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Roads to Memphis | American Experience

Striking members of Memphis Local 1733 hold “I Am a Man” signs, the slogan that symbolized the sanitation workers 1968 campaign.
Courtesy of Richard L. Copley
/
PBS
Striking members of Memphis Local 1733 hold “I Am a Man” signs, the slogan that symbolized the sanitation workers 1968 campaign.";s:

Tue. Apr. 3 at 8pm on WKAR-HD 23.1 | Witness the fatefully entwined stories of assassin James Earl Ray and his target, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Witness the fatefully entwined stories of assassin James Earl Ray and his target, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., against the backdrop of the seething and turbulent forces in American society that led these two men to their violent and tragic collision in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.

Based on the book by Hampton Sides (Ghost Soldiers), the program relies on eyewitness testimony from King's inner circle and the officials involved in Ray's capture and prosecution following an intense two-month international manhunt.

Roads to Memphis is both an incisive portrait of an America on edge in that crisis-laden year and a cautionary tale of how the course of history can be forever altered by the actions of one individual. The first film to explore the mind of the elusive assassin, Roads to Memphis is directed by Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Stephen Ives and produced by Amanda Pollak.

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