Mother—I’d never seen her like this. She was near tears. She looked at me, through me, and I don’t know what flashed in her mind—her deceased husband, their lives, twenty-one years since his assassination, twenty years working to make the King Center vision come alive, and now—“They’ve betrayed us,” she whispered. I saw her face in mine.
She told the man, “I’ve gone around and met with all of you; I was told I had the votes. Now you are telling me, today, at the eleventh hour—no? There’s a credibility gap. A big credibility gap.”
I can still see the hurt on her face—that sweet, full, butter-scotch angel’s face I’ve seen above me all of my life. I have to be honest. Those people became my enemies for a while for hurting her. I kept telling her, “They aren’t with you, Mother. They’re here for their own purposes.” She began to take her earrings off and then put them back on. She does that when she’s either nervous or has something she wants to say. Maybe she didn’t want to see it. I don’t want to say she’s naive; that would be putting her down. I was naive. But that was changing. She has good intentions and takes for granted that other people do too. It’s a country trait, it can be a downfall. She believes in the goodness in everybody. I tend to be more skeptical. I’ve seen what happens. But then, so has she.
Mother said, “There’s a credibility gap.” Another board member ignored her, saying, “If you go forward with this nomination of your son as president, then I’m stepping down.”
These votes of no confidence made me more determined, whereas before I might have been a little unsure about stepping in, fearing that I was doing it because my siblings and mother elected me. Now it was more personal. A faction of the board was not going to have me under any circumstances. They were fighting to the death on this one. Finally somebody else came in, another wealthy, prominent Atlantan; he called off the dogs and said, “We need to let this one go.”
People downstairs were getting wind something was funny, because we hadn’t come down yet. The nomination and voting should have been taking place. At some point Uncle Andy came up and said we had the votes; he and the wealthy, prominent Atlantan had twisted a few arms. I don’t think Uncle Andy knew what was going on at the time. He was always true-blue ever since that April day when he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis pointing toward where he thought the shot had come from. Also when he was a congressman, and later a UN ambassador during the Carter administration, and after that, as mayor of Atlanta; now he was downstairs dealing with the grassroots portion of the board, the King loyalists. Sure, there were some people in the loyalist crowd who may have had general concerns about an unproven person coming in, but if Mother said, “I believe this is the right thing,” they weren’t going to question it. They may have said, “Dexter, what’s your plan for this?” But I had eight to ten board members against me who were telling me, “Look, you’re not qualified, you don’t know jack, and we’re going to show you don’t know jack.” I was very hurt by the lack of support from people who I had not only looked up to but who, frankly, had also benefited from the efforts of my family.
We all went downstairs, the vote was taken, and I was elected.
Nobody voted against it. People who were against it had left the room because they didn’t want to be on record. At that point they had shown their cards. The sad thing is that some of these people, I could have worked with them then, and in fact later did work with some of them. These are black businesspeople who were known across the state and country at the time, but they just could not deal with me alone—couldn’t trust me without an academic pedigree that was familiar to them. “If it was Martin, we’d support it,” I was told.
So I was confirmed, but there was this undercurrent of contentiousness that went on past the January confirmation, even past the April installation ceremonies. Some wealthy board members feared I was going to come out and confront all these people, and stir things up, and try to wreak revenge. I never was going to do that. I kept it to myself, and my mother and siblings. The general public never really knew about this.
Someone on the board put it out that a rift had come up between my mother and me. It was tense between Mother and me sometimes, and really, as much as anything, that is what also led to my resigning as the titular president and head of the King Center that following August.
The board called me in one day, after having discussed with Barbara Skinner her departure. There were professional differences between the board and her, and she was moving on. They didn’t tell me or consult with me on that. Why would they? I was the ultimate target because I stood between them and Mother. This was the last straw for me. Since Day One I had had numerous battles with some board members who had never supported me and who wanted to micromanage the King Center. Even more important, I was not being allowed to carry out the vision I had articulated for the Center, which was to bring my father’s message of nonviolence to new generations of young people who needed it most of all.
I said to myself, “The mature thing to do is get out of the way, you all can have this.” I felt like, “If it means this much to them where they’re going to go through all this stuff to hurt me, to hurt my mother, to hurt the King Center, then hey, they can have it.”
Some people said, “If you were just a little more diplomatic,” or “If you understood you have to kind of work your way into it.” In other words, they were saying, Stay and be a figurehead and eventually you’ll get it. I was president reporting to the CEO. Mother was CEO. Then there was the board chairman. Then an “oversight committee.” I had a title with no means of accomplishing anything, I only had the liability of being in charge, ceremonially, emotionally, and spiritually if something went wrong.
When I resigned from the King Center in August ’89, I was devastated. I felt betrayed, torn. I felt then that while Mother hadn’t caused the problem directly, she had indirectly. At the time I didn’t understand that she was an innocent bystander. I was suffering to even have to question whether or not my mother had a hand in my leaving. I now don’t think she did, but at the time I was still hurt. Some of her people had betrayed me. After I left, I went through other experiences that opened my eyes, matured me; eventually I saw her hands had been tied, but at the time, I felt like she had cut me adrift—not willingly, yet it had happened. These were her people, as I saw it. There should have been allegiance from them to her, at least to the point where if she had intervened, they wouldn’t have been able to confront me in the way that they did.
Mother and I had verbal knock-down-drag-out arguments about it; I felt betrayed by her, and told her so. My father and grandfather had had the same kind of philosophical arguments as well. And my grandfather had had similar arguments with his father.
I had been told that we at the Center would be able to work together to get things done, so I had tried to work in their structure, against my better judgment. I felt it was flawed. I don’t know if it was anybody’s fault. The structure was not practical or workable. But we tried it anyway; the experiment didn’t succeed. Mother fell victim to what some people were saying about me: “What credentials does he have?” Mother, once she’s firmly behind something, will support it ardently, and she did support my coming in. However, she didn’t know how to appease or placate those voices of dissent that were bringing to her attention these “inadequacies” on my part, as they saw them.
Mother was concerned about appearances. I was not a traditional candidate, but then neither was Daddy. I’d never, ever compare myself to him; but let’s face it, on some level he was not a traditional leader. He was a C student at Morehouse, an average student by most academic standards, and became a true scholar only later. He reached heights of understanding I can’t hope to equal, emulate, or imitate; yet his grandparents were functionally illiterate. So how do you judge a man? By where he’s from, or by where he’s going? How do you judge a person’s efficiency without first giving them an opportunity to be efficient, to fail, and to try again?
&nb
sp; I don’t fault the board now. They put pressure on Mother, put her in an awkward spot, she was caught between a rock and a hard place—I’m her son, she supported me, but then she had people to answer to, some out of the Movement. My hope was she would’ve somehow been able to see beyond the past to our future; as a mom, I knew she’d support me, but I wanted her to validate me, to believe that I knew what I was doing. Not just support me because I’m her child, because the legacy needs heirs, but because quickly I’ll know what I’m doing, I’ll bring something fresh, modern to bear. But on the other hand, would she know that from past experience?
Those other factions preyed on that doubt. They pushed her hot buttons and knew exactly how to get into her insecurities. I could tell when they had talked to her. I could hear it in the tone of her voice, her discomfort.
“Mother, what is it?”
“It’s… nothing.”
When she says “nothing,” it’s usually something big.
Once I saw that everything I was trying to do was being shot down, I knew I had no support. At board meetings there had been confrontations; there was open, deep hostility that these older people had for me, particularly older black males I didn’t know. Some of those who found my presence objectionable were my father’s peers. All of them knew my father, but weren’t necessarily of the inner circle. I resigned in August of 1989, but remained on the King Center board. Resignation was painful, but the bigger trauma would have been not to resign. Mother’s getting caught in the crossfire—that threw me.
I was living alone in a townhouse in Midtown Atlanta by the end of ’89. I did not look back; but I could not look forward either. I was stuck in a place of hurt, anger, and confusion. My old friend Phil Jones, my loyal confidant, friend, and collaborator, went through all of this with me as a sounding board, and was probably the closest person to me. He knew the dynamics of it all. Now he was like my consiglieri. He’d sat in on some proceedings, was a person who understood what went on from my point of view. And he stuck by me. I could talk to him. He became my closest adviser. The choice I made—not going public or creating a scene—was no choice. The press was looking for a story behind my leaving. I would not talk to anybody. With a newly minted King national holiday, the last thing we needed was scandalous infighting. The media tried to make it about a rift between me and my mother, but it wasn’t. The real rift was with these board members. But I didn’t go public, so I couldn’t defend myself. I felt bad that my leaving the King Center presidency was portrayed as Mother’s and my having problems.
By November, I was in a funk. The only thing that saved me, outside my friendship with Phil, was that I’d met a woman who became my girlfriend, a woman who was at the right place at the right time for me. I’ll call her Good Natured. I met her at an event. I fell head over heels in love with Good Natured, such as it is within my ability to fall; I took her through all of my ups and downs, which is my habit—maybe it is the habit of all men. She’d roll with the punches. I was on some kind of journey of self-discovery and she was there with me, going through a shedding of the old skin, a metamorphosis, a slow, painful one; she was there and went through it, good and bad. The relationship ended after two and a half years, got to a point where our main issues—well, I don’t even know why we broke up, to tell you God’s honest truth. Sometimes I wish we hadn’t. It got to the point where we were constantly at each other’s throats over any- and everything. But I never questioned whether this was somebody I deeply cared for. Still, we didn’t make it.
I started doing therapy during that period with someone who wasn’t a traditional therapist, meaning she wasn’t a psychiatrist or psychologist, but a spiritual counselor and an alternative health specialist. She helped me to realize I had issues I was still dealing with in regard to Daddy’s death. “Dexter, you must come to grips with your father’s death in order to move on,” became her mantra. When I was younger and went through that phase, meeting with therapists, I never got any answers I could use. This was the first opening where I was dealing with psychological, emotional, spiritual needs. I was in year two of my vegetarianism; I was in the zealot stage, I was learning, I was self-righteous about it. This was another reason why the relationship with Good Natured soured; I imposed it on her: “You’ve got to be a vegetarian, you have got to eat this way.” The things I love, I smother. Part of it, I learned through counseling, is because of the trauma of Daddy’s death; he and Big Mama and Uncle A.D. gone. I developed a protective shell, where I was not giving of my heart because of too much pain. I held on to my heart. There was this control thing, not knowing how to open up with the people closest to me because I’d been hurt, afraid anybody who got close to me would be taken away. I wouldn’t let anyone close. That was my protection. I was told this over and over. It just wasn’t really crystallizing.
Before that, I thought it was everybody else’s problem. I thought it was Good Natured’s.
I didn’t realize I was pushing her to some of these places and causing her to lash out. I was controlling and creating my environment. We Kings were always so stoic, so necessarily stoic, after Daddy’s murder. I watched my mom and she seemed so stoic and strong; me never really emoting or crying was no accident. Obviously emotions were touched. For a long time after we broke up, Good Natured and I didn’t speak. The relationship ended badly; there was no communication. Later I tried to reach out to her, but she’d been hurt. Said she had to shut me off in order to protect her feelings. Once I realized the hurt I had caused her was my fault, I reached out to her to apologize and ask for her forgiveness. But she had already forgiven me long before so that she might move on with her life. I can say today that we are on good terms. When we talk now about it, it’s almost like yesterday, and it’s been many years. I feel fortunate that I was able to get out of denial for a while with her. I was walking around oblivious to the fact I was carrying baggage.
On January 11, 1990, Mother unveiled the Behold monument. It was not on the King Center grounds, but just across Auburn Avenue, on the National Park Service grounds, near a small mini-amphitheater. The plaque says it is a tribute to her late husband and an enduring inspiration to all who fight for dignity, social justice, and human rights. The sculptor, Patrick Morelli, was inspired by scenes from the ’70s TV miniseries Roots, the scene of actor Thalmus Rasulala, portraying the Gambian father, Omoro Kinte, lifting his newborn son Kunta to a star-studded African night sky and reciting these words: “Behold, the only thing greater than yourself.” The statue itself is of the “baptism” of the infant Kizzy, by her father, the slave Kunta Kinte, played by LeVar Burton.
Across Auburn Avenue stood the King Center administration building; that side of the street also holds old Ebenezer, and my father’s tomb in the middle of the reflecting pool. Across Auburn is the Behold monument, and soon there would stand a new multimillion-dollar Ebenezer Baptist Church; Ebenezer Horizon Sanctuary; then also the King Visitor Center set up by the National Park Service for the 700,000 tourists who visit the King Historic District each year. Up Auburn Avenue a bit on that same side of the street is the King Natatorium, the swimming pool. Above Boulevard, on the same side of Auburn Avenue as the King Center, is Fire Station No. 6. Across from that, shotgun row houses, private residences; across from them, Daddy’s birth home, 501 Auburn Avenue. I often drove by his birth home. It was demanded of us, furthering this legacy. But even though physically I was refreshed, spiritually I felt hollowed out, banished, betrayed, and, somehow, a betrayer. There was only one place left to look for help.
CHAPTER 13
Brightly Beams Our Father ’s Mercy
Bernice was seventeen when she heard the Call. My grandfather had always looked for it to first reach Martin III, Isaac, Derek, Al, Vernon, one of his grandsons, the Call that for various reasons he and then both his sons, my father and Uncle A.D., had received, in their different personal circumstances and lifetimes.
I never got it. Isaac never got it. Martin never got it. Derek got it, and Vernon
got it. Meanwhile, Bernice got the Call clear and strong. She says an inner voice told her she was going to preach like my father. For years she resisted it—for eight years, from when she first got the Call before age eighteen until she was twenty-five years old. When she was a younger woman she saw and felt and thought that preaching was something for men, mature men at that. No wonder she would get that impression, since she was in the South, since she was in Atlanta, since she was in the Baptist Church, and since she was in Ebenezer Baptist Church. Quadruple whammy.
I wouldn’t call it sexism so much as obliviousness; the same factors that might have helped cause my grandfather and his sons to take up the calling were impacting her, as a woman, a black woman in the South. Many mothers and grandfathers of earlier in the century in the South wanted their sons and grandsons to “hear the Call,” to take up the Bible and the way, because, first, it was one of the few ways a man could speak his mind and then still be held safe against powers that would kill or otherwise mute a “Negro” who was outspoken about the heinous crimes being committed against those of his flock, and, second, it was a way to make a living, a way out of no way, before segregation ended. Some of the same factors held true for women nearer the close of the century. But Bernice was, as my grandfather would’ve said, a woman who was “God-troubled.” He died aware of her calling. Wish I’d been there when Bernice told him, to see the happy look on his face.
Growing Up King Page 17
