Quincy in the late 1940s and early 1950s was a far different city than it is today.   Segregationists divided the city's black community from the white.   Political corruption was common.   So was prostitution and illegal gambling along the riverfront.   But this was the least of the city's shame.

Quincy was the family home, the criminal learning ground and safe haven to the assassin of Martin Luther King Jr.   It's something the community would probably rather not acknowledge, but it's part of Quincy's history.   And history can't be denied.

James Earl Ray had an alias even before he had a report card.   When his family moved from Alton, Illinois to the small town of Ewing, Missouri just 15 miles west of Quincy in 1935, the 7-year-old boy was enrolled in school as Jimmy Rayn.   His last name was changed to protect the guilty.   Jimmy's father, George Ray, had a criminal record he was trying to forget.

"He wasn't bad as a boy," recalled boyhood friend and neighbor Charlie Peacock. "If Jimmy got bad, it was after he left Ewing."   Indeed, the reckless high school dropout James Earl Ray spent his teenage years in Quincy drinking, gambling and stealing along the riverfront bars and whorehouses.   He idolized his Quincy uncle and namesake Earl Ray.   His father's brother was in prison on a rape conviction on the day James was born.

James Earl Ray would follow those footsteps.   His break-in at the post office in Kellerville 30 miles east of Quincy was just a start.   The Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination was a finish.

Glenn W. Glessner - Quincy, Illinois

Web Page Created on July 20, 2004