hule, who
wrote Ray's biography while
Ray was iwaiting trial on the
murder charge.
But while these and other dis-
senting voices were being heard,
Dist. Atty. Philip M. Canale
reiterated at a post sentencing
interview last Monday that the
state had uncovered no evidence
at all of conspiracy.
Canale said the sums of
money Ray s p ent hopping
around the United States and
Canada and finally to Europe,
which seemed to some suspi-
ciously large, probably came
from the assassin's own efforts
as a smuggler and holdup man.
Ray "got money from several
sources,"I Canale told newsmen,
and saved a "fairly substantial
sum of money while in prison"
in Missouri before the escape
which led ultimately to King's
death on the balcony of a
Memphis motel.

Canale said his investigators
believed Ray .mailed the money
out of the prison before he
escaped.
Canale added that the inves-
tigators believe Ray obtained
funds in "one armed robbery
and maybe two robberies in
Montreal," one in London, and
profited by smuggling jewelry
and drugs into the United States
after his prison break.
Ray's statements in court
Monday confused many who
heard them.
After entering his plea of
guilty to first-degree murder he
stood up and told the judge he
disagreed with the theory that
no conspiracy was linked with
the assassination.
Under questioning by the
court, however, Ray said he was
still pleading guilty.
After sentencing, the prisoner
was removed to the Memphis
jail pending transfer to the
state penitentiary at Nashville.
Authorities declined. to give
any clue when he would be
moved, and said no statements
on the subject would be made
until Ray had become a state
prisoner.
A Justice Department spokes-
man in Washington said ,Ray's
plea of guilty had not closed the
books on its original investiga-
tion of a possible conspiracy.
In Atlanta, Coretta King, the
widow, said Ray's plea of guilty
"cannot be allowed to close the
case, to end the search for the
Smany fingers which helped pull
the trigger."
She added, "For the moment,
we have been spared a trial
which would compel us to relive
the fearful tragic events of his
death. But we realize that this
is but a respite."
But, Mrs. King continued,
"All concerned people must
press the State of Tennessee
and the U.S. government to con-
tinue until all who are respon-
sible for this crime are appre-
hended."
"Not until then," the widow

TECHNICOLOR
TECHNISCOPE
wr N . 0M R[{. $N- OR- fp

said, "can the conscience of the
nation rest."
The Rev. Mr. Abernathy said
he had thought all along that
the slaying was the outcome of
a conspiracy and was more con-
vinced than ever after hearing
of Ray's performance in court.
"The trial," said Ray's biog-
rapher, Huie, "went according
to script.
"I'm not surprised that Ray
got up in court and said what C
he did about a conspiracy. He's
said all along there was another
man in the rooming house from
which the shot was fired.
And there are the unan-
swered questions."
Many Memphis residents ex-
pressed relief that Ray's day in
court was over.
There had been some appre-
hension that a prolonged tia l
might arouse racial feelings in
the city and both police and
sheriff's deputies had been put
on 12-hour shifts.
Perhaps because of its sud-
denness, caused by Ray's deci-
sion to plead guilty, the actual
hearing drew few spectators to
court. Only four of the onlook-
ers were blacks, there were no
major representatives of civil
rights groups, and empty spec-
tator seats were turned over to
representatives of news media.
Commenting on the wide-
spread and persistent conspira-
cy suspicions, Judge W. Pres-
ton Battle Jr., of Criminal Court,
who presided at the hearing,
said no proof of a conspiracy
sufficient to indict anybody, but
Ray had been found. But, he
noted, "Of course, this is not
conclusive evidence that there
was no conspiracy."
And he pointed out that "in
this state there is no statute
of limitations in capital cases
such as this if evidence is turn-
ed up against somebody else
later.
Those who clung to a conspir-
acy theory still were vexed by
many questions. For example:y
How did Ray pay his way?
-Where did he get the esti-
mated $10,000 he spent between
the time he escaped from the
Missouri StatesPenitentiary in
April, 1967 until he was captured
in London last June 8?
-How did Ray pick the room-
ing house from where the fatal
shot was fired, across the street
ATURDAY1
nbanjo 1421 Hill St.
na, b8n30 P.M.
ND
s ROGER
RENWICK

from the motel, and how did he
know the best vantage point
would be from a hallway bath-
room window?
-How did Ray know that King
would stay at the Lorraine,
operated by blacks, instead of
the white-operated Rivermont,
where he had stayed previous-
ly.
-How did he know King would
be on the balcony?

Nixon's OFO. plans-
face stiff op position

Science Fiction...

WASHINGTON (R)-President
Nixon's plan to reshape the war
on poverty by shifting Head Start'
and Job Corps to different gov-
ernment agencies has met stiff
resistance from a key congress-
man.
Rep. Carl D. Perkins, (D-Ky),
chairman of the House Education
and Labor Committee, criticized
the changes yesterday and said
he may ask Congress to block
them.
The White House proposals,
which will go to Congress for-
mally today, call for placing Head
poor children, under the Depart-
ment of Health, Education and
Welfare. The Job Corps would
move to the Labor Department.
The controversial Community
Action Program VISTA, the dom-
estic peace corps, would be left
in the Office of Economic Oppor-
tunity, the agency that now runs
the antipoverty program.
"They're taking away the ice
cream and cake and leaving it to
me to get the cod liver oil down,"
said Perkins, whose committee
oversees the OEO efforts.
House Republican Leader Gerald
R. Ford of Michigan said the
changes will mean greater effi-
ciency and economy for OEO.
- His Senate counterpart, Ever-
ett M. Dirksen of Illinois, said the
revision will make OEO an in-
cubator for antipoverty programs,
with other agencies taking over
the operations as soon as they are
strong enough to go it alone.
Nixon would use the presiden-
tial authority in the present law
to shift Head Start and Job Corps.

-If there were no conspiracy,
as the state contends, why did
Ray plead guilty?
"I think race had a lot to do
with it," Canale told newsmen
who asked the question at his
news conference after the hear-
ing. He first refused to elabo-
rate, but later said there was
some indication Ray had ex-
pressed bias against blacks both
in and out of prison.

He also plans to ask Congress for
,specific permission to move the
$60-million slum health centers
program and the Foster Grand-
parents program to the Welfare
Department.
The White House message calls
for a one-year extensionT n the
antipoverty program. The law
creating it expires June 30.
Perkins said he told Moynihan
he felt the Nixon administration
was acting out of political expe-
diencyingtransferring Job Corps
and Head Start without coming up
with a full-scale anti-poverty pro-
gram of its own.
"We might put both those pro-
grams in the OEO and repeal the
President's authority to move
them,'s Perkins threatened.
He said, "They were the two
most popular programs. It was
because they were in it that we
could get the House-to take the
rest of it the war on poverty.
Without them the whole thing
could be killed."
Head Start is OEO's biggest
single program with a $318-million
pricetag. Job Corps is second
largest at $280 million.
The changes would leave the
Office of Economic Opportunity
with only about half of the $1.9-
billion antipoverty program. The
Labor Department already runs
the $300-million Neighborhood
Youth Corps under the same setup
that would be used to make the
latest two major'shifts.
Perkins was reportedly the only
representative or senator attend-
ing the meeting with Moynihan
who spoke out in opposition to
Nixon's plan.

A PRESIDENTIAL STATEMENT will be forthcoming
on the handling of federal loans for students involved in
campus disorders.
The report, which will be issued next Monday or Tuesday
will contain Nixon's recommendations for handling federal
loans to students taking an active role in disorders on college
campuses.
Yesterday, Nixon, without saying what stand he would
take cited a congressional report that of 540 students arrested
during demonstrations at San Francisco State College, 122
"were direct recipients of federal funds."
HEAVY SHELLING took place in Vietnam yesterday
abruptly ending a short slump in the recent communist
offensive.
The stepped-up attacks-three times* the number re-
corded the previous night-came just as President Nixon
warned in Washington against further communist. offensive
action.
Communist gunners fired four rockets into the former
capital city of Rue and shelled nearly 50 other targets around
South Vietnam in the third week of intensified attacks.
AN ARAB NEWSPAPER reported mass movement of
Israeli forces yesterday.
The Jordanian paper Addustour reported that an esti-
mated 70 tanks, 200 armored cars, and truckloads of Israeli
soldiers were moving toward Sinai.
Israeli planes pounded a suspected guerrila stronghold
inside Jordan yesterday.
THE SOVIET UNION declared the West German pres-
idential elections in West Berlin "poisoned" Bonn-Mos-
cow relations.
The statement yesterday by Alexander Bobomolov, a So-
viet Embassy spokesman in Bonn, hinted that East German
harassment on the autobahns linking West - Germany a n d
West Berlin is not just a temporary measure.
The statement repeated the Soviet assertion that the'
March vote in which Justice Minister Gustav Heinemann was
elected the next president was "an illegal attempt by the
federal republic to extend its field of power to West Berlin."
'7,500 STUDENTS marched across Prague to protest'
Soviet attempts to isolate Yugoslavia in the Communist
World.
The march, yesterday, was caused by the belief that So-
viet Communist Party chief Leonid Brezhnev ordered Czech-
oslovak party members to shun the Yugoslav congress al-
ready underway in Belgrade.
It was the biggest demonstration in Czechoslovakia since
the emotional outburst after the suicide by burning of a stu-
dent, Jan Palch, last January.
0 0 0
THE STATE DEPARTMENT yesterday announced
that it is extending its travel bans fob six months.
The bans forbid Americans to travel to Red China, North
Vietnam, 'North Korea and Cuba.
Secretary of State William Rodgers acted under regula-
tions which would have ended the bans midnight Saturday
unless he decided otherwise.

li r

TONIGHT and S
BARRY
O'NEILL
dulcimer, concertir
AT

. IL

i
MARCH 15
THE CHASE
Marion Brando
Jane Fonda
directed by ARTHUR PENN
(Bonnie and Clyde, Mickey One)
Read and Use Daily Classifieds
II

I11,

Winner of San Sebastian Film Festival 1961
CZECHOSLAVAKIAN FILM
Directed by J IR I WE ISS
"SWEET LIGHT IN
A DARK ROOM"
("Romeo, Juliet A Tma")
Plus the "DIARY OF ANNE FRANK"
Added to "SHOP ON MAIN STREET"
Shown (With Improved Technique)
(AT THE HEATED)

1

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CINEMA GUILD Presents

The University of Michigan Players
Department of Speech
presents
Anton Chekov's
THE
CHERRYORCHARD
SLydia Mendelssohn Theatre
MARCH 12-15
8:00 P.M.
Saturday Matinee-March 15
2:30 P.M.
ADMISSION
._. A .-1. . n. *. .

THE SEVENTH
ANN ARBOR FILM FESTIVAL
MARCH 11-16, 1969
Architecture and Design Auditorium
SCREENINGS at 7:00, 9:00 and 11:00 P.M. (excluding Saturday)
SATURDAY MATINEE at 3:00 P.M.

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