Kunstler—William M. Kunstler, Deep in My Heart (New York, 1966).
LBJ—Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, Texas. The library has extensive holdings that bear on King and civil rights. They can be found in the White House Central File, the Confidential File, the White House Diary and Diary Backup, and various Aides’ Files. There are also transcripts of interviews with Chester Bowles, Ramsey Clark, James Farmer, Nicholas Katzenbach, Burke Marshall, Clarence Mitchell, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Roy Wilkins, Andrew Young, and a great many others. Unfortunately for the King student, many “sensitive” documents involving King remain classified.
Lincoln—C. Eric Lincoln (ed.), Martin Luther King, Jr., A Profile (New York, 1970). This is an anthology of contemporary writings about King by James Baldwin, Reese Cleghorn, August Meier, Vincent Harding, David Halberstam, Carl T. Rowan, Ralph Abernathy, and others.
MLK(BU)—Martin Luther King, Jr., Collection, Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University. An indispensable archive for the serious King student, the collection contains some 83,000 documents that pertain to the King story down to around 1964. Among them are King’s papers, examinations, notebooks, and other matter accumulated during his studies at Boston University; his “Autobiography of Religious Development,” listed above; his private correspondence and official correspondence as MIA and SCLC president; voluminous incoming correspondence from friends, colleagues, agents and editors, religious and political leaders both in the United States and abroad, and love and hate mail from the public; typescripts of King’s speeches and drafts of his books, articles, and sermons; telegrams, press releases, itineraries, newspaper clippings, magazine articles about King, and miscellany; and MIA and SCLC records, too, such as reports, minutes of meetings, press releases, and fund-raising letters.
MLK(CSC)—Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Atlanta, Georgia. This rich repository comprises King’s private and official correspondence chiefly from 1962 to 1968; his vast mail from the public; transcripts of many of his unpublished speeches and sermons; memoranda, press releases, and other public utterances from around 1955 to 1968; valuable documents pertaining to the Albany, Birmingham, St. Augustine, Selma, Chicago, and poor people’s campaigns; transcripts of oral history interviews with those who knew and worked with King; and thousands of other items.
MOY—“Man of the Year: Never Again Where He Was,” Time (Jan. 3, 1964), 13–16, 25–27.
NYT—New York Times.
PI—Martin Luther King, Jr., “Interview,” Playboy (January, 1965), 65–74, 76–78.
PN—Martin Luther King, Jr., “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” Christian Century (Apr. 3, 1964), 439–441.
Poston—Ted Poston, “Martin Luther King, Jr.,” New York Post Magazine (May 13, 1968).
Raines—Howell Raines (ed.), My Soul Is Rested: Movement Days in the Deep South Remembered (New York, 1977). This is a superb compendium of interviews with such civil-rights veterans as James Farmer, E. D. Nixon, Bayard Rustin, John Lewis, Fred Shuttlesworth, Andrew Young, Randolph Blackwell, Ralph Abernathy, Benjamin Mays, and Martin Luther King, Sr., as well as with lawyers, lawmen, and members of the white opposition.
Reddick—L. D. Reddick, Crusader Without Violence: A Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York, 1959).
SCLC—Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Records, Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Atlanta, Georgia. This collection covers the years from 1957 to 1968 and is arranged by offices. For the King student, the most helpful are the records of the President, which include many of King’s speeches and a fair amount of his correspondence as head of SCLC; the records of the Executive Director, which are filed under the names of those who held the post (John Tilley, Ella Baker, Wyatt Walker, and Andrew Young); and the records of the Program Director, which contain material on the Chicago and poor people’s campaigns.
Selby—Earl and Miriam Selby (eds), Odyssey: Journey Through Black America (New York, 1971).
SL—Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (reprint of 1963 ed., Cleveland, Ohio, [n.d.]).
SSCFR—U.S. Senate, Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Final Report: Book III, Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, 94th Cong., 2d sess., 1976.
SSCH—U.S. Senate, Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Hearings: Federal Bureau of Investigation, 94th Cong., 1st sess., 1976, vol. VI.
STF—Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: the Montgomery Story (New York, 1958).
Tallmer—Jerry Tallmer, “Martin Luther King, Jr., His Life and Times,” New York Post (Apr. 8, 1968).
Testament—Martin Luther King, Jr., “A Testament of Hope,” Playboy (January, 1969), n.p., 194, 231–34, 236.
TC—Martin Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of Conscience (New York, 1968).
Watters—Pat Watters, Down to Now: Recollections of the Civil Rights Movement (New York, 1971). A passionate and deeply insightful personal account of the movement by a southern white journalist who covered it.
W and M—Alan F. Westin and Barry Mahoney, The Trial of Martin Luther King (New York, 1974).
Walton—Norman W. Walton, “The Walking City: A History of the Montgomery Boycott,” Negro History Bulletin, pt. I (October, 1956), 17–20; pt. II (November, 1956), 27–33; pt. III (February, 1957), 102–105; pt. IV (April, 1957), 147–48, 150, 152, 166.
WCW—Martin Luther King, Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (paperback ed., New York, 1964).
WGH—Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (paperback ed., New York, 1968).
Wofford—Harris Wofford, Of Kennedys and Kings: Making Sense of the Sixties (New York, 1980).
Yeakey—Lamont H. Yeakey, “The Montgomery, Alabama, Bus Boycott, 1955–56” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1979).
YPI—Andrew Young, “Interview,” Playboy (July, 1977), 61–62, 78, 80, 82–83.
PRELUDE
“perpetuate a man”: Paul Murray Kendall, The Art of Biography (New York, 1965), ix.
“human portrayal”: Leon Edel, “The Figure Under the Carpet,” in Marc Pachter (ed.), Telling Lives (Washington, D.C., 1979), 20.
“literature of actuality”: Barbara W. Tuchman, Practicing History: Selected Essays (New York, 1981), 51.
“fashions a man”: Edel, 20.
“psychologically coherent”: Justin Kaplan, “The Real Life,” Harvard English Studies 8 (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), 2. For a discussion of how the first three volumes of my quartet fit together, see Stephen B. Oates, Our Fiery Trial (Amherst, Mass., 1979), 121–29.
PART ONE: ODYSSEY
“Get ahead” to “moment”: Autobiography.
“along with people” and “perfect child”: ibid.
“very dear,” “saintly grandmother,” “very intimately,” “my father”: ibid.
“motherly cares” and “noble”: ibid.
“smell like a mule”: Reddick, 44; Coretta King, 77; Daddy King, 38.
“have things”: Reddick, 45; Raines, 461.
“Some day”: Coretta King, 77; Daddy King, 109.
“sulfurous evangelism”: David L. Lewis, King, A Critical Biography (2nd ed., Urbana, III., 1978), 4; Esther A. Smith, “A History of Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Ga.,” MLK(BU). A reissue of the 1970 edition with only the postscript revised, Lewis’s King, A Critical Biography is based almost entirely on printed materials up to 1969 and makes no effort to bring King alive; it is marred, moreover, by Lewis’s often condescending and gratuitous criticisms of his subject, to whom he refers throughout as “Martin.”
“stoic impassivity”: William Robert Miller, Martin Luther King, Jr.: His Life, Martyrdom and Meaning for the World (New York, 1968), 9.
“peculiar child”: Bennett, 24; Lincoln, 101.
suicide attempt: Reddick, 60; Mille
r, King, 7; Bennett, 18; AOC, 14.
“wait and see”: Tallmer; Autobiography.
“before he could read”: Coretta King, 80.
“talkative chap”: Tallmer.
“puffed up”: Coretta King, 80.
white playmate and “never feel”: Autobiography; King’s remarks in Hugh Bennett (ed.), Face to Face (New York, 1965), 78. Other versions claim there were two playmates.
“hate every white person”: Autobiography.
“less than”: King in Bennett, Face to Face, 78.
“little nigger”: Reddick, 59–60.
“How can I love”: Autobiography. See also STF, 90, and King in Bennett, Face to Face, 78.
“straightening out”: Reddick, 57.
“show me your license”: Coretta King, 83; Reddick, 57.
“when I stand” to “with the system”: Coretta King, 82–83; Bennett, 20; Ralph McGill in Friends.
“real father” and “extreme”: Autobiography.
second suicide attempt: This is my interpretation of King’s motivation inferred from ibid., with facts from Reddick, 61, and AOC, 14.
“don’t blame”: Daddy King, 109; see also Autobiography.
“major force”: Bennett, 20.
“precocious type”: Autobiography.
“shocked Sunday School class” and “doubts”: ibid.
“didn’t understand” and “emotionally satisfying”: MOY, 14; AOC, 18; also Autobiography, Daddy King, and Bayard Rustin interview with Oates, Dec. 12, 1979.
“fullback”: Tallmer.
“middle-class combat” and “to the grass”: Bennett, 21, 24; Tallmer. It is a myth that King was nonviolent even in his youth.
“outwrestle” and “hellion”: Tallmer.
“can’t spell a lick”: Reddick, 11.
“chick to chick”: Tallmer.
“greatest talent”: Bennett, 17–18.
“black son-of-a-bitch” and “angriest”: PI, 66.
“sense of freedom”: Coretta King, 85.
“selfhood”: ibid.; Bennett, 25.
“at that point”: Bennett, 25–26.
“fallacy of statistics”: Lewis, King, 19.
“root of evil”: Miller, King, 12.
Chandler: Morehouse College, The Alumnus (fall, 1965), 2–5; Jet (Oct. 7, 1965), 23; King to Mrs. G. Lewis Chandler, Sept. 28 [1965], and Frederic L. Ellis to Mrs. Chandler, Sept. 27, 1965, in possession of Beth Chandler Warren, Peaks Island, Me.
“behind the legends” and “fundamentalism”: Autobiography; also King’s statement in Maude L. Ballou to Joan Thatcher, Aug. 7, 1959, MLK(BU).
Mays: Lerone Bennett, Jr., “The Last of the Great Schoolmasters,” Ebony (Dec., 1977), 74, 77–78; Benjamin E. Mays, Born to Rebel (New York, 1971), 89–90, 174, 241.
“a real minister”: Bennett, “Schoolmasters,” Ebony, 74; also King’s handwritten statement about Mays’s retirement [1967], MLK (CSC), and Mays, Born, 265.
“God had placed” and “personal immortality”: Autobiography. King acknowledged that his father’s powerful example also influenced his decision to become a minister.
“no little trepidation” and “just seventeen”: Bennett, 27–28.
“learn their plight”: Coretta King, 84–85; also STF, 90; PN, 440; Reddick, 74.
“more of white people”: AOC, 18; Autobiography.
“positive quest”: Bennett, “Schoolmasters,” Ebony, 74.
“race problem”: AOC, 18.
“obnoxious negative peace”: King said this many times, but see “A Realistic Look at the Question of Progress in the Area of Race Relations,” May 17, 1956, typescript, MLK(BU).
“perceived immediately”: Bennett, 27; also Mays, Born, 265.
“mighty young” and “fine girl”: Coretta King, 87, 60. Daddy King paid his son’s expenses at Crozer (see Autobiography).
“minute late to class” and “bright young man”: Reddick, 86, 78; see also Kenneth L. Smith to King, Sept. 30, 1959, MLK(BU), and Walter McCall interview with Herbert Holmes, MLK(CSC).
“from Plato”: STF, 92.
“moribund religion”: PN, 440; STF, 91–92.
Communism and capitalism: Autobiography; PN, 440; STF, 92–95; King’s “The Challenge of Communism to Christianity,” cited in Melvin Watson to King, Aug. 14, 1952, MLK(BU), was an early version of his sermon “How Should a Christian View Communism?” in SL, 96–105; see also ibid., 19, 28, 67–75, 140; Coretta King, 58–59; Reddick, 22; Ernest Dunbar, “A Negro Leader Talks about the Struggle Ahead,” Look (Feb. 12, 1963), 95; TC, 69, 70; and King, “Facing the Challenge of a New Age,” Dec. 3, 1956, MLK(BU) for the “togetherness” theme, which he repeatedly stressed.
“yourself at home”: Reddick, 83.
“eat more”: Lewis, King, 28. See also McCall interview, MLK(CSC).
Maple Shade and white student incidents: Reddick, 81–83; McCall interview (CSC); Miller, King, 21.
Nietzsche: STF, 95–96; PN, 440.
Gandhi: PN, 440; STF, 96–97; King to Lawrence M. Byrd, Apr. 25, 1957, MLK(BU); Reddick, 18–20, 80–81; Coretta King, 58–59; King, “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience,” New South (Dec., 1961), 5.
“absolutely convinced”: PN, 439; Autobiography.
the young white woman: Poston; Lewis, 33.
Niebuhr: STF, 97–99; PN, 439; Smith to King, Sept. 30, 1959, MLK(BU).
“uniformly courteous” and “so much”: Warren Carberg, “The Story Behind the Victory,” Bostonia (spring, 1957), 7.
“self contained,” “humor,” and “liked”: L. Harold DeWolf interview with John H. Britton, Apr. 23, 1968, BOHC.
“real to me”: Autobiography; see also King’s essay reviews of Winifred V. Richmond’s Personality: Its Study and Hygiene and Ruth Davis Perry’s Children Need Adults and King’s papers and examinations in MLK(BU). Niebuhr, of course, may have had some influence on King’s views of psychology.
“anxiety and conflict”: PN, 439–40.
Hegel: STF, 95, 100–101; SL, 9; AOC, 18.
Niebuhr resolved: King, “Religious Answer to the Problem of Evil,” “Reinhold Niebuhr’s Ethical Dualism,” “How Modern Christians Should Think of Man,” and lecture notebooks and examinations, MLK(BU); STF, 100–124; Pilgrimage, 439.
personalism: King, “A Comparison and Evaluation of the Philosophical Views Set Forth in J. M. E. McTaggart’s Some Dogmas of Religion, and William E. Hocking’s with Those Set Forth in Edgar S. Brightman’s Course on ‘Philosophy of Religion,’ ” “The Personalism of J. M. E. McTaggart UNDER CRITICISM,” “A Conception and Impression of Religion Drawn From Dr. Brightman’s Book entitled A Philosophy of Religion,” and examinations on personalism and on the history of Christian thought and doctrine, MLK(BU); STF, 100; Pilgrimage, 441; SL, 128–37.
“ambivert”: Reddick, 6; Bennett, 18.
“antitheses strongly marked”: SL, 9.
“these girls”: Whitaker to King, Oct. 31, 1952, MLK(BU).
“gallivanting around”: W. T. Handy, Jr., to King, Nov. 18, 1952, ibid.
Coretta Scott and marriage: Coretta King, 51–74, is the major source; see also Lincoln, 103; Reddick, 104–6; Bennett, 46–47; DeWolf interview, BOHC; King to Mr. Henry Kelley [n.d.], MLK(BU).
“real man” and “shared relationship”: Coretta King, 91.
“Nodoze”: expenses notebook, MLK(BU).
thesis: correspondence and materials about in ibid.; DeWolf interview, BOHC.
“scholar’s scholar” to “prominent scholarship”: DeWolf interview, BOHC.
Dexter Church: STF, 15–22; B. J. Simms interview with Oates, Sept. 17, 1978; Rev. J. C. Parker to King, Mar. 10, 1954, and Dexter Pulpit Committee to King, same date, MLK(BU); Coretta King, 97; Reddick, 109.
“elated,” “decree,” and “sublime”: W and M, 24; SL, 81; King’s speech, Washington Prayer Pilgrimage, May 17, 1957, MLK(BU).
“what you want”: Coretta King, 100.
PART TWO: ON THE STAGE OF HISTORY
“soul bea
uty” and “court”: Reddick, 5–6.
“break in marriage”: King to V. L. Harris, Jan. 10, 1959, MLK(BU).
“feel so helpless” to “amount of love”: King to Miss Myrtle Beavers, June 23, 1958, and to Walter R. Chivers, Nov. 5, 1960, ibid.; King’s “Advice for Living” columns in Ebony, Sept., 1957 to Dec., 1958.
King’s preaching: King’s note in folder on preaching, MLK(BU); STF, 26–27, 36; Coretta King, 59. See also among other studies E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Church in America (New York, 1963), 46; Benjamin E. Mays and Joseph W. Nicholson, The Negro’s Church (New York, 1933, 1969), 281; Charles V. Hamilton, The Black Preacher (New York, 1972), 12, 14, 19–28.
“suave…persuasive”: James Pierce quoted in Yeakey, 148; Simms interview with Oates.
“that little boy” and “my own son”: Coretta King, 100, 184; Reddick, 131.
“a good preacher” and “have a son”: J. Raymond Henderson to King, May 12, 1955, and to Martin Luther King, Sr., same date, MLK(BU).
“every way I turn”: Daddy King to “My Dear M. L.,” Dec. 2, 1954, ibid.
“vital liaison,” “corroding sense,” and “lack of unity”: AOC, 18; STF, 34, 37.
Abernathy: Abernathy to Oates, Aug. 16, 1978; Harris Wofford, “Birthday Party for a Bus Boycott,” typescript, MLK(BU); Charles Fager, Uncertain Reconstruction: the Poor People’s Washington Campaign (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1969), 28; Reddick, 117.
“graceful jab”: Reddick, 118.
“on stage”: Mrs. Sullivan Jackson interview with Oates, July 8, 1977; Abernathy interview with Oates, Aug. 16, 1978; Rev. Howard Creecy interview with Oates, Aug. 2, 1978.
“searching study”: DeWolf interview, BOHC.
“called them by name”: Louisa R. Alger to Oates, May 4, 1979, letter in author’s possession.
“compromise”: Coretta King, 106.
“full of niggers”: Dan Wakefield, Revolt in the South (New York, 1960), 32–33.
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