Let the Trumpet Sound

by Stephen B. Oates

  “Now,” he said, “it doesn’t matter [go ahead! go ahead! sounding from the audience]. It really doesn’t matter what happens now.” He described the bomb threat on his plane that morning and told how some began to talk about the threats that were out, about what would happen to him “from some of our sick white brothers. Well,” he said, “I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead [yeah! oh yes!]. But it really doesn’t matter with me now [oh yes!]. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop [cries and applause]. Like anybody I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain [go ahead]. And I’ve looked over [yes, doctor]. And I’ve seen the Promised Land [go ahead, doctor]. And I may not get there with you [yes sir, go ahead]. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land [applause, cries, go ahead, go ahead]. So I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord [cries, applause]. I have a dream this afternoon that the brotherhood of man will become a reality. With this faith, Iwill go out and carve a tunnel of hope from a mountain of despair…. With this faith, we will be able to achieve this new day, when all of God’s children—black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics—will be able to join hands and sing with the Negroes in the spiritual of old, ‘Free at last! Free at least! Thank God almighty we are free at last.’ ”

  Many who heard the “Mountaintop” speech were convinced that King had had a premonition of death. Young thought it “almost morbid,” and others also worried about its tone of resignation and impending doom. Certainly death weighed heavily on him that night, because of the bomb scare on the plane and the other threats against his life. Yet what his friends missed was how much the address summed up and reaffirmed King’s life: his intellectual odyssey through history during his college days; his awareness that something was happening in his time, that the Zeitgeist was tracking him down to lead the masses who were on the move in America as they were across the globe; his life of struggle, plagued with the constant threat of death, especially in these difficult days; his vision from the mountaintop where he saw God’s glory—that world of brotherhood, love, and solidarity which Rauschenbusch had prophesied and which King had labored in the valleys to build; his lyrical repetition of “I have a dream” as though he were back in 1963 at his moment of greatest glory. The speech was truly an affirmation of life—“I want to live,” he kept saying. Yet he took consolation from the fact that history would go on if he died; the forward progress of history would yet carry mankind to the Promised Land.

  One thing was for certain: the speech and the warmth of the audience proved therapeutic for King. The anxiety that had bothered him before the address was gone now. “He had broken the cycle again,” said Lee, “had broken the despair.” Back at the Lorraine that night, he was relaxed and happy as he worked on a sermon for the following Sunday. After midnight, his brother A. D. arrived from Louisville, and King visited with him so late that it was after 4 A.M., April 4, before he got to bed.

  AROUND MIDMORNING, Abernathy woke him gently. “Come on now,” he said, nudging King, “it’s time to get up.” King said “yes” in a voice heavy from sleep but didn’t move. “It’s time to get up now,” Abernathy said. “You know we can’t win this nonviolent revolution in bed.” King was awake now, bantering with Abernathy, telling him he was still a farmer for arousing him at this hour. “I’m never going to get the farmer out of you,” King said, chuckling. Alert, jovial, he was eager to get to work. As he showered and shaved, he had Abernathy make critical phone calls and take notes concerning the day’s business.

  Then King met with his executive staff, going over plans to bring in the celebrities and keep the march nonviolent. So that all the legal and logistical problems could be worked out, they elected to postpone the march until the following Monday, April 8, and Young carried the news down to the federal courthouse where Eskridge was battling city attorneys in an effort to get the injunction lifted. The owner of the motel recalled that King, usually so business like, was playful that morning, “teasing and cutting up.”

  In a motel conference room, King and his staff sat down with fifteen or sixteen Invaders and members of the Black Organizing Project, a militant student coalition of which the Invaders were a part. King explored the possibility of employing the young men as march marshals and sending them into the schools to preach nonviolence. Abernathy thought them clean-cut and intelligent looking—not like the bearded malcontents SCLC had skirmished with in Washington and other cities—but they came on in an aggressive, almost belligerent style. Sure, they said, they could go talk to the kids, but they couldn’t guarantee that they would be nonviolent. One young man thought it absurd to ask them to maintain peace when not even the cops could do that. But should they agree to cooperate, they wanted things from SCLC—such as four or five cars to get around in and help in securing funds for a “community unification program” of theirs. By now, several SCLC staffers were openly hostile—“they felt we were trying to rip them off,” an Invader recalled—and King too was completely put off. He refused their demands and sent them away. Afterward, he was incensed to discover that one of his assistants—Williams or Bevel—had put three or four Invaders on SCLC’s staff and payroll. He would not, he told his aides, tolerate advocates of violence on his staff. Chastened, they conveyed the message to the youths, who subsequently checked out of the motel.

  Back in room 306, King and Abernathy ordered a lunch of catfish and salads brought up from the dining room. Alas, the waitress arrived with the catfish all on one plate. Irritated, Abernathy started to send her back for another plate, but King intervened. “It doesn’t matter,” he told Abernathy. “You and me can eat from the same plate.” The catfish was delicious—one of their favorite dishes. As they shared the platter, King sampled both bowls of salad, eating out of Abernathy’s too.

  After lunch, Abernathy lay down for a nap and King visited A. D. in his room. The brothers called their mother in Atlanta, and she was glad her sons were together this day. Around four, King phoned Abernathy, waking him up, and asked him down to A. D.’s room to share their fellowship. He told Abernathy about the call to his mother. “You know,” King said, “she’s always so happy when A. D is with me.”

  In A. D.’s room, the conversation turned to their evening plans—King and his staff were all going out to Reverend Samuel Kyles’s home for dinner. Since he was not a man who liked a lot of cauliflower, broccoli, and asparagus, he asked Abernathy to phone Mrs. Kyles and find out what she was serving. On the phone, Abernathy repeated the fare as she ran through it: prime rib roast and lots of soul food—chitterlings, greens, blackeyed peas, and pigs’ feet. King was delighted.

  Presently, Young and Eskridge burst into the room. They had been in court most of the day, challenging the city’s contention that another march would trigger violence “worse than Watts or Detroit.” Eskridge had put Young and Lawson on the stand, and they had given “a magnificent philosophical presentation” about how a nonviolent march would unify the black community and ward off explosions of rage like that in Detroit. Impressed with their argument, the judge ruled to let the march take place on Monday, so long as King’s people moved six abreast with marshals at every four ranks. “We’re home free!” Eskridge exclaimed. Though King had been prepared to march anyway, he was so tickled at the news that he grabbed Young and wrestled him to the bed, everybody joking and laughing in all the horseplay.

  Around five, King and Abernathy returned to their room and dressed for dinner. King shaved again, applying the pungent, sulfurous depilatory powder he always used to remove his heavy beard. Then he splashed on Aramis aftershave lotion to cover up the awful smell. As they talked, Abernathy confessed that he couldn’t attend the initial march to Washington because he had to conduct a revival in his church in Atlanta a
t that time. But King wouldn’t even consider going to Washington without Abernathy. “You will have to go to West Hunter and tell them that you have a greater revival, a revival to revive the soul of this nation and cause America to feed the hungry, to have concern for those who are downtrodden, and disinherited, and they’ll understand.” Abernathy agreed. “We have been together so far,” he said, “and there is no need for us to separate now.”

  Around 5:30, Reverend Kyles arrived. “OK, Doc,” he said, “it’s time to go.” King’s chauffeur, Solomon Jones, was waiting in the parking lot below, ready to drive them to Kyles’s place in a limousine on loan from a Negro funeral home.

  Finished dressing, King asked Kyles if his tie matched his suit. Still in a good mood, he teased Kyles about dinner, recalling how he’d once gone to a preacher’s house and had ham and Kool-Aid, and the ham was cold to boot. He jested, “I don’t want to go to your house for cold food,” and then said to Abernathy, “Are you ready?” They put on their coats. “Wait just a minute,” Abernathy said. “Let me put on some aftershave lotion.” “OK,” King said. “I’ll be standing out here on the balcony.”

  He and Kyles stepped outside and stood at the iron railing along the balcony. In the parking lot below, King’s aides were standing around, waiting to leave for dinner. Young was talking to Lee and Williams, and Bevel and big James Orange were wrestling playfully. “Don’t let him hurt you,” King called down to Bevel. It was chilly after last night’s storm, and Solomon Jones encouraged King to bring his topcoat. “Solomon,” King said, “you really know how to take good care of me,” and he asked Abernathy to fetch his topcoat. Then he spotted Jesse Jackson, modishly clad in brown slacks and brown turtle-neck, standing in the lot with Ben Branch, leader of Jackson’s Breadbasket Band.

  “Ben,” King said, “make sure you play ‘Precious Lord, Take My Hand’ at the meeting tonight. Sing it real pretty.”

  “OK, Doc, I will,” Branch said.

  “Jesse,” King said, “I want you to go to dinner with us this evening.” He spoke affectionately, no longer angry at Jackson as he had been in Atlanta. “And you be sure to dress up a little tonight, OK, Jesse? No blue jeans, all right?”

  It was six now and time to go. As Kyles headed down to the parking lot, King stood at the iron railing by himself, facing a row of rundown buildings in some trees beyond Mulberry Street. At that second, there was a report of a highpowered rifle, and a bullet tore into the right side of King’s face with such force that it drove him violently backward. He grasped for his throat, crumpling to the balcony floor with his feet protruding through the bottom rail. Below, King’s assistants shouted, “Take cover!” and fell to the pavement or hid behind a car. Abernathy, who’d heard a “pop” like a firecracker, ran out onto the balcony and saw King lying diagonally there, his hands rigid at his throat. “Oh my God,” Abernathy cried “Martin’s been shot.” A woman screamed. Abernathy stepped over King and bent down, relieving a man (an undercover policeman, it turned out) who was trying to stem the flow of blood from King’s face with a towel. The bullet had torn away the right side of his jaw and neck, and his head lay in a spreading pool of blood. Abernathy thought he seemed conscious and terribly frightened, and he started caressing the left side of King’s jaw, saying, “Martin, this is me, this is Ralph, this is Ralph. Don’t be afraid.” King’s mouth quivered once, as though he were trying to speak. Then he looked at Abernathy, “and I got a message from his eyes,” Abernathy said. People were running up the balcony steps now, yelling and ducking down in case there were more shots. Kyles found himself in Room 306, screaming into the telephone in a futile attempt to get the operator, banging his head again and again against the wall. Outside, Young had reached King and was groping for his pulse, sobbing, “Oh my God, my God, it’s all over.” “No, it’s not over,” Abernathy raged in tears. “Don’t you ever say that.”

  A young man crawled over with a pillow, and Abernathy put it under King’s head, trying frantically to stop the bleeding. By now Lee, Williams, Jackson, and a young woman were on the balcony, too. A photographer snapped a picture of Young and several others pointing in the direction of the gunshot—toward the old buildings on Mulberry Street. In all the commotion, Lee glanced up and saw some of King’s flesh on the ceiling of the balcony. “He’s dead,” Lee thought with a stab of anguish. “He’s really dead.”

  Within a few minutes, the courtyard was brimming with policemen. An ambulance had arrived, and stretcher bearers came and carried King away. Abernathy climbed into the ambulance with him, refusing to leave “my buddy.” As the ambulance raced for St. Joseph’s Hospital, Abernathy helped the attendant check King’s fading pulse and give him oxygen.

  At the hospital, Abernathy helped roll King down to a brilliantly lit emergency room and lay him on the table there. Bernard Lee was beside him now, numb from shock. A nurse ordered them to leave, but they refused to budge, trying to explain who they were. When she still told them to go, Lee snapped, “Don’t worry about us. Just take care of Dr. King.”

  As they stood vigil against the wall, hands clasped before them, a team of doctors worked feverishly on King under a bright fluorescent light, machines flickering with dials and screens nearby. There was no time to disrobe him, so they cut away his coat and shirt, tucking them under his back, and started massaging his heart and tending his wounds. The bullet, a metal-jacketed .30–06, had smashed through his neck, severing vital arteries and fracturing his spine in several places. Abernathy abandoned hope when he saw the full damage—there was a hole in King’s body, he thought, large enough to put both his fists in. Lee kept watching a pulse monitor above the operating table: it barely registered a signal. A small neurosurgeon came in to examine King and concluded that he had suffered irreparable brain damage from lack of oxygen. He laid his instruments down and walked out shaking his head. As the doctors kept working on King, one came over to Abernathy. “I’m afraid it’s over,” he said, “and it will be an act of God if it is, because if he lives, he will be a vegetable for the rest of his life, for he will be paralyzed from the neck down.”

  In a few minutes, the doctors stepped back from the table. “I’m sorry,” the head physician told Abernathy and Lee, “but we’ve lost him. It’s all over.” The physician recorded the time: 7:05 P.M., April 4, 1968. While the nurses did something at the machines with their dials and screens, King lay unattended at the table, face straight up. Had he been able to see, he would have gazed on a little silver figure of Jesus on the cross, directly on the wall above, looking down at him.

  Abernathy took King’s personal effects from his coat—a checkbook and some papers—and Lee gathered what there was in his left trouser pocket. Then Lee took a last look at him, thinking back over all the years they had been together, all the thousands of miles they had traveled in the rush and tumble of his life. “We were always tired,” Lee thought. “I know he was tired. Now maybe he’ll get some rest.”

  He and Abernathy walked into a small anteroom where Andrew Young waited with his head buried in his hands. SCLC’s attorney Chauncey Eskridge came in from an adjoining room, and Abernathy said, “Now Martin is gone from us. Now we are alone.”

  “Ralph,” Eskridge said, “you have to become our leader. You now are our leader. The television people are waiting outside. We know Coretta is on her way here. We are going to take you in front of the TV cameras and you say your say, and then we’ll go to the airport and wait for Coretta.”

  Without a word, Abernathy reached out with his arms, and the three men came to him; they hugged one another and wept with their faces together. Then Abernathy said a prayer for King, and Eskridge and Young each took him by the arm and helped him out the door to face the din of reporters and television cameramen. He said what had to be said, then climbed into a waiting car with the other three men and headed for the airport.

  There they found out that Coretta had canceled her flight; she wasn’t coming to Memphis until tomorrow. In a daze, Abernathy and Young w
ound up at the John Gaston Hospital—the Memphis morgue—where the medical examiner wanted permission to do a thorough autopsy on King’s body, which had been brought there from St. Joseph’s Hospital. He and the other authorities were anxious to avoid all the confusion and unanswered questions that had marked Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas. Abernathy put him in touch with Coretta by phone, and she gave him permission to proceed. Then he asked Abernathy to perform one other duty. “I must have witnesses,” he said. “You must attest that it is Dr. King in the next room.”

  Abernathy entered the morgue, pulled back the piece of brown paper that covered the body of “my friend and my buddy,” and touched him gently on the cheek. The man who had been their leader, inspiration, and spokesman couldn’t speak any more—that marvelous voice stilled now. How could they get him and not Abernathy too? He had always assumed they would be killed together, but God in His wisdom intended otherwise. Somehow Abernathy had to go on without King, somehow had to continue his work. He felt an overpowering loneliness, weighed down by the sheer impossibility of taking King’s place. No one could ever take his place. There was no one else like him. Still, his words would never die. Even now, television and radio stations across America and other lands were playing highlights of his most famous speeches. Like the words of Jesus, Abernathy believed, “they will live in our minds and our hearts and in the souls of black men and white men, brown men and yellow men as long as time shall last.”