Parting the Waters

by Taylor Branch

  Students gathered the next morning not knowing whether they would march or King would come. Dr. Brawley of Clark College took the most extreme position of the six presidents: he ordered the doors of the gymnasium locked from the outside in an effort to keep the students from marching. But someone slipped out a window to spring the locks, and the Clark students joined an immense tide of students that prayed, caucused, and sang, then surged into the streets 1,500 strong. They marched from the West Side to the perimeter of the capitol grounds, where they found that the governor indeed had posted state troopers with orders not to let them pass. From there, the main body of students retreated eastward through downtown Atlanta—reversing the historical path of Negro migration from the city—toward Auburn Avenue. Borders had agreed to let them hold their rally at Wheat Street Baptist Church. The students had heard radio bulletins that King was flying in from Montgomery expressly to join them, but conflicting rumors buzzed until the head of the column came into sight of Borders and King together at the top of the Wheat Street steps. Waving and beaming, the two preachers greeted the students like victorious pilgrims. A great shout of triumph went back through the line of march, and when the rally began, King commended the students for their nonviolence and for having the courage to take a stand. King praised Borders, Borders praised King, and everyone praised the students—even the college presidents who had urged them not to march. All six turned up on the dais during the rally, giving thanks that their fears had been proven wrong. The goodwill was so pervasive that no one thought ill of the presidents or begrudged them their places of honor.

  During the Atlanta student march, white pedestrians stood silently for the most part, gawking at the endless procession. A bewildered woman matter-of-factly said, “I didn’t know there were that many niggers in college.” Her comment, which made the newspapers, was fairly representative of the national state of mind. For the vast majority of Americans who were not directly threatened or inspired by the demonstrations, the very existence of large masses of Negro college students came as a revelation. Hitherto, whites had been able to categorize Negroes as both a class and a race of laborers, because the educated ones they knew tended to be famous, idiosyncratic by definition and set apart from ordinary life. Even in the North, white-collar Negroes were an uncommon sight in the downtown business districts. Now, suddenly, their presence in sufficient numbers to clog streets or fill up jails began to register, and more than a few members of the majority culture wondered how they would fit into the greater scheme of things.

  For those millions who did not happen to witness a live march, the civil rights issue remained a distant cause, arousing variously curiosity, fore-boding, or hope. Sit-in stories from anywhere outside one’s hometown played on the inside pages along with the wildcat coal strikes and the news that the government had approved an invention called the birth control pill. In the spring of 1960, the stories that dominated the front pages tended to reverberate homeward from overseas. Even the most prominent race stories came not from Dixie but from Africa. When police in Sharpeville, South Africa, opened fire on a crowd of blacks demonstrating peacefully against the hated identity-card laws of apartheid—killing sixty-nine people, most of whom were shot in the back—dispatches shocked readers all over the world. The Eisenhower Administration denounced the South African government for its repression. Foreign capital began fleeing South Africa in multimillion-dollar chunks. Photographs of Africans burning their identity cards appeared on American front pages above stories featuring riots and predictions of the final rebellion. The tension faded, however, as the South African government simply jailed 13,000 suspicious Africans without trial. Neither the African blacks nor their white liberal supporters had an answer to state power unchecked by law or qualm.

  In May, not long after the Sharpeville massacre, secret agents snatched former S.S. colonel Adolph Eichmann out of Argentina for transport to Israel, where his trial for Nazi war crimes against Jews made him world famous as the man in the glass booth, on his way to the gallows, and intellectuals debated how this bland technocrat fit with the global image of evil incarnate that had fastened upon the Nazis in the fifteen years since Hitler’s death. Across that same span, the world had struggled to comprehend a successor evil that was, like Eichmann, too real to be comprehensible: the specter of thermonuclear war. In early May, all 160 million Americans participated in a national air-raid alert, the seventh since U.S. officials had acknowledged that the Russians might be capable of raining nuclear warheads down on the Western Hemisphere. As before, schoolchildren crawled under their desks, Wall Street closed, television screens went blank, and American leaders set examples by scurrying into underground bomb shelters. The consumption of electricity in New York dropped 90 percent for half an hour.

  On May 5, as devilish Civil Defense officials were putting government executives through a surprise repeat of the national air-raid drill, word reached Eisenhower in his top-secret North Carolina command bunker that Khrushchev was claiming publicly that the Soviets had shot down an American spy plane. Reacting instinctively to protect the secrecy of the U-2, and on the assumption that both the CIA pilot and his plane were destroyed, Eisenhower ordered release of the cover story that a weather plane must have strayed off course. The next day, when the President was back in Washington to sign the Civil Rights Act of 1960 into law, he confirmed the weather plane story to reporters, and the day after that Khrushchev sprang his trap, announcing that the Soviets had captured Francis Gary Powers alive and would prove to the world that he had been flying no weather plane. This should have finished the tale, but Eisenhower, reeling in shock, authorized another cover story. The State Department admitted that it was a spy plane but blamed Powers as a renegade, asserting that he had no orders to fly over the Soviet Union. When this flimsy claim did not last a single day, the White House acknowledged the bare essential truth, but Eisenhower could never bring himself to admit that he had personally approved each U-2 flight. “I would like to resign,” he said despondently in the White House. In public, he never lost confidence. A week later, he flew to Paris for a summit meeting, only to watch a sputtering, sarcastic Khrushchev brand the United States a pirate nation and walk out. Eisenhower flew home again on May 17, as King was greeting Atlanta’s marching students at the Wheat Street Church.

  The U-2 was so important an event that millions denied its importance, rallied to the flag, and routinely denounced the Russians. What lingered beneath were memories of Ike’s humiliation, of the first great lie, the public debut of the CIA in a vaguely sinister context, and the first serious puncture in the American innocence that had swelled up since Eisenhower’s war.

  In spite of the unnerving headlines from abroad, the country exhibited a mood of tranquil optimism. Distant crises were exciting, after all, and at home the United States left behind the bitterness of the McCarthy years while building its “economic miracle” through an unbroken generation, with no sign of slowdown in sight. Americans had licked polio. Cancer was next. A majority of employees wore white collars, and economists puzzled over the enigma of surplus, wondering what else people could want. “Gone for the first time in history is the worry over whether a society can produce enough goods,” Time had announced. Automobiles were everywhere, and those who turned on their car radios were most likely to hear the strings of the Percy Faith orchestra playing the winsome “Theme from A Summer Place,” which was the number one song that spring. By the end of the year, adults and kids alike were trying the new dance craze called “the twist,” introduced by an orphan singer from Philadelphia named Chubby Checker. There was a rapprochement between age groups. Adults were cooler, teenagers less wild.

  Building all through the year—laid down along the heart of the culture somewhere between the threats of holocaust and the gurgle of pop entertainment—was the presidential campaign. The contest for the Democratic nomination drew a host of candidates, each of whom was perceived to have a fatal flaw. Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson en
joyed the support of nearly every leading Democrat in Congress, but he and everyone else knew that no pure Southerner had run successfully for President in more than a hundred years. Adlai Stevenson, the best-known Democrat, was a two-time loser to Eisenhower. Like Johnson, he was loath to expose himself to loss and therefore played Hamlet in public as to whether he would run at all. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota suffered no such restraint, but he was not very well known, and his reputation as a champion of civil rights and labor unions was thought to confine the range of his appeal. Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts began with a limited political network as a result of his run for the vice presidency at the 1956 convention, but he was young and he was Roman Catholic.

  Early bickering among the Democrats seemed to work to the advantage of Vice President Nixon, who was all but assured of his party’s nomination. He faced no Republican opponent except possibly New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, who wanted to run but could not bring himself to say so. Possessed of broader experience than any of the Democrats, and with the mantle of Eisenhower at least formally on his shoulders, Nixon was shrewd enough to warn against the sort of complacency that had led to Dewey’s upset by Truman in 1948. Theirs was still a minority party, he kept reminding his supporters, and he was not Eisenhower. “Anyone who does not recognize that we are in for the fight of our lives must be smoking opium,” he told Nebraska Republicans.

  Kennedy eliminated Humphrey from the race by winning early primaries in Wisconsin (next door to Humphrey’s home state) and in the Protestant stronghold of West Virginia. The unannounced candidates grumbled that Kennedy’s wit and glamour were seducing the party toward defeat, and the leading Democrats looked on the new front-runner with distaste. Only two senators endorsed him for the nomination. Eleanor Roosevelt continued to campaign for Stevenson, making scathing remarks about Kennedy as a puppet of his millionaire father and a coward in the battle against McCarthyism.* Adam Clayton Powell continued to support Johnson, the Southern wheeler-dealer. Former president Harry Truman said he was for Senator Stuart Symington or for Johnson—anybody but Kennedy—and he felt so strongly as to scold Kennedy on television just before the convention. “Senator, are you certain that you are quite ready for the country, or that the country is ready for you?” he asked.

  Race played a large role in the campaign, less because of the civil rights movement than because the polls were showing the Negro vote to be divided and volatile. The candidates competed intensely for Negro votes, but they tried to do so in ways that would generate as little controversy as possible among whites. Subtle-minded readers of Jet magazine knew Lyndon Johnson was serious about running for President when they saw the “exclusive” posed photograph of LBJ with a Negro leader in the March 3 issue. The hypersensitive Johnson never had allowed such a photograph to be published, for fear of losing votes in Texas. Two months later, Johnson wore brand-new contact lenses on a “non-candidate” campaign tour of three primary states, and all the while he was welcoming Negroes into his Taj Mahal along with everyone else he could corral.

  Johnson had many endorsements but few convention delegates. Kennedy had the reverse problem, which proved to be the better one, but the candidate himself worried that his strategy might not win him certain blocs of voters, including Negroes. His insecurities peaked when he allowed a campaign aide to talk him into attending an NAACP dinner, only to have Jackie Robinson refuse to have his picture taken with Kennedy on the grounds that he was a Republican. Stung and embarrassed, Kennedy left, saying he thought Robinson was for Humphrey. This was true, he learned, but Robinson considered himself a Republican for Humphrey, and if Humphrey did not win the nomination, the former Dodgers star might support Nixon. Hard on this intelligence came the rumor that even Roy Wilkins felt misgivings about Kennedy, and sympathized privately with Lyndon Johnson. “We’re in trouble with the Negroes,” said campaign manager Robert Kennedy. He assigned Harris Wofford, the white Gandhian lawyer whom King had known since the boycott, to work full time on the Negro vote.

  Senator Kennedy himself was so alarmed by his lack of feel for race politics that he decided to investigate personally. One night late in May, he carved a hole in his campaign schedule, jettisoned his retinue of advisers, planners, and noisemakers, and instructed his driver to wait for him outside Harry Belafonte’s apartment building on New York’s West End Avenue. After introducing himself to Belafonte and thanking him for agreeing to the hastily arranged visit, Kennedy came straight to the point. He said he knew Belafonte was for Stevenson. That was all right, he could understand it. But Kennedy was looking ahead to the fall campaign against Nixon. He was worried about Jackie Robinson, and he had two favors to ask. Could Belafonte explain to him how someone like Jackie Robinson could ever endorse Nixon for President, and would Belafonte consider organizing Negro stars for Kennedy, to offset the political damage of Robinson’s likely defection?

  Belafonte, who remained convinced that Stevenson would win the Democratic nomination, made small talk as he absorbed the many surprises of his first few seconds with Kennedy—the candidate’s assumption so early in the contest that he would win the nomination, his sharp intuition that Jackie Robinson was a political problem that he must address forcefully, his capacity to ask penetrating questions and request brash favors under cover of his charm. Belafonte replied that he could understand why Robinson and other prominent Negroes did not prefer Kennedy among the Democratic candidates. Kennedy was an unknown to them, without friendships or even acquaintances, and he had no record of sympathy with the cause of civil rights. Belafonte confessed, however, that he had no better idea than Kennedy why Jackie Robinson might endorse Nixon. He considered Nixon anathema for his role as a leader of the McCarthy witch-hunts, during which Du Bois had been arrested, Paul Robeson driven from the country, and Belafonte himself partially blacklisted. On civil liberties grounds alone, said Belafonte, he would do everything he could to help Kennedy defeat Nixon, if Kennedy won the nomination. In the course of the long strategy session that followed, Belafonte recommended above all that Kennedy establish a close relationship with Martin Luther King.

  “Why do you see him as so important?” Kennedy asked. “What can he do?”

  Belafonte paused. It was clear to him that Kennedy was not being snide or argumentative. The senator saw King as an unfamiliar preacher who had once led a bus boycott in Alabama and was now facing trial on income tax charges. What was King in comparison with the nearly universal appeal of Belafonte or Jackie Robinson, who could sway Negro voters without alienating white ones? Belafonte tried to explain to Kennedy his belief that the Negro vote no longer could be contested on the basis of popularity, because civil rights was building to the status of a sacred cause. He said he was not a religious man himself but had seen and felt King’s impact. Its strength was not reflected in either the white or Negro press. “Forget me,” he advised Kennedy. “Forget Jackie Robinson and everybody else we’ve been talking about. If you can join the cause of King, and be counselled by him, then you’ll have an alliance that will make the difference.”

  Kennedy, always nodding, asking more questions, thanking Belafonte for the information, made no commitments and disclosed no plans. At the end of nearly three hours’ discussion, he made his way back down-stairs to his car. Belafonte called King almost immediately with a report on Kennedy, whom he described as unschooled and unemotional but very quick. He recommended that King make every effort to get to know Kennedy. King was receiving the same advice from Harris Wofford, who was promoting Kennedy to King and King to Kennedy. Like Belafonte, Wofford was a Stevenson man. Even after joining Kennedy’s staff, in fact, he kept up his contact with the reluctant candidate from Illinois. He wrote a letter commending King to Stevenson, a copy of which he sent King “in strictest confidence,” hoping to make sure that no one in the Kennedy camp would discover that he was still consorting with the enemy.

  On May 22, King took his seat at the defendant’s table in Judge James J. Carter’s Montgomery
courtroom, charged with perjury. There were legal motions and futile skirmishes over segregation in the spectator area as well as the jury box, but the prosecutors managed to introduce by the third day a mountainous pile of 999 exhibits—mostly copies of deposit slips and checks payable to King. The state’s case built smoothly until King’s strutting Chicago barrister, William Ming, cross-examined the chief prosecution witness, Lloyd D. Hale, the state revenue auditor who had appeared at the Dexter parsonage back in January to demand payment of back taxes. Ming tried to make the prosecution’s blizzard of numbers backfire by asking Hale how the state had arrived at its own estimate of King’s income. Hale admitted that he had made his calculations pretty much spontaneously, on the same day he had visited King. Furthermore, Hale testified, the state of Alabama was still not sure how much money King had earned in 1956, the year in question. These answers were highly favorable to the defense. Ming studied Hale, a clearly troubled man who seemed to make an effort to be objective in his characterization of King, and decided to pose an extremely dangerous question. Did Hale remember telling King that day at the parsonage that there was no evidence of fraud in the tax return, he asked. Hale said he did. This testimony drew gasps from spectators, who were shocked to hear a white Alabama civil servant give comfort to a Negro in Alabama’s most visible, and blatantly political, trial.

  The prosecutors seemed agitated as they rested their case; the defense remained subdued. The facts lay somewhere in a maze of numbers, and King had never won a case in an Alabama court. The defense lawyers put R. D. Nesbitt on the stand to tell the jury how fiercely King had resisted the salary increases the Dexter trustees tried to force upon him, and Morehouse’s President Mays led a string of distinguished character witnesses. Still, defense hopes for a mistrial were so dim that King’s lawyers, after furious internal argument, took the ultimate risk of putting King himself on the stand. As expected, the prosecutors in cross examination ridiculed King’s descriptions of the daily financial notations in his little diaries and battered him with questions designed to maximize the jury’s political hostility. This high price the defense lawyers were willing to pay so that King could corroborate Hale’s testimony about their conversation in the parsonage on the day of the tax ambush. After King stepped down, the defense lawyers called as their final witness the accountant and Ebenezer trustee J. B. Blayton, who told incomprehensible tales of accounting inventions such as the geographic-median-airfare method he had used to estimate King’s legitimate travel deductions for 1956. Somehow, from all the numbers he threw into the air, Blayton pulled the precise figure of $235.16 as the paltry amount of King’s undeclared income. Even that, Blayton testified, could be explained by an alternative expense formula. Throughout Blayton’s testimony, Chauncey Eskridge muttered to himself that Blayton was merely grafting bowdlerized accounting jargon to the results of Eskridge’s own calculations. Eskridge knew, however, that Blayton’s expostulations might be helpful, because the defense had an equal right to lay claim to the benefits of confusion.