Death of a King

by Tavis Smiley

  “We’re going to look bad, Doc,” he says. “What should we do?”

  Rather than answer, Doc goes into prayer. For some fifteen minutes, Graves listens to Doc commune with God. When the prayer is over, Doc says, “Give away the tickets.”

  Graves does just that. A couple of hours later, when Graves is arranging to give away tickets at supermarkets, a limo pulls up. A black chauffeur emerges.

  “Who’s in charge?” asks the chauffeur.

  “I am,” Graves answers.

  “This is for your boss,” he says, handing over an envelope.

  “Who is it from?”

  “My boss.”

  “Who’s your boss?” asks Graves.

  “Doesn’t matter. He doesn’t want to say. He doesn’t even want any tickets. Just wants your boss to have this.”

  Graves opens the envelope holding ten thousand dollars.

  That’s the good news. The bad news is that during the concert itself stink bombs are set off. The audience is holding handkerchiefs to their eyes and noses. Belafonte takes the stage and defiantly says, “I was told that if I came to Houston, I would fare no better than John F. Kennedy did in Dallas.” The show goes on. Aretha sings “Respect.”

  Aretha’s appearances with Doc and Belafonte in Cleveland and Washington do not increase sales. Business is so bleak that Doc is forced to send a telegram to supporters in Philly, his next stop: “We urgently need a commitment from your organization for a block of 300 tickets,” he writes. “Prices are $7.50, $5.50 and $4.50.”

  Seeing that Doc is reeling from the disastrous tour, Dora McDonald, his secretary in Atlanta, urges Stanley Levison to speak to her boss. “Dr. King has been so despondent over how badly the concerts have been going,” she says, “that he can’t bring himself to do a thing.”

  Beyond failing to bring in money, the tour struggles to earn back its costs.

  A bit of much-needed good news arrives when, in the midst of the tour, an all-white jury in Mississippi convicts seven white men for the 1964 murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.

  “I am pleasantly surprised,” Doc tells the Associated Press. “The decision represents a first step on a thousand-mile journey toward the goal of equal administration of justice in Mississippi.”

  Doc does not attend the massive antiwar rally on October 21, during which fifty-five thousand protestors march on the Pentagon—a cataclysmic event later immortalized in Norman Mailer’s book The Armies of the Night—but he is in the nation’s capital the next day. He has come to speak at another poorly attended fund-raising concert after testifying before the LBJ-appointed Kerner Commission, which is looking to identify the root causes of the recent riots. Defiantly, Doc calls for “escalating non-violence” and, in his remarks to waiting reporters, ups the ante by saying, “The time has come if we can’t get anything done otherwise to camp right here in Washington… just camp here and stay here by the thousands and thousands.”

  The Washington Post rebukes Doc’s remarks as “a call to anarchy.”

  A week later, on October 30, a dark and rainy day, he goes to prison in Alabama along with his brother, A. D.; Ralph Abernathy; and his longtime trusted aide Wyatt Tee Walker, all of whom participated in the 1963 civil rights demonstration in Birmingham that the courts have upheld as illegal.

  “It is with mixed emotions that I return to Birmingham,” Doc tells the press, “to serve this five-day sentence for insisting upon our right to peacefully protest the brutal and unconstitutional treatment of Negroes in this city.… I have been happy to enter the jails for the freedom of my people.… But I am sad that the Supreme Court… could not uphold the rights of individual citizens in the face of deliberate use of the courts of the State of Alabama as a means of oppression.… Perhaps these five days will afford me an opportunity for a more intense and serious evaluation of our situation, for all the signs of our time indicate that this is a dark hour in the life of America. Our jailing is but symptomatic of the ominous clouds which overshadow our national destiny.”

  Walking into his jail cell with three books—the Bible, an economics text, and The Confessions of Nat Turner, the recently published William Styron novel about the 1831 Virginia slave revolt—Doc’s intention is to write a sequel to his celebrated “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” He’s determined to work through his exhaustion and commit his thoughts to paper.

  Concerned about his safety, officials move him from one jail to another, and he falls sick with the flu. When Coretta and Juanita Abernathy visit their husbands, they remark to reporters that not only are the facilities subpar in terms of decent food and adequate health services, but they are also, ironically, still segregated.

  Racked by chills and a hacking cough, Doc tries to write but doesn’t get far. He reads over what he has already said in a formal statement before entering prison—a reflection on the reason he is here. “Today we return to a Birmingham jail once again to bear witness, this time against a weapon which has the potential of doing greater harm to America than [Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety] Bull Connor’s dogs.… The weapon is the ‘X-party injunction’ used by hostile local courts to frustrate and silence the vital First Amendment rights.… We are witnessing an escalating disregard for constitutional freedom. In the last two weeks U.S. Marshals, state troopers and local police have clubbed demonstrators in Washington, Berkeley and Madison, Wis.; police have dragged girls by the hair in Brooklyn, tear gas has scattered and routed protesters in Washington, Berkeley, and Oberlin, Ohio, and even the odious fire hoses of Bull Connor were callously deployed against college students at Oberlin.… We call out to America: ‘Take heed. Do not allow the Bill of Rights to become a prisoner of war.’ ”

  He picks up pen again to fight through the fever and write what he envisions as a “Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged,” a new version of the GI Bill (of Rights), the 1944 law granting special benefits to World War II veterans. But his sick body and disheartened mind overwhelm his ambition. In the isolation of his cell he can do little but suffer.

  He emerges from prison on November 5, still weak but determined to reenter the fray. After a quick trip to Atlanta to see Coretta and the kids, enjoy a home-cooked meal, and sleep in his own bed, he’s off to Cleveland, where he hopes to celebrate the victory of Carl Stokes, campaigning to be the first Negro mayor of a major American city. Over the past year, Doc has flown into Cleveland on a regular basis and tirelessly bolstered voter registration drives. This is the same city where Doc even tried to get prostitutes to register and vote. On election night, he and Ralph Abernathy meet with Stokes in their room in the hotel where the campaign is headquartered. The candidate assures Doc that, should he win, he’ll call for him to join the celebration.

  Later that evening Stokes does win in a close contest. It is a landmark moment in American electoral politics. Doc is gratified to have played a major role in turning out a massive black vote. After a long and difficult battle, he looks forward to standing beside the mayor-elect in the glow of this hard-earned victory. But after the final returns are announced and the TV cameras focus on a smiling Stokes waving to his cheering supporters in the crowded ballroom, Doc is nowhere to be seen. Stokes has reneged on his promise to have Doc join him onstage. Looking to broaden his appeal to the nonblack constituency, Stokes is convinced that his association with Doc—who remains controversial and, in the minds of many, increasingly irrelevant—will do him no good. Doc is crushed.

  He puts his personal feelings aside, though, when he addresses the press about the victory of Stokes as well as that of Richard Hatcher, a black American who on this same night in November has been elected mayor of Gary, Indiana. “These victories,” Doc says, “represent a new political fervor among America’s Negro citizens.… This surge of political action is a desperation quest to find someone to champion the cause of the poor and oppressed in our cities.… New resources must come from the business community and from Washington or we have only se
t up two outstanding men as lambs for the slaughter.”

  In the face of this humiliating rejection by Stokes, Doc is once again generous to a fault. But then he turns up the heat, focusing on the issue closest to his heart—in the words of Jesus, “the least of these my brethren”:

  “Even as I speak, the stage is being set in the Congress and at the White House for an immoral and monumental backward step in our nation’s War on Poverty.… I am appalled that there is a serious possibility that the House may eliminate this week 272,000 of our nation’s poor children from Head Start programs; 250,000 high school dropouts from the Neighborhood Youth Corps and an additional 50,000 poor adults from much-needed jobs. To cut the program in this fashion is an open invitation to violence and social disorder in the streets of our beleaguered urban ghettoes. It is disgraceful that Congress can vote upwards of 35 billion dollars a year for senseless immoral war in Vietnam, but cannot vote a weak 2.5 billion dollars to carry on our all too feeble efforts to bind up the wounds of our nation’s 32 million poor. This is nothing short of Congress engaging in political guerrilla warfare against the defenseless poor of our nation.”

  In the aftermath of the victories of Stokes and Hatcher, Doc talks to his aides about the meaninglessness of black faces in high places if these Negro public officials cannot galvanize the power of government—on both the local and the national level—for an out-and-out assault on poverty.

  Poverty is one issue that won’t go away; the war is another.

  On Monday, November 13, preparing for still another trip—this one to England to accept an honorary degree from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne—Doc reads a story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that raises his spirits, if only for a moment. The day before, seated on the first pew in a historic church in Colonial Williamsburg—the same pew on which George Washington once sat—Lyndon Johnson is read the riot act by a white clergyman, surely influenced by Doc’s gospel-based antiwar stance. Reverend Cotesworth Pinckney Lewis unapologetically uses the pulpit of his Episcopal church to condemn the president’s policy in Vietnam.

  Poverty, militarism. And when he boards his transatlantic flight and settles in his seat, Doc peruses the special issue of Newsweek devoted to the third great matter that, to paraphrase the poet John Keats, haunts his days and chills his dreaming nights: the crisis of race in America.

  As the jet taxis down the runway and prepares for takeoff, Doc straps on his seat belt, girds himself for another long ride, and, as is his nature, engages in deep reflection.

  He has been addressing the issue of racism since he began preaching at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery in the fifties.

  He was hammering away at the issue of war well before his speech at the Riverside Church some seven months ago.

  And in the aftermath of the riots of this past summer and the reactionary politics of Congress, he’s convinced more than ever that the issue of poverty must be prioritized.

  Like a malignant cancer, poverty is eating at the very soul of black America.

  Poverty is threatening our very democracy. It’s now a matter of national security.

  This is the essence of his spiritual rebirth and recommitment to the gospel of Christ.

  The Bible, the book that Doc loves best, speaks about poverty in Lamentations: “The tongue of the nursing infant sticks to the roof of its mouth for thirst; the children beg for food, but no one gives to them.”

  Consumed by war and racial rancor, America is not giving.

  Despite his own battle with political and personal despondency, Doc realizes that he is morally obligated to muster all his energy to bring attention to the poor. Their suffering cannot be rendered invisible.

  As he flies over the dark Atlantic into the cold night, he would like to take an easier course—a sabbatical, perhaps; a cushy job in a think tank; the presidency of a quiet college in New England—but he can’t. His conscience won’t allow it. In this winter of his discontent, he forges on.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I, MARTIN LUTHER KING, TAKE THEE, NON-VIOLENCE, TO BE MY WEDDED WIFE”

  It’s another verbal slugfest, another contentious SCLC conference in Frogmore, South Carolina.

  It’s the same old story—only this time it’s worse. Among Doc’s supporters, the disenchantment is deepening and Doc’s lieutenants are fighting to take the campaign in different directions. James Bevel is unrestrained and long-winded in his opposition to redirecting SCLC efforts to address poverty. Backing Bevel, Jesse Jackson leaves early on a fund-raising trip that Doc suspects will serve Jesse’s ambitions to start a splinter group of his own. Hosea Williams fiercely attacks Doc’s choice for the new SCLC executive director: William Rutherford, a Chicago Negro with a PhD from the Sorbonne, who has lived in Europe for well over a decade.

  “That nigger don’t know nothing about niggers!” Williams screams in Doc’s face.

  Even before Frogmore, Doc faced another roadblock, during a meeting with Olympic athletes who would be competing in the 1968 Summer Olympic Games. They wanted to use the event to dramatize their stance against racism. Doc wanted to help them formulate a plan, but it was no use. For now, Black Power militants undermined the prospect of the athletes conducting a peaceful protest—though this does turn out to be the Olympic Games at which John Carlos and Tommie Smith hold up their black-gloved fists.

  In this moment, militancy and violence—all the rage among the avant-garde black activists during the winter of 1967—are increasingly on Doc’s mind.

  “The riots are now in the center of the stage,” he says. “Some Negroes argue that they are the incipient forms for rebellion and guerrilla tactics that will be the feature of the Negro revolt.”

  He argues long and hard against the efficacy of this approach while pointing to its moral bankruptcy. He realizes that the political currents are against him. He tells a story about flying from New York to London in 1956 on a propeller plane. The trip took more than nine-and-a-half hours, but the return flight was three hours longer. Doc asked the pilot why. “When we leave New York,” said the captain, “a strong tail wind is in our favor, but when we return a strong head wind is against us.” The pilot added, “Don’t worry, these four engines are capable of battling the winds.”

  “In any social revolution,” Doc tells his dissatisfied troops, “there are times when the tail winds of triumph and fulfillment favor us, and other times when strong head winds of disappointment and setbacks beat against us relentlessly. We must not permit adverse winds to overwhelm us as we journey across life’s Atlantic. We must be sustained by… engines of courage.… This refusal to be stopped, this courage to be, this determination to go on in spite of, is the hallmark of great movements.…

  “I’ve decided that, on this question of non-violence, I’m going to stand by it. I’m going to love because it’s just lovely to love. I’m going to be non-violent because I believe it is the answer to mankind’s problems. I’m not going to bargain with reality.… I’ve taken a vow—I, Martin Luther King, take thee, non-violence, to be my wedded wife, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer… in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”

  Doc sets out his plan for a series of rallies, sit-ins, and encampments to protest poverty—a Poor People’s Campaign—that will start in Washington. “If we will do this,” he says, “we will be able to turn this nation upside down and right side up, and… cry out that we are children of God, made in his image. This will be a glorious day; at that moment the morning stars will sing together, and the souls of God will shout for joy.”

  Doc’s staff members, though, are not shouting for joy. They continue to question the likelihood of signing up three thousand nonviolent volunteers to join the protest.

  “I’m serious about this,” Doc replies. “I’m on fire about this thing.”

  When his aides’ doubts keep coming, Doc keeps firing back. He talks about Peter being fired up for Jesus on the day of Pentecost, when his sermon converted thr
ee thousand souls. He talks about concentration camp survivors who clung to hope; baseball teams that pulled out a victory in the bottom of the ninth; a violinist who, having snapped his A string, found a way to transpose the composition midperformance. He cites the Book of Revelation: “Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have found your deeds unfinished in the sight of my God.”

  Doc feels compelled to finish his work.

  “We’ve gone for broke before,” he declares, “but not in the way we’re going this time. If necessary I’m going to stay in jail six months.”

  When the conference is over, the New York Times quotes Doc about his plans for “massive civil disobedience,” which are to include “mass sit-ins inside and at the gate of factories and thousands of unemployed youths camping in Washington as the bonus marchers did in the thirties.… I am convinced civil disobedience can curtail riots.” He expects whites to join in the protests.

  It is the issue of Vietnam, though, not the issue of poverty, or nonviolent solutions, that continues to attract the vast majority of the country’s attention.

  At the end of November, Eugene McCarthy, a Democratic senator from Minnesota, beats Bobby Kennedy to the punch by announcing his candidacy in the presidential primaries. McCarthy’s anti-Johnson crusade is centered on a single issue: opposition to LBJ’s war. In the autumn of 1967, the story of Doc’s Poor People’s Campaign is buried by the increasingly heated contest within the Democratic Party to oust their seated president.

  On the orders of his physician, Doc takes a short break during the first week of December. He flies to Bimini, in the Bahamas, for a few days of relaxation, and he is invited to the home of Adam Clayton Powell, who, due to budgetary mismanagement of the House committee that he chairs, had been excluded from the Ninetieth Congress, only to win a special election in his Harlem district. His legal status uncertain, Powell has decided to stay in Bimini indefinitely.