Let the Trumpet Sound

by Stephen B. Oates

  “doing something”: Lincoln, 103; King to Corrine Johnson, Mar. 23, 1959, MLK(BU); Coretta King, 178–79.

  “My failure” and “terribly frustrated”: King to Allan Knight Chalmers, Apr. 18, 1960, MLK(BU).

  SCLC strategy: Southern School News (Jan., 1960), 9; Coretta King, 183; King’s recommendations at the SCLC Board meeting, fall and Dec., 1959, SCLC press releases and reports of the executive director, fall, 1959, MLK(BU); King’s MIA Speech, Dec. 3, 1959, SCLC.

  “total struggle”: King to Chalmers, Apr. 18, 1960, and press releases, Dec. 1 and 8, 1958, ibid.; Southern School News (Jan., 1960), 9; King’s MIA speech, Dec. 3, 1959, SCLC.

  “trying”: Coretta King, 181–83.

  “black boy and girl”: Southern School News (Jan., 1960), 9; statement, Feb. 1, 1960, MLK(BU); Washington, Black Religion, 13.

  PART FOUR: SEASONS OF SORROW

  King’s finances and ambivalent attitudes: PI, 77; documents on royalties and honorariums in MLK(BU); Lincoln, 119; Harry Wachtel interview with Oates, Sept. 20 and Oct. 18, 1978; King to Ruth Cunningham, Aug. 5, 1979, MLK(BU). Halberstam, in Lincoln, 203, reported that King in later years became so unconcerned about money that his friend Harry Belafonte set up an educational trust for each of his children.

  “first thing”: Loudon Wainwright, “Martyr of the Sit-ins,” Look (Nov. 7, 1960), 132.

  “coalition” and “too busy to hate”: John D. Hutcheson, Jr., Racial Attitudes in Atlanta (Atlanta, Ga., 1973), 5; Leonard, “Martyr,” Look, 35; also Harold H. Martin, William Berry Hartsfield, Mayor of Atlanta (Athens, Ga., 1978); Melvin W. Ecke, From Ivy Street to Kennedy Center: Centennial History of the Atlanta Public School System (Atlanta, Ga., 1972), 345–56.

  scolded his father and tacit agreement: Carl Holman interview with John H. Britton, Oct. 3, 1967, BOHC; Edwin Guthman, We Band of Brothers (New York, 1971), 154–55; Wyatt Walker interview with John H. Britton, Oct. 11, 1967, BOHC; Lincoln, 106–11. Mays, Born, 273, reported that it was a long time before he and others could get King appointed to the Morehouse Board of Trustees, thanks to Negroes who “bitterly opposed his election.”

  “the teachings”: Raines, 99; John Lewis interview with Katherine M. Shannon, Aug. 22, 1967, BOHC. See also William H. Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom (New York, 1980); and Milton Viorst, Fire in the Streets: America in the 1960s (New York, 1979), 93–117.

  “significant developments”: Watters, 78–80; newspaper clippings and King to Ruby Nell Burrows, Apr. 13, MLK(BU).

  “Many people” and “rest of my life”: Coretta King, 185.

  “run of history,” “personal trials,” “endeared himself,” and “gestapo-like tactics”: King to Jackie Robinson, June 19, 1960, MLK(BU); King, “Suffering and Faith,” Christian Century (Apr. 27, 1960), 510; Bernard Lee quoted in Watters, 87; King to Eisenhower, Mar. 9, 1960, and SCLC press release, Mar. 11, 1960, MLK(BU).

  defense of sit-ins: Newsweek (Feb. 29, 1960), 25; U.S. News & World Report (Mar. 21, 1960), 77; King, “The Burning Truth in the South,” Progressive (May, 1960), 8–10; Nashville Banner, Apr. 21, 1960. King elaborated on his arguments in his speech, “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience,” New South (Dec., 1961), 3–11.

  “no fad”: Wakefield, Revolt, 126–27; see also the documents pertaining to the Youth Leadership Meeting in Raleigh, MLK(BU).

  “young people’s Martin Luther King” and “spiritual mother”: Cleveland Sellers and Robert Terrell, The River of No Return: the Autobiography of a Black Militant and the Life and Death of SNCC (New York, 1973), 35; Lewis interview, BOHC.

  King’s speech: newspaper clipping, Apr. 23, 1959, MLK(BU).

  “all believed”: Watters, 129, 132. Baker interview, BOHC, Sellers, River, 36–37, Bernard Lee interview with Oates, Aug. 29, 1978, and James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries (New York, 1972), 216–17, give different versions of King’s offer of affiliation. Forman, for his part, all but accuses King of attempting to take over the student movement. Student leaders at the time certainly didn’t feel that he was, as evidenced by their correspondence with King that year (see the next note). Throughout the spring, in fact, King emphatically denied news stories that he was the leader and initiator of the sit-in movement.

  “its very existence” and “inspiration”: Marion S. Barry, Jr., and Jane Stembridge to King, July 13 and 25, 1960, and Lonnie C. King, Jr., to King, Feb., 1961, MLK(BU).

  “immoral and impractical”: King to Benjamin F. Mays, Apr. 1, 1960, ibid. Legal correspondence regarding the case is in ibid.

  “Alabama courts,” “truth and conviction,” “these white people”: King to Robert E. Hughes, Apr. 23, 1960, ibid.; Kunstler, xxiii–xxiv; Lincoln, 104–5.

  Wyatt Tee Walker: Walker interview, BOHC; Selby, 282–87; Walter Fauntroy interview with Oates, Aug. 28, 1978. James Wood, an NAACP and labor organizer, became King’s administrative assistant, Dorothy Cotton his administrative secretary, and Dora McDonald his personal secretary. At this time, Bayard Rustin was serving as King’s special assistant, but soon departed, in part because of conflict with Adam Clayton Powell. See Rustin interview, LBJ, and his letter to Harper’s Magazine, Feb. 6, 1961, MLK(BU). David J. Garrow, The FBI and Martin Luther King: from “Solo” to Memphis (New York, 1981), 69–70, maintains that Rustin’s “widely known homosexuality” also played a role in his leaving.

  “black bourgeoisie club”: Claude Sitton, “King, Symbol of the Segregation Struggle,” NYT Mag. (Jan 22, 1961), 10; Walker interview, BOHC.

  “chief civil rights organization”: King to Robinson, June 19, 1960, Robinson to King, May 5, 1960, and Benjamin F. Mays to Robinson, MLK(BU).

  Kennedy meeting: Martin Luther King, Jr., interview for JFK Library with Berl I. Bernhard, MLK(CSC); King to Bowles, June 24, 1960, ibid.; DTTP, 61.

  “nonalignment”: Nation (Sept. 23, 1961), 180; WCW, 147.

  “neutral against Nixon,” “always argued,” and “both major parties”: Wofford, 12; King to I. G. Whitchurch, Aug. 6, 1959, MLK(BU); Cleveland Robinson interview with Oates, Feb. 27, 1980; King, “The Rising Tide of Racial Consciousness,” Sept. 6, 1960, MLK(BU).

  “what it is, Senator”: DTTP, 61; King interview for JFK, MLK(CSC).

  “can’t force Rich’s”: John Gibson interview with John Britton, Apr. 26, 1968, BOHC; Holman interview, ibid.; also Daddy King, 164–65.

  interview: Wainwright, “Martyr,” Life, 126, 128–29, 132, 134.

  “spiritual leader”: Raines, 88–90; Lee interview with Oates, Aug. 29, 1978; Wofford, 12–13.

  “Second Battle”: George B. Leonard, Jr., “The Second Battle of Atlanta,” Look (Apr. 25, 1961), 31–40.

  King’s arrest and “Our prize”: Atlanta Journal, Oct. 19, 1960; Atlanta Constitution, Oct. 20, 1960; Wainwright, “Martyr,” Life, 129; Lee interview with Oates.

  King’s trial: Atlanta Constitution, Oct. 26, 1960; Atlanta World, Oct. 26, 1960.

  “Corrie, dear,” “this time,” and Reidsville: Coretta King, 194–95; King interview for JFK, MLK(CSC); Jet (Nov. 10, 1960), 4.

  “vulnerability” and “We Shall Overcome”: Watters, 53–54.

  King on Kennedy: Wofford, 22–23; King to Mrs. Frank Skeller, Jan. 30, 1961, MLK(BU); DTTP, 61; King’s statement, Nov. 1, 1960, MLK(CSC). Afro-American, Nov. 12, 1960.

  “No Comment Nixon”: Carl M. Brauer, John F. Kennedy and the Second Reconstruction (New York, 1977), 49–50.

  “price”: King to Mrs. Skeller, Jan. 30, 1961, MLK(BU).

  “stress” and Kilpatrick debate: King to John H. Harriford, Mar. 31, 1961, transcript of the debate in ibid.

  “scene of action”: King to A. J. Muste, Mar. 22, 1961, ibid.

  “rafters”: press releases from Frank Clarke [n.d.], ibid.

  Atlanta agreement and King’s speech in church: Accounts vary as to details. I’ve put the story together from King to Upper Manhattan Committee, Apr. 21, 1961, ibid.; Raines, 91–93; Holman interview, BOHC; I
van Allen, Jr. (with Paul Hemphill), Mayor: Notes on the Sixties (New York, 1971), 40–42, 44; Leonard, “Atlanta,” Look, 32, 34.

  “optimistic”: Leonard, “Atlanta,” Look, 34.

  “moral tone”: Wofford, 128; also Wofford interview with Berl Bernhard, Nov. 29, 1965, JFK; King to John F. Kennedy, Mar. 16, 1961, MLK(BU).

  “convince me” and “never wanted”: DTTP, 61; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House (Boston, 1965), 930–31.

  “experiencing nature” and Martin and Bobby: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (Boston, 1978), xi; Seigenthaler interview with Robert F. Campbell, July 10, 1968, BOHC.

  “We are heartened” and “our country”: King to Robert Kennedy, Apr. 28 [1961], and King to Barbara Lindsay, May 3, 1961, MLK(BU).

  “big enough to admit”: Testament, 234.

  “CORE started”: Walker interview, BOHC; Lee interview with Oates; Selby, 75; also Viorst, Fire in the Streets, 133–43, and Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 135–37.

  “whole country”: Seigenthaler interview, BOHC; also Selby, 75.

  mob at Abernathy’s church: Raines, 122–23; John Lewis and Walker interviews, BOHC; Robert F. Kennedy interview with Anthony Lewis, Dec. 4, 1964, V, 556–59, JFK; Burke Marshall interview with Louis Oberdorfer, May 29, 1964, 51, ibid.; Lucretia Collins’s account in Forman, Revolutionaries, 155–56; Viorst, Fire in the Streets, 154–55.

  “Attorney General know”: Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, 299.

  “on probation too” and “heard King say”: Raines, 123–24; Lewis interview, BOHC; Lee interview with Oates; Forman, Black Revolutionaries, 147–48.

  King’s work for the Freedom Riders: see, for example, King to Dr. Harold Fey, June 4, 1961, to Robert Cobb, June 12, 1961, to Theodore Kheel, Aug. 9, 1961, and E. B. Joyner to King, June 26, 1961; and Walker to George W. Lee, Aug. 5, 1961, MLK(BU). Walker and seven others went on their own freedom ride out to Mississippi and back, and Walker filed a report about it with Robert Kennedy, July 3, 1961, in ibid.

  “He is carrying”: King, “The Time for Freedom Has Come!” NYT Mag. (Sept. 10, 1961), 25, 118–19.

  “remarkable victory” and “Systematic segregation”: King to Russell Buckner, Oct. 25, 1961, MLK(BU); Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, 300.

  “presence of the press”: King to Harold Courlander, Oct. 30, 1961, MLK(BU).

  “prophet”: Kunstler, 75–76, 78–79.

  “central front” and “from the vote”: Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, 302; Kunstler, 77; SCLC news releases, MLK(BU); Robert F. Kennedy interview with Lewis, V, 22–23, JFK.

  “historic” and “Mr. President”: King to Harry Wachtel, Nov. 7, 1961; SCLC news release, Oct. 18, 1961, MLK(BU); DTTP, 61.

  “President did more”: King, “Fumbling on the New Frontier,” Nation (Mar. 3, 1962), 190–93.

  “This, in itself” and “run King”: King to Sidney Poitier, Sept., 1961, MLK(BU); Allen, Mayor, 82–93.

  Klansman Morris: FAR, 502.

  “really funny,” “You know,” and “Whippings”: Atlanta Constitution, Jan. 14, 1978; Alfred Duckett interview with Oates, Sept. 19, 1978; Reddick, 5; Coretta King, 215–16; Harry and Lucy Wachtel interview with Oates, Sept. 20, 1978.

  “won some applause”: PI, 66. Coretta King, 213–14, gives a somewhat different version.

  “morale booster” and “constant dangers”: Lee interview with Oates; DeWolf interview, BOHC.

  “trusted Ralph” and “want you to know”: Hosea Williams quoted in Fager, Resurrection, 25–26; Abernathy quoted in Mark Lane and Dick Gregory, Code Name “Zorro”: The Murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1977), 120; and Abernathy interview with Oates.

  “King’s spiritual brother”: Walker Interview, BOHC; C. T. Vivian interview with Oates, Aug. 16, 1978.

  “give up the fight”: newspaper clipping (spring, 1961), MLK(BU). Reddick, 129, contrasted the opposite styles of the two friends in their description of the new Negro. King: “The new Negro has replaced self-pity with self-respect; self-deprecation with dignity.” Abernathy: “The Negro no longer grins when he isn’t tickled nor scratches when he isn’t itching.”

  Bevel: newspaper clippings dated Aug. 23 and Sept. 12, 1965, HMB; Bevel interview with Katherine Shannon, July 6, 1968, BOHC.

  Young: YPI, 61–62, 72, 74; Selby, 82–85; Young, “Desegregation/Integration: Still Live Issues in America,” NEA Advocate (Apr./May, 1980), 2; Young to King, Mar. 24, Aug. 8, and Sept. 11, 1961, MLK(BU). When Young first wrote King in March, asking questions about his career as though they knew one another, King was dumbfounded. “I cannot for the world of me place Andrew Young!” he wrote Miles Horton, director of Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. King was all the more astonished because he had a remarkable memory for names and people. Still, he liked what Young had to say and asked Stanley Levison to find out more about him, to see whether he was “the kind of man who could work with me at SCLC.” (King to Horton, Apr. 25, 1961, and to Levison, same date, ibid.). Evidently Levison gave King a favorable report.

  “community of interests”: King to David Dubinsky, Dec. 31, 1958, ibid.

  “shocking”: Anderson, Randolph, 308; Cleveland Robinson interview with Oates, Feb. 27, 1980; Rustin, Line, 227.

  King’s speech: typescript, MLK(BU), published as “We Shall Overcome,” IUD Digest (spring, 1962), 19–27; NYT, Dec. 12, 1961. The FBI, on the basis of hearsay, reported that Levison had written King’s speech. Perhaps Levison helped him draft it (Rustin may have as well), but the language, style, and sense of history are King’s.

  “great crowd” and “best resolution”: Robinson interview with Oates; Anderson, Randolph, 309.

  “just speak”: Raines, 425; also Forman, Black Revolutionaries, 255, for SNCC’s objections. For SNCC’s role in Albany, see Clayborn Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), 56–65.

  King’s speech: Watters, 13–16, 11–15; Raines, 425; Lincoln, 124.

  “our brothers”: Watters, 365–66.

  “refuse to pay” and “bailed out”: MOY, 15; Walker interview, BOHC.

  Wachtel and Gandhi Society: Wachtel interview with Oates, Sept. 20, 1978; King’s speech at the formation of the Society, May 17, 1962, MLK(BU); Kunstler, 91–92. Wachtel conceived of the Gandhi Society and New York attorney Theodore Kheel became its president. But Wachtel and New York lawyer Clarence Jones actually managed it. See the documents bearing on the Society in MLK(CSC).

  King’s speech: MLK(BU).

  “good workers,” “thrown out,” “subtle and conniving”: King’s statement, July 13, 1962, MLK (CSC); clippings from Atlanta World dated July 11, 13, and 14, 1962, ibid.; Kunstler, 98–99; Raines, 362–63. Raines is the source for the Negro bondsman.

  “any handles” and “called”: Watters, 175; see also King’s statement, July 12, 1962, MLK(CSC).

  “upside down” and “walkin’ tall”: Atlanta Constitution and Atlanta Journal clippings, dated July 17, 1962, MLK(BU); PI, 68.

  Pritchett and “never cease”: NYT, July 23, 1962; Raines, 365; Atlanta World clipping, dated July 17, 1962, MLK(BU); Abernathy interview with Oates.

  “federal courts” and “work vigorously”: Kunstler, 101–6; W and M, 45–46.

  “nonviolent rocks” and “pool game”: Watters, 210–16; Time (Aug. 3, 1962), 12.

  “against us,” “long argument,” and “up against”: Andrew Young interview with Thomas H. Baker, June 18, 1970, LBJ; DTTP, 64; Coretta King, 206.

  “a limit” to “here in Albany”: Time (Aug. 3, 1962), 12–13.

  King in jail: NYT, Aug. 6, 1962; Coretta King, 205; Ernest Dunbar, “A Negro Leader Talks About the Struggle Ahead,” Look (Feb. 12, 1963), 93; King’s jail diary in yellow spiral notebook, MLK(BU).

  “no solution” and “segregated as ever”: NYT, Aug. 9, 1962; Atlanta Constitution, Aug. 9, 1962; Bauer, Kennedy, 175; Lincoln, 124.

  “appalled,” “go on, anyhow,
” “broken our backs,” “naive enough,” “being around,” and “so vague”: Lincoln, 124–25, 225; W and M, 59; Watters, 146–47, 233; MOY, 15; PI, 66. See also Howard Zinn, “Albany: A Study in National Responsibility” (Atlanta: Southern Regional Council, 1962).

  “never fight”: WCW, 44–45; Abernathy to Oates, Aug. 16, 1978; Walker interview, BOHC.

  “thick as hogs,” “an anarchist,” and “done found”: Victor S. Navasky, Kennedy Justice (New York, 1977), 121–22; Watters, 149, 220.

  “greatest problems”: Atlanta Constitution, Nov. 19, 1962, and NYT, same date. King made his remarks to a NYT reporter, who asked if King agreed with Howard Zinn’s criticism of the FBI’s role in Albany which appeared in a Southern Regional Council report. Arthur L. Murtagh, a southern FBI agent during that time, later testified that King’s own assessment was “absolutely” valid (HSCAH, V, 96). Other government officials agreed. See Ovid Demaris, The Director: An Oral Biography of J. Edgar Hoover (New York, 1975), 208–9, 211, and Burke Marshall interview, LBJ.

  Hoover and the FBI: FAR, 535, 568–71; HSCAH, VI, 64, 91–96, 98, 131–36, VII, 41, 141; SSCFR, 82, 87–91; SSCH, VI, 198, 209; Hoover to Robert F. Kennedy, Sept. 30, 1963, Civil Rights Policy File, JFK; Demaris, Director, 12–96, 128, 197, 201, 233; William C. Sullivan (with Bill Brown), The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover’s FBI (New York, 1979), 135–36. Garrow, FBI, 26–56, 78–85, demonstrates that the FBI’s “pronounced interest” in King began before his criticism of the FBI in Albany (Hoover and his men “honestly” believed that Stanley Levison, King’s friend and adviser, was a Communist influence on him); Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy, 353, also notes that the FBI scrutiny of King began before his Albany remarks.

  PART FIVE: THE DREAMER COMETH

  “Negro people,” “we win,” and “Tears”: PI, 66; quoted in Watters, 158; quoted in Lewis, King, 168–69. See also King’s unpublished article on Albany, MLK(CSC).

  Sol Hurok’s offer: Raines, 427.

  “This system” and “had a knife”: Dunbar, “Negro Leader,” Look, 95–96.