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The University of Richmond Boatwright Memorial Library has Released an Oral History of Prominent Civil Rights Leader Wyatt Tee Walker

Picture that hung in the Walker Home. Left to Right, Dr.Martin Luther King and Wyatt Tee Walker, Dr. King and Walker sharing Birmingham jail cell.
Picture that hung in the Walker Home. Left to Right, Dr.Martin Luther King and Wyatt Tee Walker, Dr. King and Walker sharing Birmingham jail cell. Courtesy of the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt Tee Walker Collection

He was a former Petersburg pastor who became King’s trusted Chief of Staff. And before he died, Wyatt Tee Walker donated a collection of letters, photographs and tapes that reveal his unique and sometimes shocking perspective. “Nobody close to Dr. King believed that, it wasn’t James Earl Ray had anything to do with Dr. King’s death. Dr. King was executed with the proverbial hit by the federal government industrial complex. His opposition to the Vietnam war was the warrant for his death.” Walker knew him well. And spoke about it in a two-and-a-half-hour interview just released by the University of Richmond’s Boatwright Library. Walker passed away in January 2018 and the oral history was released in honor of the one-year anniversary of his death.