That was in the era before Commissioner Edwards, and the frequency of similar encounters helped fuel the electoral uprising that sent Cavanagh into the mayor’s office and Edwards into the top job at 1300 Beaubien—while, at the same time, a contagion of fear generated by that earlier crime wave had helped propel a countermovement of whites to the Detroit suburbs.
The first thing young Scott heard about the march was that many ministers were not supporting it. The fact that C. L. Franklin had organized it was enough for him. He identified with the High Priest of Soul Preaching from his days on Hastings Street. “We knew people who went to his church, and we knew Aretha, and it seemed very significant that he was involved,” Scott recalled. “I was highly motivated on that walk.” As he hiked down Woodward, he was thinking about those parts of his own experience—urban renewal, police attitudes, and the racial segregation of his northern city—that took him to that moment, but the presence of so many others with him on the street brought elation along with anger. The feeling, he said, “was a combination between a vision and a festive atmosphere . . . a solemnity, but really it was kind of exciting. There were a number of people in our age group marching. We were just part of the mass. I was already simmering by the time of the march. It just enhanced the spark.”
Covering the march for the Michigan Chronicle was Ofield Dukes, their ace reporter and editorial writer on civil rights, who would go on to a White House job in Washington and a long career in public relations and civic engagement, including a key role decades later in establishing King’s birthday as a national holiday. His Rolodex in 1963 had the telephone numbers of many key figures in the movement, from the late Medgar Evers and Aaron Henry and James Meredith in Mississippi to Martin Luther King, Ralph Abernathy, and Andrew Young in Georgia. He covered the national scene but was intimately familiar with the Detroit players and wrote several stories about Reverend Franklin and his skeptics in the city’s black Baptist hierarchy. Even as he reported that day, Dukes walked with his own race story. He was born in Alabama and came up to Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood during World War II with his mother and three siblings to join their father, who had taken a job at the Ford plant. At Miller High, then the city’s only all-black high school, he was vice president of the senior class and manager of the championship basketball team. After graduating he tried to get into Wayne State but failed the entrance exam and ended up with the army in Korea, where, he later recalled in an oral interview, he spent most of a year reading books on philosophy—his favorite was William James on pragmatism—while stationed “on a lonely hill overlooking the Chowan Valley about five miles from the front.” After his service, he took the college tests again, got accepted at Wayne State, and graduated four years later with a B average and a degree in journalism. There were nine journalism grads, he said, and the eight white students found jobs on the News, Free Press, and Times. None would hire Dukes, so he joined the Chronicle. “You always have two strikes against you,” a mentor told him. “It’s just a question of what you do with that third strike.” At Detroit’s leading black newspaper, he used that third strike to full advantage. “Nothing happened in this city, politically, without people coming by the Michigan Chronicle,” he said, and no one knew black Detroit more intimately than Dukes. Now, as he surveyed the marchers moving down Woodward, he concluded that this “was a C. L. Franklin crowd.” He saw blacks “of all classes—street walkers, doctors, school children, senior citizens, drunks, clergymen and their congregations [who] came from near and far to walk for freedom.”
For Russ Cowan, another veteran Chronicle reporter, the march satisfied two yearnings at once: the huge crowd buoyed his hope for the cause, and the physical act itself pleased him for a wholly personal reason. “For a long number of years, I had cherished the desire to march down Woodward to the stirring tunes of a band,” Cowan revealed. He went to the march with his son and along the route joined forces with Dave Clark, a former welterweight who had trained at the Brewster Recreation Center with Joe Louis, learning the left jab–right cross–left hook technique that became known as the Detroit style, and Clarence Gatliff, an accomplished swimmer who ran the Brewster rec program and had worked to integrate Detroit’s pools and recreation facilities. Gatliff and Clark carried a banner that read “Brewster Old Timers.” Nearby was another old-timer, Myrtle Gaskill, society editor of the Chronicle, who called her participation in the march “absolutely an ablution for my shame in my generation which had no spirit to generate such magnificent solidarity of purpose.” It had never occurred to her, she wrote, “to be proud of what should be obvious, but I WAS proud of this tangible evidence that my race is in accord with what we should have initiated decades ago.” Walking down Woodward, she said, made her feel that she belonged.
June Brown, who worked in classified ads, had a different reaction as she marched down Woodward. Like Reverend Hood, her first question was “Where did all these people come from? If there is strength in numbers, then we are very strong.” The next thing she thought was “Wouldn’t it be great if all of us turned out like this every Election Day?” And her third thought subsumed any sense of satisfaction she experienced along the way: “What do we do now?” Ray McCann, a general assignment reporter for the Chronicle, was less concerned with that question. He found the march impressive for a number of reasons: “First, it demonstrated that if properly notified, Negroes will support civil rights groups. Second, it demonstrated the ability of Negroes to organize properly and manipulate a crowd in excess of 100,000 people. And finally the participation by so many whites of all ages points out that many Americans realize that the problem of civil rights is a problem for this whole country to settle.” There in fact were many whites in the crowd, at least several thousand, including Protestant ministers, Jewish rabbis, and Catholic priests, along with clusters of their followers. Peg Edwards, the wife of the police commissioner, marched with an integrated but largely white group from the Michigan chapter of the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity. In such a massive crowd, the white participants appeared slightly more in percentage than black members of the police force, and as many whites might have been observing the march from the downtown sidewalks as taking part in it.
There was remarkably little heckling and no violence whatsoever. No need to summon the hundred-man commando team from the 1300 Beaubien garage. Some bystanders brought stools, coolers, and radios, as though this were a holiday parade, and had their radios tuned to the warmly crackling voice of Ernie Harwell calling that afternoon’s Tigers game against Kansas City (Detroit won 11–2; Mickey Lolich went the distance; Rocky Colavito smacked a homer; some scrub named Tony LaRussa pinch-ran for the Athletics). Along the route, three observers were injured in falls, seven marchers fainted from heat and exhaustion, twenty-six children were separated from their parents, and four people were arrested, including two drunks and a pickpocket. The fourth arrest involved a man who stepped from the sidewalk at Woodward and Grand River, saying he had a message for King, and started scuffling with officers when they sought to get him away from the curb. The message that Joseph Lalibert, a house painter, said he had for King was to go slow pushing for integration in suburbs like his neighborhood in Berkley out near Royal Oak. Lalibert never got close to King, but many other people did, without serious incident. “Everywhere he went, people shouted, pressed in to touch him, shake his hand, stand close to him, or just look in his face,” the Detroit News reported. At one point he was overheard saying, as a bookend to Commissioner Edwards’s greeting at the airport, “I’ve faced so many mobs of hate in the South, this was kind of a relief.”
It took an hour and forty-five minutes for all of the marchers to reach their destination. By then Arthur Johnson, the NAACP official, was watching from the roof of Cobo Hall. “It was a breathtaking experience and tears of joy welled in my eyes.” He also felt “a deep irony at work” as he watched the marchers file into Cobo. “This venue, named after a racist mayor [many Detroit blacks shared
that opinion of Albert Cobo], was transformed by a man who would become the iconic voice for racial justice. Twenty years ago on this same day, the worst race riot in U.S. history happened in Detroit. The Walk to Freedom was a model of peaceful protest and racial cooperation.” Another irony, of course, involved his own organization: the largest civil rights rally to that point in U.S. history was staged without the full support of the NAACP.
By the time the marchers finished, there was no room inside for them. The arena was jammed to the capacity fire officials would allow, every one of the sixteen thousand seats filled, with another ten thousand finding seats in the adjacent hall. May Reuther, the labor leader’s wife, was in the arena’s front row with her daughters, Linda and Lisa. Commissioner Edwards found a place to stand. Erma Franklin, the second most famous singing daughter of the preacher, was backstage with a sterling cast of performers, but her sister Aretha, who had returned home from New York a month earlier to perform for a week at the Flame Show Bar, could not make it back again. Official programs were handed out with special acknowledgments to the United Auto Workers, the Detroit Federation of Musicians, Cleage Printing Company, and Gordy Printing Company. Many marchers who could not get inside straggled toward home, thirsty and exhausted, but at least ten thousand more remained, spreading out in a vast semicircle around the building. Booker Moten and Reverend Hood were among those who stayed to listen to the rally as it was broadcast on loudspeakers outside. One could hear the proceedings, the other could not because of the hubbub around him, but both would be able to say they were there when Martin Luther King rehearsed the most famous refrain of his life.
Chapter 12
* * *
DETROIT DREAMED FIRST
WITH EVERY SEAT OCCUPIED and people standing in back and pressed against the sidewalls, Cobo Arena was uncomfortably dense yet improbably calm. The mood was softened by a communal sense of accomplishment after that long walk down Woodward and by anticipation of what was to come, a program of songs and speeches culminating with an oration by Martin Luther King. Women fanning themselves, babies crying, well-dressed men holding canisters to collect the day’s offering—it felt like a Sunday morning at New Bethel Baptist. A ring of policemen stood sentinel outside to keep back the throngs, but there was no pushing and shoving beyond the unavoidable nervous jostling of an overflow crowd.
The speechifying part of the program started an hour later than scheduled, but the prelude was filled with music that provided reason enough to be there. The lineup included the Ramsey Lewis Trio, in town from Chicago to perform at the Grand Show Bar, a new jazz club out on Joy Road. Lewis, a pianist, and his partners, drummer Redd Holt and bassist Eldee Young, were moved by what they had experienced that day in Detroit. Young felt the march had “a tremendous emotional impact” on him. Holt called it “a great stride toward equality.” And Lewis stressed the importance of entertainers showing their commitment by refusing to play at segregated nightclubs or “to accept privileges not afforded other Negroes.” The jazz trio entertained the crowd with songs from their latest album, Pot Luck.
Then there was Dinah Washington, who had moved from Chicago to Detroit to live with her soon-to-be seventh husband, Dick (Night Train) Lane, the star defensive back for the Detroit Lions, who was in the Cobo audience. The exotic queen of the blues and the hard-tackling Night Train were to get married ten days later in Las Vegas. Washington, who was performing that week at the 20 Grand, was drawn to the rally mostly because of her close friendship with Reverend Franklin and his daughter Aretha. She was also a favorite of Berry Gordy, who before his Motown days had been a doting fan of her performances at the Flame Show Bar, entranced by how “she actually would shake her booty onstage and move from place to place and talk about men.” Also on the bill were the Four Tops, a popular local quartet about to join Gordy’s Motown assemblage, and Liz Lands, a soul singer from New York with a stunning five-octave range, also soon to fall into the Motown orbit. Chairman Gordy himself made arrangements to record the program, not for the music so much as for the words of Dr. King.
It would take some time to get to King. Reverend Franklin, who already had occasioned a miracle of sorts with the successful and peaceful march, accomplished something equally extraordinary now, sublimating his ego by serving as emcee rather than main attraction. There were those who had heard both who thought Franklin could outperform King onstage or at the pulpit, but the pitch of his hum now was limited to brief remarks interspersed among more than twenty speakers, a too-long list that was an unavoidable result of his desire to keep his coalition together in the fractious days before the event. After introductions, a prayer, a spiritual reading, and a resounding rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the black national anthem, from the Rock of Ages Gospel Choir, Mayor Cavanagh stepped to the podium to issue the city’s formal welcome.
This had been a long Sunday for the mayor. Before securing his place in the second row of marchers, three feet directly behind King, he had spent the morning dedicating a new wing of the Detroit Public Library, where he honored “the enduring nature of knowledge and wisdom” in an age of skepticism. Now, at Cobo, he spoke of the struggle between enlightenment and ignorance and the power of nonviolence and legislative action: “This gathering is a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King and to those men of goodwill who march for freedom and justice throughout this nation. If a symbol were needed of intelligent, enlightened leadership, Dr. King has dramatically filled that need. The hunger for equality, the thirst for justice, the struggle for the right to sit at a lunch counter and the yearning for educational and job opportunities has generated tremendous antagonisms. But the reaction to brutal treatment, to mass arrests of peaceful marchers, to the denial of fundamental human rights as citizens, has been swift and decisive. No longer can the courts alone carry the brunt of the burden. No longer can this nation tolerate legislative indifference to blatant constitutional violations. President Kennedy has challenged the Congress to enact the laws needed to help achieve equality. I believe a national consensus supports these proposals.”
The various speakers and agendas that followed over the next ninety minutes reflected the complicated racial realities of that momentous summer and the frailties of a broad coalition. Radicals interspersed with moderates, politicians mixed with street rhetoricians, those who believed in the system and the legislative process and those who thought salvation came only from a rising of the people. On one end was Reverend Cleage, who had tried and failed to make this a blacks-only event and now said that he and his people were readying themselves for the liberation struggle. On the other end were two Republicans representing George Romney, the Mormon governor who was absent because this was a Sunday, the one day he did not make public appearances. When Franklin, as emcee, first mentioned Romney while introducing Leo Greene, one of his aides who had come down from Lansing, there were scattered boos and catcalls from the audience. “Be kind now,” Franklin said. “Be sweet.” The booing recurred each time Greene mentioned Romney. There was a warmer response when Stanley G. Thayer, the Republican state senator from Ann Arbor, a moderate and strong supporter of civil rights, as was Romney, presented King with a proclamation welcoming him to the state. And even more to the crowd’s liking was John B. Swainson, the former governor who had lost both legs as a young soldier in World War II and walked down Woodward on his prosthetic limbs. “If Americans can fight and die together, they can live and work together,” Swainson told the receptive Cobo audience.
Soon came Reuther, who as the summer began was allowing as little room as possible between himself and Dr. King. The day before, at the White House, he had supported King’s defense of large-scale demonstrations in the face of President Kennedy’s wariness on the subject, and he reiterated that position now, while broadening the civil rights cause to all races and regions. This was “a fight for every American,” he said. “Let’s keep the freedom marches rolling all over America. We shall not rest until we have full freedom for every American.”<
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The assembled choirs sang Rossini’s “Inflammatus” during a break for passing the offering buckets, and then Congressman Diggs introduced the main speaker. The arena roared with shouts and applause. King, at five-seven, stepped up on a small box to reach the bank of microphones placed before him on the podium. “God didn’t make me tall enough,” he said. The large room grew close, bathed in shadows and light. “My good friend, the Reverend C. L. Franklin,” he began, “I cannot begin to say to you this afternoon how thrilled I am, and I cannot begin to tell you the deep joy that comes to my heart as I participate with you in what I consider to be the largest and greatest demonstration for freedom ever held in the United States. And I can assure you that what has been done here today will serve as a source of inspiration for all of the freedom-loving people of this nation.”
The call-and-response had begun, with shouts of “All right!” and “Amen.”
King was still in the moment, struck by what he had seen and heard that day: the greeting Police Commissioner Edwards gave him at the airport, promising there would be no dogs and hoses; the city’s protective embrace symbolized by his assigned bodyguard, the black lieutenant, George Harge; the buoyant throngs lifting him up as he walked down Woodward. “I think there is something else that must be said because it is a magnificent demonstration of discipline. With all of the thousands and hundreds of thousands of people engaged in this demonstration today, there has not been one reported incident of violence.” More applause and approving shouts. “I think this is a magnificent demonstration of our commitment to nonviolence in this struggle for freedom all over the United States, and I want to commend the leadership of this community for making this great event possible and making such a great event possible through such disciplined channels.”
Once in a Great City Page 19
