Martin Luther King was shot dead because a £62,000 bounty had been placed on his head by the Ku Klux Klan, according to a new book.

Assassin James Earl Ray was in jail when he is said to have heard on the prison grapevine that the racist group would pay out to anyone who ended the life of the black U.S. civil rights leader.

The book’s authors say the KKK in the 1960s functioned like an Al Qaeda-style organisation raising money to fight a ‘holy war’ against black people.

By collecting donations from supporters who hated racial integration it put together the huge ‘reward’.

Speculation has long raged that Dr King was killed in 1968 as part of a wider conspiracy, even though the FBI immediately dismissed the idea that Klansmen were responsible....