MLK: That day in Memphis

Perhaps the most seminal image from America’s Civil Rights era is the black and white photo of the preeminent figure of the movement, Martin Luther King Jr. sprawled across the balcony of Memphis’ Lorraine Motel, an instance after an assassin’s bullet mortally wounded him on April 4, 1968.

Among the figures surrounding him are a cadre of insiders and King intimates who would go on to figure prominently in the following decades. Partially obscured by them but closest to the victim is Marrell “Mac” McCollough, a member of a local militant group, The Invaders designated to provide security for those visiting to support the city sanitation worker strike.

As a bullet whizzed through the air into King’s jaw, through his neck and his spinal cord before lodging in his left shoulder, McCollough was among the first to react, sprinting up the stairs from the parking lot below. Upon reaching the upper floor, he grabbed a towel from a maid’s cart and attempted to stem the flow of blood from the gaping wound on King’s neck. There he would be immortalized in the picture snapped by South African photographer Joseph Louw.

Decades later, in a book written by Mac’s daughter Leta, she recounted the next steps. The Rev. Ralph Abnernathy, aide and advisor to King, replaced Mac in applying pressure to the wound. As McCollough stood up, he pulled a newly arrived police officer to the side.
“I’m an undercover police officer,” he said, speaking close to the man’s ear. “The shot came from that building across the street, from that window.”

Mac McCollough would later be “outed” by the media as an undercover cop, tasked with keeping tabs on The Invaders. Adding to the intrigue, a few years later he secured employment with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), sprouting rumors of conspiracy and rumors of malfeasance from the highest echelons of government.

These included the notion that McCollough was possibly complacent in the killing of America’s greatest Civil Rights figure.

Uncovering Childhood Secrets
As a product of the “New South,” Leta McCollough’s upbringing was similar to many military “brats” of post war America, with parents absent for extended periods looking out for the country’s interests. “All that anyone would ever say was ‘oh, he works for the government,’” she said about her father. As McCollough’s oldest child, she was benefited with occasional visits by her father, bearing exotic gifts from locals outside the familiar geography of the United States.

The path to maturity brought with it the occasional grains of information as she approached adulthood, which included divorce and the addition of step-parents. By time she was 11, her dad took the magnanimous step of bring her and her little brother to an office building in Virginia, and informed them that this was his place of employment. In essence, her father was a spy.

This revelation came with a caveat of sorts. “He told us that it was a secret we had to keep between ourselves,” she said later. Higher education and the exploration of career paths brought the opportunity of pursuing an internship at dad’s place of employment during her sophomore and junior years at Northwestern University. “This was explicitly for the children of CIA employees.”

Instead, she chose a more conventional path, in pursuing and successfully embracing the practice of law at George Washington University. Now Leta McCollough Seletzky, she fell into the familiar pattern of marriage and then motherhood while building a professional career. Parenting brought with it the prospect explaining the legacy of her father’s presence in the historical narrative.

Through conversations and correspondence, a chronicle of gaps in childhood were filled after decades of separation. The following was a familial reconciliation and an addendum to American history, as Seletzky explains. “This is about history. A missing puzzle piece. A story that had never been told before by one of the only people who could tell it. One of the last people who was still living who was on that balcony.”

Uncovering a Sordid History
For his part, Marrell McCollough enjoyed a successful, if obscure career with the agency before he hit the “glass ceiling,” the invisible barrier preventing minorities and women from reaching the top of the intelligence pyramid. His tenure was interrupted by a summons to appear behind closed doors before a House committee on assassinations in 1978, then an interview and lie detector test at the end of the millennium, both covering his activities on April 4, 1968.

For Leta McCollough Seletzky, years of legwork and research gave way to writing a book in about eighteen months. Along the way, she came across data from another landmark murder in the struggle for Black dignity, as she watched a 2020 television miniseries titled “Who killed Malcolm X.”

Befriending its director, Phil Bertelsen, she came across several parallels between the slayings of the two icons. Most notable was the considerable presence of covert operatives at both crime scenes. Gene Roberts, a New York City detective is captured in a photo unsuccessfully giving CPR to the stricken Malcolm X on the floor of Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom at his 1965 murder.

Roberts would later go on to found the New York chapter of the Black Panther Party and consort with the likes of Lumumba Shakur, stepfather of hip hop legend Tupac Shakur. While she believes her father was never a part of the plot to eliminate King, Seletzky is adamant about Roberts’ involvement. “That guy was culpable.”

Hindsight is not always 20/20, but certain memories maybe construed as fact, especially considering the documented activities of COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) the FBI’s successful covert crusade against radical activists between 1956 and 1971. Lesser known is their “Ghetto Informant Program,” which began in 1967 to form a network of working class tipsters to counter those deemed subversive.

“There are all kinds of stories where you had all kinds of folks who worked in law enforcement, or folks who were informants,” Seletzky notes on these disclosures, including the saga of Panther leader Fred Hampton, whose betrayal by militant contemporary William O’Neal was dramatized in the 2021 motion picture “Judas and the Black Messiah.”

Over the years, more epiphanies have been made after denials and rebuttals. Martin Luther King, arguably the principal target, was hounded by numerous informants within his inner circle. In 2013 the FBI revealed that his primary photojournalist, Ernest Withers had been in their employment as a paid informant.

More tellingly, his accountant James A. Harrison enjoyed dual salaries from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the FBI. This man, entrusted with King’s personal finances, was paid a higher salary by the FBI for passing information than he received from the SCLC, according to Taylor Branch’s 2006 Pulitzer Prize winning historical trilogy “America in the King Years.”

“The activist community, particularly the Black activist communities, were relentlessly and unlawfully targeted,” Seletzky said. She found her own name in files recently released by President Donald Trump in 2025.

This underhandedness likely did not end with the past millennium. Local Black Lives Matter co-founder Melina Abdullah has shared personal experiences with “swatting,” false dispatching of armed policemen to her home as a form of harassment in past issues of Our Weekly.

“Black Lives Matter organizers are under constant surveillance and subject to ongoing harassment,” said Abdullah.

“Members have been stalked at their homes and forced to relocate. Of course there is much more, but the surveillance is often hidden,” she continues.

As technology advances the methods of scrutiny become more intricate and sophisticated. She mentions the possible use of portable “StingRay” cellphone trackers by entities such as Homeland Security and the LAPD.

Upon completion of Leta McCollough Seletzky’s book, it was submitted to the CIA for approval before it could be published. “The Kneeling Man (Hurst Publishers, 2023) is available on Amazon and other bookstores. The CIA’s own review of “The Kneeling Man,” by a retired African American clandestine officer may be read at the agency website at (https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/).