Eye on the Struggle

by James McGrath Morris

  “The use of the word ‘disarray’ gets at me,” said James Nabrit Jr., who after announcing his resignation as president of Howard University sat down for a long interview with Payne. “We have always had infighting among individuals and organizations,” he said. “There is not a Negro or a white person who can say, with accuracy, what a Negro should do or not do. We can’t sit down and pick one Negro to lead.”

  THE DISUNITY DID NOT STEM from a lack of effort on the part of the old guard. Payne was convinced that King was trying to move the SCLC forward rather than resist change. He obtained consent at the August conference to organize Afro-American unity meetings, put on identity workshops, and promote community economic development programs. The move toward Afro-American unity, Payne reported, was an enormous shift from King’s philosophy of interracial cooperation. “It means that the Nobel Peace Prize winner is taking a bold step to grab the initiative in the black revolution from the more extreme black power advocates.”

  Over the fall, Payne found that official Washington was growing nervous with what it saw. The previous almost deferential tone of the civil rights leaders was turning hostile, and King, who had been considered by many in the capital to be a moderating force, now spoke in heated tones. “We have found throughout our experience that timid supplication for justice will not solve the problem,” he told an interviewer. “We have got to confront the power structure massively.”

  Senator John McClellan, an Arkansas Democrat who chaired the special Senate subcommittee that investigated crime and civil disorder, met with Payne and a few other colleagues of hers. He wanted to send a message through the black press to the organizers of the planned poor people’s march. What King is planning to do, McClellan said, may violate the law. “This borders on tyranny and insurrection,” the senator said. “These people ought to be advised before they start the march that they will be stopped.”

  King’s planned protest, however, was gaining traction. In January 1968, Carmichael—no longer with SNCC—convened a closed meeting with almost a hundred civil rights leaders at New School of Afro-American Thought on Fourteenth Street in Washington. Payne, along with other reporters, was kept at bay, standing in the freezing cold until midnight before giving up and deciding to piece together an account the next day from her sources. What she found was encouraging news for King. The group had not attacked the old guard. Instead they appealed for a united front.

  A few weeks later Payne further learned that Carmichael would join the protest if certain conditions were met, such as a pledge from King that he would hold out for actual congressional action rather than promises. She found a more conciliatory black power advocate. “Stokely Carmichael is sincerely dedicated to Black Unity, or least he projects this image,” reported Payne. “In an effort to win more grassroots support he has stopped his public rabble-rousing and temporarily the sound of ‘honkey’ and ‘uncle tom’ has gone into the freezer.”

  As she had done with civil rights legislation while a reporter in the 1950s, Payne assiduously pursued the story of the Poor People’s Campaign. Like King, she was frustrated by the lack of progress following the legislative and judicial victories of the movement and was encouraged by the prospect of shaking up government. “All that talk about putting up shacks among the cherry trees has official Washington shuddering and the promoters of the Annual Cherry Blossom Festival horrified at the thought even of violating the tranquility of the sacred limbs,” Payne wrote as plans for the protest took shape.

  She followed the story behind the scenes, reporting that King and Carmichael were holding secret meetings and that an appeal from the White House to call off the march had been dismissed. Even at the SCLC, said Payne, changes were being implemented for the new mission. “Our policy and goal,” said the organization’s new manager, “is to organize the SCLC to the point where it can be an organized movement and not simply a movement organization.”

  Carmichael lived up to his side of the bargain and continued to refrain from his incendiary vocabulary of the past. At a press conference to announce the aims of the new Black United Front and its support for the poor people’s march, Payne kept her eyes on the man. “Stokely Carmichael was massively present, but passively silent,” she wrote.

  By mid-March, Payne had learned all the details of the planned springtime mobilization. It called for King to kick off the protest by being arrested for holding a sit-in at a government office with about a hundred followers on April 22. Afterward, caravans of buses would begin their trek to Washington loaded with poor people from all parts of the country. A campsite, with kitchens and toilets, would be erected somewhere in the nation’s capital to house the protesters, who would stay for at least two months. They would call the site the New City of Hope.

  CHAPTER 29

  RESURRECTION CITY

  MARTIN LUTHER KING’S TALK OF BRINGING A NEW protest to Washington frightened national leaders, much as A. Philip Randolph had twenty-seven years earlier when he called on black Americans to march on the capital. White elites were befuddled. From their reading of white newspapers and viewing of mainstream television news, many had presumed the need for protest was over now that black citizens had been generously granted the civil rights so long denied to them. And as far as poor people in general were concerned, had not Johnson’s War on Poverty generously come to their aid?

  Ethel Payne watched with eagerness and hope. If King’s planned protest came off, it would directly challenge the nation’s power structure in ways that had not been done before. He wanted to bring together the downtrodden and disinherited members of society across all racial and ethnic lines to force a confrontation over the biggest societal division of all—that which kept the poor in poverty. Despite ennobling and historic legislation as well as lofty federal programs, the nation would soon confront evidence that it had failed to overcome racism and poverty. “People ought to come to Washington, sit down if necessary in the middle of the street and say, ‘We are here; we are poor; we don’t have any money; you have made us this way,’” wrote King. “ ‘And we’ve come to stay until you do something about it.’”

  There remained only one holdout from the growing unity. Speaking at the National Press Club on April 3, Roy Wilkins, the NAACP’s executive secretary, said his organization would not join in. There would be a great danger of violence because King might not be able to control the marchers, Wilkins said. Payne was furious. She had her own complaints about King. In fact, Payne was one of several black reporters who knew about King’s extramarital relationships but kept quiet. But Wilkins’s speech criticizing King was for her a violation of a long-held rule among African Americans. “Never under any circumstances could you have got me to stand up in front of an audience of white people—hard nosed, some bigoted newsmen—and downgrade him,” she wrote privately to friends.

  ON THE DAY WILKINS LOBBED his criticism at King, the civil rights leader was eight hundred miles away from Washington in Memphis, Tennessee. He had come to the city in support of striking sanitation workers. At a packed church meeting, with a thunderstorm raging outside, King spoke of the threats on his life. “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life,” he said. “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. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land! And so I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

  Less than twenty hours later King lay dead on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel, struck by a single bullet fired from a Remington rifle whose trigger was pulled by an assassin who had been on his trail across the country and escaped capture.

  The anger in black neighborhoods could not be contained. By midnight rioting broke out in Washington and dozens of other cities. The next day confrontat
ions between rioters and police in the capital grew so intense that President Johnson brought in federal troops to restore calm. “It was almost like the sacking of Rome by the barbarians here,” said Payne. “For four days we were literally under siege or rather the curfew and the restrictions made it seem like that.”

  Despite her allusion to Visigoths, Payne was not unsympathetic to the rioters. “These were the have-nots of the city—those who have dwelled in the shadows of the Capitol for so long and who have been ignored by Congress,” she said privately. When the rampage was over, Payne wandered out, armed with her press pass, to look over the damage at the epicenter of the riot, where buildings were still smoldering. She found that “first to go were the notorious credit houses and discount places which have been robbing the people for years.” Except for the Salvation Army, whose destruction she chalked up to a mistake, those businesses with signs of “Soul Brother” or “Soul Business” had been spared. These included the office of her doctor Edward C. Mazique, a famed African American physician who was friends with civil rights leaders, on whose window was scrawled “Soul Doctor,” and Reverend Walter Fauntroy’s New Bethel Baptist Church. In contrast, the white-owned grocery store at the corner was a pile of ashes and twisted metal.

  Back in her apartment, Payne was deluged with calls from readers, activists, and mentees wanting to talk and get direction. “Nowadays it’s a different world with the accent on youth, and this should be so,” she said when telling friends about the calls. Payne felt the only thing she could do was repeat advice she had given for years. “So I go back to the old premise that women united can change things, not with pretty theories and polite tea parties, but by coming to grips with the heart of the problem.” Specifically, Payne told callers, there were three women best suited for the task. They were Coretta Scott King, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Myrlie Evers, all three widows from assassinations. “Together they can have a powerful impact on the conscience of America.”

  Payne decided not to go to Atlanta for the funeral. She kept her reasons private. But it was not for any loss in admiration for the slain leader. She had stuck with him even after he turned against the war while she had not. She noticed, with satisfaction, that Roy Wilkins—who had withheld his support of the Poor People’s Campaign—stayed away as well. Watching the funeral on television, she was glad of her decision. “The spectacle at Atlanta of so many politicians jostling for position at the funeral, some of whom had only lately condemned Martin Luther King’s tactics, was appalling,” she said.

  RALPH ABERNATHY, whom Payne had first met during the early weeks of the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, assumed the leadership of the SCLC, beating out Jesse Jackson, the youngest member of King’s entourage. He vowed to complete King’s planned Poor People’s Campaign. As the first vanguard of the poor reached the capital in early May, Payne wrote: “Martin Luther King Jr. has achieved in death what eluded him in life—a coalition of the poor people of America.” Senators Russell Long and Robert Byrd, evangelists of segregation, fumed but were powerless to stop high government officials in the executive branch from putting out the welcome map for the marchers’ representatives, all of whom were running late. “It was the first time,” Payne wrote, “that it could be accurately said that the government of the United States waited for the poor people.”

  But experience restrained Payne’s enthusiasm. She knew from her years of covering Congress that it was unlikely to simply yield to the protesters’ demands. “But right now with the charred ruins of the cities, the ghost of Martin Luther King, and the strains of ‘We Shall Overcome’ pervading the atmosphere,” Payne wrote, “the jumpy legislators don’t want to offend the downtrodden who have come to collect the promissory note of King’s dream.” On his list had been demands for full employment, a guaranteed minimum income, $30 billion for antipoverty programs, and the annual construction of 500,000 affordable residences.

  At the start, the marchers won their first concession from the government. It agreed to permit them to use a fifteen-acre strip of land parallel to the reflecting pool near the Lincoln Memorial. Below the massive memorial to the emancipator and stretching out on America’s most famous lawn, organizers set out to build a city to host representatives of its poorest segments. The encampment was named Resurrection City.

  At first, Payne thought she saw a high level of organization. Architecture students from Xaverian College created prefabricated structures of plywood that were erected, forming small neighborhoods. Important health information was collected from each resident and an elaborate system of identification, including identity cards, was put into operation.

  Caravans of buses, even a mule train, departed from different points around the country such as Selma, Alabama, and Marks, Mississippi, loaded with poor whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans, headed toward Washington. But when the buses reached their destination, Resurrection City was not yet ready to receive them. After several days, reports began to circulate of low morale and sickness. Payne, along with reporters from the Washington Star and the Times of London, met with Reverend James Bevel, an SCLC leader. He said that only a few had abandoned the encampment but admitted the Poor People’s Campaign was having financial trouble. “We are live theater,” Bevel told Payne. “Just as some Broadway productions have to close down temporarily for lack of funds, this is our situation, but we don’t expect to have to do this.”

  Payne was skeptical of Bevel’s claims. She went to St. Augustine Catholic Church, where priests and nuns were trying to house and feed marchers for whom no provisions had been made. Among them were eighty members of the Blackstone Rangers, one of the most famous gangs from Payne’s hometown of Chicago and adherents of the black power movement in the city. When told they would have to build their own shanties, the Rangers drifted off into the city. Rumors spread they were seeking to connect with other gangs and spark violence. “It turned out,” said Payne, “that they were on a sightseeing tour.”

  In the church’s cafeteria, Payne found a young priest from Chicago. “I’m cheesed off,” he said while halfheartedly stabbing food on his plate. “Nobody wants to listen and face facts. Here you have 387 people with no plan and no direction.” Nearby, in the corner, a group of white protesters from Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin, sat forlornly awaiting instructions or help from organizers.

  City church leaders told organizers that they could no longer cope with the deluge of marchers while the construction continued on the six hundred shanties being erected on the mall. The press was beginning to report on the chaos, but the SCLC leadership kept the cameras at bay. “We’ve had it,” said a CBS news employee after waiting for more than an hour to speak with a protest coordinator. “Most of us are in sympathy with your cause, but we’re fed up with your uncooperative attitude.”

  “Well,” replied the coordinator, “you’re going to slant the news anyway.”

  Andrew Young, who was now second in command of the SCLC, repudiated the statement, but the damage was done. And Payne found the hostility to the white media was also repeated when well-known cartoonist Bill Mauldin followed a caravan from Chicago with the intention of drawing cartoons, as he had done in World War II, in support of the cause. Marshals informed him there was a ban on the news media. “Hell,” he said, “don’t they know I’m for them?”

  Sympathetic to the marchers, Payne published a warning. “Leaders of the Poor People’s Campaign have scoffed at stories of disorganization and dissension as manifestations of a biased press,” she wrote. “But as the march was going into its third week, it becomes the unavoidable truth that unless some sense of responsible direction and coordination is given to the campaign, and very soon, it is doomed to collapse and Martin Luther King’s dream of the promised land will fade like a desert image.”

  FREQUENT HEAVY RAIN, with more than two inches coming down over two days alone, turned Resurrection City into a soggy mess. Payne rechristened the camp Mud City. But touring the camp, she found residents to be coping
stoically. One tent dweller told her that if such obstacles as rain bothered residents, they would never make it to the promised land.

  Payne’s doctor, Edward Mazique, established the Health Services Coordinating Committee with seven organizations of progressively minded doctors, dentists, and nurses. It aimed to provide medical care for acute conditions and emergencies, provide physical exams to residents, some of whom had never seen a doctor, and improve the well-being of the protesters by providing health education. He recruited Payne to serve as the group’s public relations director.

  One day Payne toured the camp with Mazique. He was embroiled in a fight with the city’s health department, who did not like his makeshift group’s interference with their work. Without disclosing her role with Mazique’s group, Payne reported on the fight for control over medical services to the encampment and the complaints of the black doctors. “They said that what was at stake,” wrote Payne, “was the philosophy of empathy with the poor which was being established with the presence of middle-class doctors and dentists who were giving time and service voluntarily in a very critical area.”

  John Conyers Jr., a black congressman from Detroit serving his second term, also spent the day touring the site. He wanted the city to cut its red tape and give permission to lay pipes that would drain the showers into the Tidal Basin. A plumber complained to Payne that official Washington was more concerned with the health of the Tidal Basin than with that of the residents in the camp.

  Conditions were indeed Spartan. “When you enter the city,” said Payne, “the worst side of the camp is where the big trucks have chewed up all the grass, so that the rains made the ground a sea of mud.” She noticed that the higher, drier ground was staked out by young militants such as the Milwaukee Commandos, which had been created as a peacekeeping force during civil rights protests in that city, and a New Jersey black power group. “The language is the tough cool talk of the city,” she said. “The girls are as rough as the boys.”