Redemption

by Joseph Rosenbloom

  Money was being raised, but it was far from enough to meet the heavy costs they expected to incur in Washington. At the SCLC money had always been tight. In 1965, when its staff roster totaled 150 people, the budget was shy of a million dollars.15 To cover its expenses, the SCLC relied on the uneven flow of direct-mail appeals and King’s income as a writer and speaker. At times only emergency bailouts from labor unions or fund-raising performances by celebrities such as Harry Belafonte and Aretha Franklin kept the SCLC afloat.16

  King was counting on the pastors of African American churches to promote the Washington campaign. Some were proving to be less supportive than he had expected. As the FBI would note in field reports, a group of 150 pastors King had convened in Miami to enlist as boosters in the antipoverty drive “had remained noncommittal” despite his impassioned plea for help.17

  Even some of King’s long-devoted benefactors were abandoning him. Labor union dollars were barely trickling in, and King seemed at a loss what to do about it.18 The reasons varied: a shift of liberals’ attention from civil rights to Vietnam, a backlash against inner-city rioting, and doubts about the Poor People’s Campaign.19 So little money was coming in during February that William Rutherford, the executive director of the SCLC, wrote an urgent plea to Marlon Brando. Rutherford said that the SCLC’s needs were great, and he appealed to the celebrated actor to sponsor a “fundraising soiree” in Hollywood to support the antipoverty campaign.20 Years later, reflecting on the state of the SCLC’s finances in the spring of 1968, Ralph Abernathy would say, “We were getting ready to launch the largest campaign that ever had taken place within this country, the Poor People’s Campaign, and we just didn’t have the money.”21

  The SCLC treasury had been far short of the needed sums in late February when King agreed to speak at a rally in Memphis for the striking garbage workers. The timing suggested that he might have scheduled the speech to prop up the SCLC’s finances as it embarked on the Poor People’s Campaign. Dramatizing the impoverished plight of the garbage workers could have inspired support for the campaign in the form of money and volunteers.

  The budgetary picture brightened somewhat the next month. A fervent direct mail letter signed by King yielded a $15,000 cascade of checks in a single day.22 Volunteers were signing on in numbers that promised to exceed the minimum target of two hundred persons per city or state in some locations.23

  But by the end of March, as the FBI recorded in a wiretap, Rutherford was warning about an alarming shortfall between receipts and the extraordinary expense to transport, feed, and shelter three thousand volunteers for weeks, perhaps months.24 What’s more, according to Rutherford, King was so concerned about the lack of progress in recruiting volunteers that he was reassigning Hosea Williams, Bernard Lafayette, James Bevel, and Andrew Young to devote themselves to that priority.

  As King brooded about the deficit of money and volunteers, another question was nagging at him. How would the American public respond to the massive civil disobedience that he was planning? He knew it would not be easy to build the groundswell of public support that would cause Washington lawmakers to approve the multibillion-dollar antipoverty programs he was demanding. He would succeed only if he could win broad popular support for his sweeping plan to end poverty. At a retreat for SCLC staff at Ebenezer Church on King’s thirty-ninth birthday, January 15, 1968, he conceded that taxpayers might recoil against his plan. He said, “It’s really going to cost billions of dollars, and, as a result of that, many people find themselves resisting.”25

  King knew too that powerful forces were already converging to oppose the Poor People’s Campaign. Out of public view President Johnson was demanding that King call the whole thing off. Publicly, referring obliquely to the expected protests in Washington, Johnson vowed that he would oppose lawlessness “in whatever form and in whatever guise.”26

  In the article for Look magazine King acknowledged the roadblock that his legislative agenda would encounter in Congress. Calling it a “coalition-dominated, rural-dominated, basically Southern Congress,” he wrote, “There are Southerners there with committee chairmanships, and they are going to stand in the way of progress as long as they can.”27 The US Supreme Court, which had vindicated the movement’s right to free speech and assembly in a string of First Amendment cases, seemed to be tilting the other way. In Walker v. Birmingham, the high court upheld, on June 5, 1967, King’s conviction for violating an Alabama judge’s injunction barring him from leading a march.

  Not known to King were the dirty tricks being readied by J. Edgar Hoover to thwart the Poor People’s Campaign. Hoover was intensifying the smear campaign against King that had been ongoing for years. He was ordering FBI agents around the country to cook up various schemes. One would falsely link King to the highly controversial Nation of Islam in order to derail fund-raising. Another would spread disinformation to muddle King’s speaking schedule and frustrate prospective volunteers. Yet a third would falsely warn that participants in the antipoverty mobilization would lose their welfare checks. A special agent pretending to be a businessman already had called the SCLC office in Detroit offering buses to transport volunteers to Washington. The FBI had no intention of providing buses. It was a ruse that would dishearten volunteers and might deter them from going to Washington altogether.28

  Despite the melancholy that seemed to engulf King that Thursday afternoon, he emerged from his lethargy for brief spells of conversation and laughter. He turned chatty when lawyer Chauncey Eskridge and an SCLC aide stopped by. But King did not leave the room. He did not join his friend Billy Kyles and aide Jesse Jackson elsewhere at the Lorraine to sing along with bandleader Ben Branch. The band, an arm of Operation Breadbasket, had flown in from Chicago to play at the pro-strike rally scheduled for that night at Mason Temple. At the Lorraine the band was rehearsing gospel hymns. One of them was entitled “I’m So Glad Trouble Don’t Always Last,” which seemed aptly chosen as a tonic for the troubles in Memphis.”29

  Abernathy, who had returned to Room 306 for a nap, rejoined King downstairs at about four o’clock. Not long after, Andrew Young knocked at the door. Davis opened, and Young bounded in. Davis would recount what happened next.

  Young turned to King. “The judge says you better not march,” Young said. “They gonna lock you up if you march.”

  Everyone laughed, except King. He said, tersely, “We’ll go on and march regardless of what they say.” He did not seem amused.

  “Nah,” Young said. “We can march as long as it’s peaceful.”

  In a flash King grabbed a pillow and pitched it at Young, who lobbed it back to him. Peals of laughter filled the room.

  Young briefed King on the day’s events in court. A march, Lucius Burch had told Judge Brown, was certain to occur with or without King at the head of it. In crafty cross-examination, Burch had then maneuvered Police Director Holloman into conceding a central point. Holloman had admitted that he would prefer a march under King’s leadership committed to nonviolence than a march that proceeded without him. That line of argument had carried the day. Brown had said he would allow King to march provided he agreed to certain safeguards: there must be enough trained marshals on hand, and the organizers of the march must coordinate their plans with the police. Lawson and Young had assured the judge that King would abide by those terms.

  It was about 5:30 when King told the people gathered in Room 201 of the Lorraine, “I want to go upstairs and freshen up.” He wanted time to dress before he left for dinner. King and the whole SCLC staff in Memphis were invited to the house of Billy Kyles and his wife, Gwen, for soul food. The dinner would precede the night’s rally at Mason Temple.

  Back in their room, King and Abernathy had visions of soul food dancing in their heads. They knew Gwen Kyles to be an excellent cook. Imagining what food she might serve that night had King and Abernathy salivating. King said to Abernathy, “Ralph, call her up and ask her what she’s having.”30

  “You’re not kidding, are you?�
� Abernathy replied.

  “No,” King said. “Call her.”

  Abernathy called Mrs. Kyles. She ticked off the menu: roast beef, asparagus, cauliflower, candied yams, pigs’ feet, and chitlins. Delighted by the menu, King went into the bathroom to shave. In King’s case shaving was a particularly onerous chore. In deference to his tender skin, he shaved not with a razor but a depilatory powder called “Magic Shave.” He had to plaster it on and wait for it to erode the hair.

  While King was waiting for the laborious shaving procedure to run its course, Abernathy mentioned a scheduling conflict. On days Abernathy was scheduled to be in Washington, he had to preach at the weeklong revival of the West Hunter Street Baptist Church in Atlanta. Turning to Abernathy, King said, “Ralph, I would never think of going to Washington without you. West Hunter is the best church in the world. They’ll do anything for you. You go tell them you’re going to have a different kind of revival, one in which we are going to review the soul of this nation. Will you do it?” Sighing, Abernathy promised.

  Billy Kyles knocked on the door to tell King that dinner was at six and to please hurry along. It was 5:55 p.m. King splashed some cologne on his face. He told Abernathy, “I’ll wait on the balcony,” and he exited the room.

  Chapter 20

  Ray’s Lucky Breaks

  This is what is going to happen to me also.

  —MLK, reacting to the assassination of President Kennedy, November 22, 1963

  JAMES EARL RAY likely slept in on the morning of April 4. He did not check out of the New Rebel until early that Thursday afternoon. As was his habit, he bought a copy of the local paper—in the case of Memphis, that was the morning daily, the Commercial Appeal. He must have zeroed in quickly on a front-page story headlined “King Challenges Court Restraint, Vows to March.”

  The story said that King was back in Memphis preparing for the march on Monday. It explained, though, that Judge Brown’s injunction might block him from leading the march. The story quoted King’s comment the day before that he might disregard such an injunction “on the basis of conscience.”

  One detail buried in the tenth paragraph would have had Ray riveted to the story. He was on a mission to kill King, and he knew how he would do it. He would shoot him. Where he could find King was another question. If he had not learned where King was staying from the TV news the night before, the newspaper would have clued him in. It identified the Lorraine Motel as King’s lodging while he was in Memphis.

  Determining King’s likely whereabouts so quickly and effortlessly from a TV broadcast or a ten-cent newspaper was the first of several lucky breaks that would advantage Ray’s murderous plan.

  In the early afternoon, he left the New Rebel in his Mustang heading to the Lorraine. From the New Rebel it is a ten-mile drive through the city’s southwestern flank to the motel. Very likely Ray cruised the area around the Lorraine, scouting for a covert location from which he might observe King’s movements. Roaming the seedy area around the motel would have pointed him to four red brick buildings, none taller than four stories, which formed the 400 block of South Main. The Lorraine faced the rear of the four buildings across Mulberry Street.

  Ray likely cased the 400 block of South Main, hoping that from inside one of the four buildings he might find a window that would afford him an unobstructed view of the motel. On the same logic, police officers Redditt and Richmond had picked the back of the fire station at 474 South Main as their surveillance post from where they could monitor King and his associates. Unlike Redditt and Richmond, Ray would not only have to locate the right building. He would also have to be fortunate enough to find a way to enter and remain in it long enough to get a bead on King.

  Luck was on Ray’s side again. He was able to find just the place that suited his purpose. It was the rooming house at 418½–422½ South Main: two adjoining brick buildings, each two stories tall. On the ground floor were two businesses, Jim’s Grill and Canipe Amusement Company, a jukebox repair and record shop. To the left of the Canipe storefront, an entrance opened to a stairway leading to the rooming-house office on the second floor.

  It was about 3:15 p.m. when Ray parked the Mustang nine blocks away, probably to distance the car far from the rooming house so no one could link it to his having been on the 400 block of South Main. He walked to the entrance of the rooming house, climbed the stairs, and knocked at the door of the office.

  Bessie Brewer, the resident manager, interrupted her bookkeeping to answer the door. An ample woman in her thirties, she was wearing faded blue jeans and a checkered shirt, and her hair was in rollers. Her sixteen-unit establishment catered to hard-up transients. Ray, who was no stranger to derelict rooming houses, would belittle it later as a “wino place.”1 Its residents were not far removed from homelessness, and Brewer had learned to exercise caution. When Ray knocked, she opened the door a crack, leaving its chain latch closed, and gazed at Ray.

  “Do you have a room to rent?” he asked through the door, as Brewer would relate to author Gerold Frank.2 In Frank’s account, she would remember Ray as a “trim white man who appeared to be in his early thirties,” having “dark hair, blue eyes, and a thin nose” and wearing “a dark suit that seemed much too nice for the neighborhood.” Reassured, she opened the door to admit him. “He was a clean, neat man,” she would tell a reporter for the Commercial Appeal a day later.

  Brewer motioned to Ray to follow her across from the office to the first door on the left. It was Room 8, a kitchenette apartment that rented for $10.50 a week. It had a stove and refrigerator. Ray glanced around. The room was not on the side of the building facing Mulberry Street. “I only want a sleeping room,” he told Brewer.

  She led him through a second-floor passageway to Room 5B in the adjoining building. To enter Room 5B, Brewer had to open a padlock on the door and turn a jury-rigged doorknob fashioned from a coat hanger. The rent was less, $8.50 a week, she told Ray. The room looked as humble as the door lock. A naked lightbulb dangled from the ceiling. A mattress on a metal bed frame sagged. There was a worn wooden dresser and a single window behind tattered, floral-patterned curtains. Ray glanced inside and said the room was fine. He would take it.

  During its investigation a decade later, the House Select Committee on Assassinations would find no evidence that Ray had checked out the view from the window before taking Room 5B. Rather, the committee concluded, “the privacy and its location at the rear of the building apparently made the room more acceptable to Ray” than Room 8.3

  Back in Brewer’s office, she asked him to pay for the room in advance. He dipped into his pocket for a crisp $20 bill and handed it to her. As she wrote a receipt, she asked his name. He said it was John Willard. To Brewer he seemed pleasant and calm. He even smiled reassuringly. Only after he left the office did something about him strike her as odd. He did not ask for the padlock to lock the door of Room 5B. Nor did he have any luggage.

  A half hour later, Ray turned up at the York Arms Company, a sporting goods store on South Main four blocks north of the Lorraine. Ray asked a store clerk, Ralph Carpenter, to show him a pair of binoculars. Carpenter would comment later on his impression of Ray and how he was struck by the quaint neatness of the slender man. Ray’s dark hair was combed straight back, and he wore a narrow, old-fashioned knit tie.

  The clerk offered two of the store’s pricier models, one pair of binoculars for $200 and another for $90. Ray asked for something cheaper. He was shown a pair of 7x35 Bushnell Banner binoculars. The price was $40, plus $1.55 tax. Ray nodded his approval. He dug into his pocket and slowly counted out two twenties, a one-dollar bill, two quarters, and, finally, five pennies.4

  Equipped with the binoculars, Ray drove back to the rooming house. This time he parked a few doors south, at 424 South Main. He sat in the car for a few moments, scarcely moving, seemingly staring into space. Or so it appeared to Elizabeth Copeland and Frances Thompson, two employees at the Seabrook Wallpaper store across the street. They observed him frozen to t
he driver’s seat and wondered about this.5 He may have remained in the car until he believed nobody was around and he could exit the car unseen.

  When he did exit the Mustang, he opened the trunk and removed a bulging bundle wrapped in a green and brown bedspread. The bedspread most likely cloaked the Remington Gamemaster rifle that Ray had bought in Birmingham, a portable transistor radio etched with his inmate number (00416) from the Missouri State Penitentiary, a pair of men’s undershorts, an undershirt, a hairbrush, various tools and toiletries, and at least two cans of Schlitz beer.6 He wrapped the bundle in his arms and managed at the same time to grip in one hand the York Arms bag containing his new field glasses. He hastened the few steps to the rooming house entrance and climbed the twenty stairs to Room 5B.

  It was not long after 5:00 p.m. when he entered the room. Outside it was cool, and the sky was clear. The sun would not set till six twenty-five. As it would turn out, luck was again on his side. He could count on plenty of light for almost an hour and a half.

  In his room, Ray hooked the curtain out of the way, raised the window, removed the screen, and canvassed the area. Room 5B was located near the rear of the building on the east side, which stood at a ninety-degree angle from Mulberry Street. By leaning out the window and craning his neck to the left, he could look diagonally across Mulberry. From that angle the Lorraine came into full view. His good luck was holding. Room 5B afforded him a view of the motel.

  Yet as a lookout it was not ideal. To see the whole expanse of the Lorraine, Ray had to lean out the window. He would have to expose his head outside as he surveyed the area with binoculars. A vigilant passerby on South Main might have been struck by a man’s head jutting out the window, with binoculars trained toward the Lorraine. A police security detail protecting King at the Lorraine, if there had been one, might have seen the man with the binoculars, been suspicious, and investigated.

  Six rooms on the same floor as Ray’s shared a dingy bathroom at the end of a linoleum hallway. The faded green walls were smudged and peeling. The only light was a bulb screwed into a ceiling socket. There was a toilet, a small sink below a pitted mirror, and, off to the left underneath the single window, a bathtub. From Room 5B it was ten steps down the hallway.