“Yes, that’s him,” Abernathy told the medical examiner, and left the hospital.
IN ATLANTA, Coretta had learned about the shooting from a friend and had set out for the airport with Mayor Allen and his wife, only to find out there that King had died. In shock, unable yet to accept what she had prepared herself for all these years, she elected to go home to her children. In this shattering hour, she said her place was with them. Over in Ebenezer Church, Daddy and Momma King heard the news over the radio, and they sat there, unable to say anything, weeping silently together. “Suddenly, in a few seconds of radio time, it was all over,” Daddy King remembered. “My first son, whose birth had brought me such joy that I jumped up in the hall outside the room where he was born and touched the ceiling—the child, the scholar, the preacher…all of it was gone.”
That night and the next day, King’s stricken country convulsed in grief, contrition, and rage. Only four and a half years after Kennedy’s assassination, another national leader had been gunned down in his prime, and Americans in all corners of the Union worried about the stability of their country. “Dr. King’s murder is a national disaster,” editorialized the New York Times, “depriving Negroes and whites alike of a leader of integrity, vision and restraint.” “When white America killed Dr. King,” cried Stokely Carmichael, “she declared war on us.” “Get your gun,” he told blacks. And a lot of them did, as riots flared up in 110 cities, and 39 people were killed, most of them Negroes. More than 75,000 federal troops and National Guardsmen patrolled America’s streets. The hardest hit was Washington, D.C., where 711 fires blazed against the sky and 10 people died, among them a white man dragged from his car and stabbed. From the air, Washington looked as though it had been bombed; smoke even obscured the Capitol. That King’s death should trigger the worst outburst of looting, arson, and theft thus far was a cruel and final irony. In Atlanta, an FBI agent yelled with joy, “They finally got the s.o.b.l” In Arlington, Texas, a milkman argued that he got what he preached, and white students in the dormitory of the University of Texas at Arlington cheered when they heard the news. Meanwhile, a massive federal manhunt was under way for the suspected sniper, a white man in a white Mustang, seen racing away from the murder area where police had found a .30–06 rifle in a bundle tossed in a doorway. Authorities would later identify him as escaped convict James Earl Ray.
With sections of Washington and many other cities still ablaze, President Johnson proclaimed Sunday, April 7, as a day of national mourning, and flags around the country flew at half mast and countless thousands of Americans, blacks and whites together, marched and prayed and sang freedom songs in King’s honor. On Monday, Abernathy, Coretta, and her three older children led 19,000 people in a silent memorial march through the streets of Memphis, proving to all the nation that a nonviolent demonstration could be conducted in King’s spirit. The strike ended eight days later when the city recognized the sanitation workers’ union and agreed to wage increases and other benefits. King’s death had seen to that.
The New York Times had called it a disaster to the nation; the London Times said it was also a great loss to the world. Not since the assassination of Kennedy had an American death caused such grief and consternation abroad. Everywhere news of the shooting dominated the press, television, and radio. Pope Paul VI, who had granted King a private audience in 1964, poured out his “profound sadness” in a cablegram to the entire American Catholic hierarchy, sent to his Apostolic Delegate in Washington. In Japan, Foreign Minister Takeo Miki reported that his country was “gravely concerned.” In South Africa, newspapers printed special editions about King and blacks lined up on street corners to get them. In Lagos, Nigeria, officials bemoaned “this sad and inhumane killing,” and the U.S. Embassy hung a portrait of King draped in black crepe outside its front door. In France and Britain, the press made much of the violence and racism that cursed America, and both parties in the English House of Commons introduced resolutions expressing horror at what had happened. In West Germany, both houses of parliament stood in silent tribute, and Mayor Klaus Schutz led a march of 1,000 Germans and Americans through West Berlin to John F. Kennedy Square. In Tanzania, Reverend Trevor Huddleston, expelled from South Africa for standing against apartheid, contended that King’s death was the greatest single tragedy since the assassination of Gandhi in India and that it challenged the complacency of the Christian Church the world over.
Meanwhile, with tributes and condolences flowing in from all corners of the globe, Coretta and A. D. brought King home in an Electra jet chartered by Robert Kennedy. He lay in state in the chapel of Spelman College, where weeping mourners of all races and religions filed by his open casket at the rate of 1,200 an hour, women touching and kissing him. Daddy King brought Alberta, Coretta, and the four children to pay final respects, to look one last time at the father, the husband, and the son. Overcome with grief, Daddy King reached into the casket. “M. L.!” he cried. “Answer me, M. L.” Then he collapsed, sobbing, “He never hated anybody, he never hated anybody.”
On April 9, a hot and humid day in Atlanta, Abernathy officiated over King’s funeral service in Ebenezer Church, where almost 800 people were packed in the sanctuary. From 60,000 to 100,000 surrounded the church outside, listening to the proceedings over loud speakers, and thousands more waited at Morehouse College, where a public service was scheduled. Inside Ebenezer, Negro comedian and civil-rights activist Dick Gregory observed dozens of Negro celebrities in attendance, many of whom had marched with King on various civil-rights battlefronts. There were Harry Belafonte and his wife, Sammy Davis, Jr., Floyd Patterson, Thurgood Marshall, Mahalia Jackson, Diana Ross, Lena Home, and many others, come to pay homage to a man who had extolled the strength of black people and endowed them with the noblest mission of any Negro leader before. There was King’s special family of staffers and former aides—Young and Lee, Williams, Fauntroy, and Vivian, Bevel, Jackson, Orange, and others—who felt lost without him, suffering a sorrow so deep that for some it would never heal. Here and there in the crowded sanctuary were King’s fellow civil-rights leaders—Wilkins and Whitney Young, Carmichael, McKissick, Forman, and John Lewis—who had quarreled so often with him or one another this past year and a half, brought together by his death. Carmichael had appeared at the church with six bodyguards, causing a brief disturbance because there were no seats for the guards. There were scores of white friends and dignitaries too: the Wachtels and Levisons, Attorney General Ramsey Clark, labor and religious potentates, a regiment of mayors and governors, numerous congressmen, and all the major presidential contenders that year save George Wallace. There were Robert Kennedy with his wife Ethel, Eugene McCarthy, and Richard Nixon, the front-running Republican, whose presence evoked cries of “politicking” and complaints of “crocodile tears” among some Negroes. But it was the arrival of Jacqueline Kennedy, dressed like Coretta in a black silk mourning suit, that created the greatest sensation outside the church, The crowds surged around her with such force that she had to be pulled and pushed inside the door, her face looking frightened for a moment. Just before the services began, Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey entered through a side door, greeted the family, and found his seat; he was standing in for Lyndon Johnson. No, the President did not attend the funeral of one of the first citizens of the world, as the World Council of Churches referred to King. (Neither did Georgia Governor Lester Maddox, a white supremacist who refused to close the schools and even protested against lowering the flag to half mast.) In the front row, facing the African mahogany coffin with its cross of flowers, was King’s grieving widow, children, and parents.
With the organ groaning in the background, Abernathy intoned, “We gather here this morning in one of the darkest hours in the history of the black people of this nation, in one of the darkest hours in the history of all mankind.” The choir sang some of King’s favorite hymns—“When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” and “In Christ There Is No East Nor West”—and Harold DeWolf gave the tribute. At Cor
etta’s request, Abernathy had a tape played of King’s own eulogy, “A Drum Major for Justice,” given at Ebenezer the past February. Once again that mellifluous voice swept through the church, the church he had joined on another spring day thirty-four years before, the church in which he had been baptized and ordained to spread the gospel of his Christ. “But I just wanted to leave a committed life behind,” his voice cried in the hushed sanctuary. “Then my living will not be in vain.”
The pallbearers carried him out to a special hearse—a farm cart drawn by two mules, which symbolized his poor people’s campaign, his own last and greatest dream. Then with bells shattering the humid day and 120 million Americans watching on television, the cart started forward to the clop, clop of the mules, carrying Martin Luther King on his last freedom march, with Abernathy and his young aides—many of them dressed in the poor people’s uniform of faded jeans and overall jackets—moving beside and behind their fallen leader. Some 50,000 people toiled along behind the cart, suffering from the muggy heat as they passed thousands of muted onlookers, most of them black. The line of march led past the domed Georgia capitol, where Lester Maddox was sitting in his office under a heavy guard. At last the great cortege reached the tree-shaded campus of Morehouse College, where King had discovered Thoreau and found his calling under the guidance and inspiration of Benjamin Mays. Now, at the portico of Harkness Hall, Mays gave the eulogy to King, to a man who had come preaching love and compassion and brotherhood rather than cynicism and violence; a man who, as a Negro, had had every reason to hate America but who had loved her passionately instead and had sung of her glory and promise more eloquently than anyone of his generation, maybe of any generation.
“We have assembled here from every section of this great nation and from other parts of the world to give thanks to God that He gave to America, at this moment in history, Martin Luther King, Jr.,” Mays said. “Truly God is no respecter of persons. How strange! God called the grandson of a slave on his father’s side, and said to him: Martin Luther, speak to America about war and peace; about social justice and racial discrimination; about its obligation to the poor; and about nonviolence as a way of perfecting social change in a world of brutality and war.”
But that world was behind him now, life’s restless sea was over. His anguished staff gathered round the coffin and prayed together for guidance and strength, their hearts breaking in this, their final farewell. Then his family, friends, and followers escorted him to South View Cemetery, blooming with dogwood and fresh green boughs of spring, and buried him near his grandparents, near his Grandmother Williams whom he had loved so as a boy. On his crypt, hewn into the marble, were the words of the old slave spiritual he had quoted so often:
FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST
THANK GOD ALMIGHTY
I’M FREE AT LAST
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I could never have written this book without the support of others. A Senior Summer Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities facilitated my research forays into the South in 1978, and I thank the Endowment for its financial aid. I am also grateful to the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, for a Moody grant which helped defray my expenses there, and to Tina Lawson, Nancy Smith, and Linda Hanson of the Library’s staff for their prompt and cheerful assistance. William Johnson, Henry J. Gwiazda, and Deborah Green of the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston made my stay there both comfortable and rewarding, and I am in their debt. Meyer Weinberg, Director of the Horace Mann Bond Center for Equal Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, introduced me to the Center’s collection on the Chicago campaign and regaled me with graphic stories about his role in it. I am much obliged to him. I want to express my gratitude to Dr. Howard Gotlieb, Director of the Special Collections of Boston University’s Mugar Memorial Library, and his entire staff for their help, and to Joan Daves, Agent of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Estate, for permission to quote from documents in the Library’s King papers. Joan Daves also opened her private papers to me and stood by my work from the very outset. My thanks, too, to D. Louise Cook, Director of the Library and Archives of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, for her professional and enthusiastic service during my labors there. She has made the Center’s one of the most efficiently organized archives I have ever had the pleasure of working through. Coretta Scott King, President of the Center, proved sympathetic and understanding in a long discussion we had about my book and the quartet of which it is a part. Though this is not an official, authorized life of King (I am a fiercely independent biographer who writes his own books), I am indebted to Mrs. King for making the Center’s holdings available to me without restrictions. Because of her and her energetic staff, the King Center is now the foremost library in the United States for the study of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil-rights movement.
When it comes to thanking friends and colleagues, I scarcely know where to begin. Ruth Byrne, Peter Eddy, Jonathan Hensleigh, Sandra Katz, Elizabeth Lloyd-Kimbrel, Ann Meeropol, and Will Ryan of the Amherst Creative Biography Group heard sections of the book during our Friday night readings, and I deeply appreciate their constructive remarks. I can never repay Ruth Byrne for all the additional help she provided. She not only listened with alacrity and patience as I read the manuscript to her, but proofed and criticized it and offered invaluable moral support. Charles C. Alexander and Alonzo Hamby of Ohio University examined the manuscript in its entirety and furnished incisive critiques that made it a better book than it otherwise would have been. John Hicks of The Massachusetts Review made many cogent suggestions about King’s college years, and Paul Mariani, a poet and a fellow biographer, perused the entire manuscript and gave me encouragement when I needed it the most. Harry Wachtel perceived the value of my work in its initial stages, and I very much appreciate his constant support. He gave generously of his time in protracted interviews, sent me manuscript materials when I needed them, answered questions when I found myself in trouble, and with his wife Lucy assisted me in countless other ways. No expression of thanks to them could ever suffice.
I am grateful, too, to Sally Ives for typing the final draft of the manuscript, to Michael Kirkby for proofreading it with a careful eye, to N. J. Demerath and David Garrow for their courtesies, and to Hugh Carter Donahue, G. Barbara Einfurer, Fred and Elise Turner, Betty Mitchell, Mark Gerstein, and O. C. Bobby Daniels for their kindness and friendship during the past five years. Finally, I owe a special debt to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, which helped more than any other institution to make this book a reality. The University not only provided me with funds for supplies, research, and typing, but granted me a remunerative Graduate Faculty Fellowship that released me from teaching duties for a year so that I could complete the biography. Though often misunderstood and maligned in the state it represents, the University has excellent students, a talented, nationally acclaimed faculty, and a firm commitment to creative scholarship.
REFERENCES
The sources listed below are abbreviated in the reference notes according to the key on the left. All other sources are identified in the notes. For a full index of King’s own published writings, consult Daniel T. Williams, “Martin Luther King, Jr., 1929–1968: A Bibliography,” typescript copy in MLK(BU), which see below.
AOC—“Attack on the Conscience,” Time (Feb. 18, 1957), 17–20.
Autobiography—Martin Luther King, Jr., “Autobiography of Religious Development,” MLK(BU). Written for a graduate course at Boston University, this is a remarkably revealing account of King’s early experiences and sentiments.
Bennett—Lerone Bennett, Jr., What Manner of Man: A Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (4th rev. ed., Chicago, 1976). Written by a friend of King’s and a fellow Morehouse man, this biography, first published in 1964, carries the story down to 1965, with a brief epilogue.
BOHC—Ralph J. Bunche Oral History Collection, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D
.C. The collection is a rich storehouse of interviews, conducted in 1967–68, with Ella Baker, James Bevel, Harold L. DeWolf, John Lewis, Rosa Parks, Glenn E. Smiley, Fred Shuttlesworth, John Seigenthaler, C. T. Vivian, Wyatt Walker, and many others involved in the civil-rights movement.
Coretta King—Coretta Scott King. My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York, 1969).
Daddy King—Martin Luther King, Sr. (with Clayton Riley), Daddy King: An Autobiography (New York, 1980).
DTTP—Martin Luther King, Jr., “It’s a Difficult Thing to Teach a President,” Look (November, 1964), 61, 64.
FAR—The Final Assassinations Report: Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives (New York, 1979).
Friends—CBS TV News Special, “Some Friends of Martin Luther King,” hosted by Charles Kuralt, April 7, 1968, transcript, BOHC. Reminiscences of King by Harry Belafonte, Ralph McGill, Hosea Williams, Reverend Sam Williams, and Andrew Young.
HMB—The Horace Mann Bond Center for Equal Education, University of Massachusetts library, Amherst. The center has a valuable file of newspapers, clippings, and other matter relating to King’s Chicago campaign and the school fight there against Superintendent Benjamin C. Willis.
Howell—Leon Howell, “An Interview with Andrew Young,” Christianity and Crisis (Feb. 16, 1976), 14–20.
HSCAH—U.S. House of Representatives, Investigation of the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.: Hearings Before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, 95th Cong., 2d sess., 1978, vols. I, IV, VI, and VII.
JD—Joan Daves Papers, New York City. Daves, one of King’s literary agents, currently represents King’s literary estate. Her papers include some speeches and valuable correspondence and other documents relating to his published writings.
JFK—John F. Kennedy Library, Boston. Several collections housed here contain materials germane to King and the civil-rights movement. Among them are the papers of Robert F. Kennedy, Burke Marshall, and Harris Wofford, as well as interviews with the three men, Clarence Mitchell of the NAACP, and many others.
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