At Canaan's Edge

by Taylor Branch

  “We are not going to be pushed out”: FRUS, Vol. 3, p. 256.

  He called the Pentagon Situation Room through the night: PDD, July 27, 1965, p. 1, LBJ.

  “may have been a DRV trap”: FRUS, Vol. 3, p. 257.

  three secret deliberations: PDD, July 27, 1965, LBJ.

  approved a reply to Martin Luther King’s thanks: LBJ to MLK, July 27, 1965, Name File, Box 144, LBJ.

  “I am convinced that God”: MLK to LBJ, July 16, 1965, A/KP13f8.

  Cigarette Labeling Act: Associated Press, World in 1965, pp. 134, 261.

  a record 520 billion cigarettes: “Smoking Scare? What’s Happened to It,” U.S. News & World Report, Jan. 11, 1965, p. 38ff; NYT, Jan. 2, 1966, p. IV-7; Business Week, Dec. 3, 1966, pp. 143–47.

  corroborated none of the government’s alleged ill effects: NYT, June 19, 1968, p. 18.

  “Let it be clear”: “Tobacco Called Help in Learning,” NYT, April 18, 1965, p. 31.

  the President ordered his staff to rustle up cushioning news: Califano, Triumph, p. 47.

  “How is your blood pressure?”: LBJ phone call with Abe Fortas, 11:48 A.M., July 28, 1965, Cit. 8406, Audiotape WH6507.09, LBJ.

  “could not conceal his decision”: Karnow, Vietnam, p. 441.

  “announced the expansion of the war”: Dallek, Flawed, pp. 276–77.

  “mask the central fact that this is really war”: NYT, July 29, 1965, p. 12.

  Lady Bird Johnson covered her face: Ibid.

  as he reprised from his Selma speech: LBJ’s first call that morning, at 6:55 A.M., and his last outgoing call before the press conference, after the one to Fortas, were to speechwriter Richard Goodwin, who crafted both the March 15 “We Shall Overcome” speech and the July 28 Vietnam announcement around lyrical passages uniting Johnson’s boyhood formation with American purpose. PDD, July 28, 1965, pp. 1, 4.

  “I just couldn’t be happier”: Hubert Humphrey phone call with Juanita Roberts (over LBJ taping system), 1:05 P.M., July 28, 1965, Cit. 8408, Audiotape WH6507.09, LBJ.

  “We repealed 14-B today”: LBJ phone call with Arthur Goldberg, 7:20 P.M., July 28, 1965, Cit. 8412, Audiotape WH6507.09, LBJ.

  “JOHNSON ORDERS 50,000 MORE MEN”: NYT, July 29, 1965, p. 1.

  “held down to the absolute minimum”: Ibid., p. 26.

  “Don’t pay any attention”: Clifford, Counsel, p. 417.

  “just put water on Mansfield’s and on Morse’s paddle”: LBJ phone call with Dwight D. Eisenhower, 11:45 A.M., July 23, 1965, Cit. 8371, Audiotape WH6507.05, LBJ.

  DeLoach noted with satisfaction: DeLoach to Mohr, July 29, 1965, FK-1662.

  the House had added July 9: Congressional Record, July 9, 1965, pp. H16207–86.

  “I am confident that the poll tax provision”: MLK quoted in Katzenbach letter of July 29, 1965, cited by Rep. William Cramer of Florida, Congressional Record, August 4, 1965.

  Southerners professed shock: Ibid.

  Katzenbach steered the compromise through Thursday’s conference: NYT, July 30, 1965, p. 1.

  His bronchitis had worsened since Chicago: Garrow, Bearing, pp. 434–35.

  calls from Adam Clayton Powell: Powell phone calls to MLK July 4 and July 20, overheard on the MLK wiretap, cited in FACP-293.

  Chauncey Eskridge to seek collection: Fred Wallace to Jack Greenberg, July 1965, and Chauncey Eskridge to Maurice Ryles, Reliable Bond Company, July 29, 1965, both A/KP10fl. The Eskridge letter begins: “When Dr. King was here in Chicago the other day, we discussed the enclosed memorandum prepared at my request by Attorney Fred L. Wallace of the NAACP Legal Fund.” The dispute would be settled at a meeting of bankers, lawyers, Shuttlesworth, the bondsman Ryles, and others in December of 1965. See Eskridge to Orzell Billingsley, Jr., Sept. 14, 1965, A/SC3:38; Eskridge to Erskine Smith, Nov. 16, 1965, A/SC10f2; Eskridge to A. G. Gaston and Eskridge to Fred Shuttlesworth, Dec. 21, 1965, A/SC10f2.

  King mediated a complex pulpit dispute: Int. Andrew Young, Oct. 26, 1991; Jet, Aug. 12, 1965, p. 48.

  “you and your group must not repent”: Abernathy to Carlton Reese, July 15, 1965, A/KP31f9.

  Adam Clayton Powell could not resist: NYT, July 29, 1965, p. 58.

  “I told him to go to cities”: Ralph, Northern, p. 35.

  “Moore Assails Two-Day Visit”: Philadelphia Inquirer, July 30, 1965, p. 10.

  a sympathetic FBI report: Philadelphia LHM dated July 30, 1965, FSC-NR.

  protests against Moore: Ralph, Northern, p. 36.

  with two planeloads of legislators: PDD, July 30, 1965, LBJ.

  “I’m glad to have lived this long”: NYT, July 31, 1965, pp. 1, 8.

  excluded the Old Order Amish: Associated Press, World in 1965, pp. 128–29.

  “gives greater satisfaction than this”: NYT, July 31, 1965, p. 9.

  front-page photograph of church elders: NYT, Aug. 2, 1965, p. 1.

  Larry and Daniels took seats: Eagles, Outside Agitator, pp. 58–59.

  went forward to the altar alone: Int. Gloria Larry House, June 29, 2000.

  “This is the first time a Negro”: Mathews to “Bishops Carpenter and Murray,” Aug. 1, 1965, BIR/C8f25.

  “this white man in his near Clerical clothes”: Mortimer Garnett Cassell to Suffragan Bishop George M. Murray, Aug. 3, 1965, BIR/C10f55.

  “very distasteful”: Murray to Cassell, Aug. 5, 1965, BIR/C10f55.

  “If he is hanging around causing trouble”: Carpenter to Mathews, Aug. 12, 1965, BIR/C8f25.

  seeking to learn why the school board rejected: Eagles, Outside Agitator, p. 139; Jeffries, “Freedom Politics,” pp. 146–48.

  Bernice Johnson went inside alone: Int. Bernice Johnson, Feb. 16, 2001.

  Coleman closed the Negro schools a week early: Lowndes County WATS report, June 5, 1965, Reel 16, SNCC; “Great Day at Trickem Fork,” Saturday Evening Post, May 22, 1965, pp. 89–93. The WATS report noted that Superintendent Coleman was the sister of Tom Coleman, “a known Klansman.”

  less than a month before the new fall term: Orfield, Reconstruction, p. 109.

  “I’m with my friends”: Int. Bernice Johnson, Feb. 16, 2001.

  20: FORT DEPOSIT

  pickets outside segregated Girard College: Garrow, Bearing, p. 436; Philadelphia LHM dated August 3, 1965, FSC-NR; Hoover to SAC, Philadelphia, Aug. 11, 1965, FK-1706.

  House of Representatives passed: Congressional Record, Aug. 3, 1965, p. 19191; Garrow, Protest, p. 132.

  A bomb threat the next day: NYT, Aug. 5, 1965, p. 12.

  Senate passed the identical bill, 72–18: Congressional Record, Aug. 4, 1965, p. 19378. Forty-nine Democrats and thirty Republicans voted for the final bill. The supporting Democrats included three Southerners: Albert Gore of Tennessee, George Smathers of Florida, and Ralph Yarborough of Texas. The only Republican to vote nay was Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who had switched parties ten months earlier to become the first of the Deep South’s new “Goldwater Republicans” in the Senate. The only other Southern Republican, John Tower of Texas, had voted against the voting rights bill on first passage, but was absent for the decisive vote on the conference report.

  “fellow revolutionaries”: NYT, Aug. 5, 1965, p. 13.

  Justice Department stood ready to file: “Outline of Proposed Implementation of Voting Rights Act of 1965,” attachment for Doar to Califano, Aug. 5, 1965, Legislative Background, VRA ’65, Box 1, LBJ.

  Johnson disclosed this breakthrough agenda: MLK press statement after White House meeting, Aug. 5, 1965, A/KS; Hoover to SAC, Atlanta, Aug. 6, 1965, FK-1688.

  meeting scheduled to discuss conditions: Lee White to LBJ, July 23, 1965, Name File, Box 144, LBJ; Lee White to LBJ, Aug. 4, 1965, Diary Back-up, Box 20, LBJ. Johnson’s diary shows that the meeting included Ralph Abernathy and Walter Fauntroy with King, and aides Lee White and Major Hugh Robinson with LBJ, lasting from 4:17 to 5:55 P.M., and that Juanita Abernathy joined the group afterward for photographs: PDD, Aug. 5, 1965, p. 5, LBJ.

  Thursday night, King returned: NYT, Aug. 6, 1965, p.
12.

  “Be sure to get one of the pens”: Dellinger, From Yale, pp. 220–21.

  He and Dellinger separated: Ibid.; Longenecker, Peacemaker, pp. 291–92.

  “Today is a triumph”: NYT, Aug. 7, 1965, pp. 1, 8.

  “The chair recognizes the Senator”: WP, Aug. 7, 1965, p. 4.

  carved of mahogany in 1819: Caro, Master, pp. 4, 581.

  “We just got to”: LBJ phone call with Nicholas Katzenbach, 6:10 P.M., Aug. 6, 1965, Cit. 8514, Audiotape WH6508.02, LBJ.

  “You didn’t do a damn thing”: LBJ phone call with Carl Albert, 6:16 P.M., Aug. 6, 1965, Cit. 8515-16, Audiotape WH6508.02, LBJ. LBJ immediately called Speaker McCormack with congratulations that also jumped quickly into battering pressure: “Now, will you help us work on higher education and immigration, and get a bill quickly on those two?”

  Dellinger was among roughly six hundred pickets: Dellinger, “We Seek No Wider War,” Liberation, Sept. 1965, pp. 4–6; Zaroulis and Sullivan, Who Spoke Up?, pp. 20–21, 50–53; Dellinger, From Yale, pp. 208–15.

  guard of two hundred police: NYT, Aug. 7, 1965, p. 3.

  Bob Moses of SNCC: A. J. Muste, “Assembly of Unrepresented People: The Weekend That Was,” Liberation, Sept. 1965, pp. 28–29.

  followed Moses as a teenager: On McComb in 1961, see Dittmer, Local People, pp. 99–115; Branch, Parting, pp. 492–523.

  “Negro boys should not honor the draft”: Dittmer, Local People, pp. 349–51; Lawson, Pursuit, pp. 96–97.

  John Lewis, though he had signed: Muste to Lewis, March 29, 1965, Reel 1, SNCC.

  issued a pained statement: NYT, Aug. 7, 1965, p. 3; John Lewis, oral history by Archie Allen, pp. 213–14, AAP. Marion Barry reported that he and Cleveland Sellers of SNCC joined Lewis for the meeting with LBJ. White House records show that only James Farmer of CORE and Lewis were present as guests. Lewis hand-delivered a letter to the President. See Barry, WATS report, Aug. 6, 1965, Reel 16, SNCC; PDD, Aug. 6, 1965, p. 1, LBJ; Lewis to LBJ, Aug. 6, 1965, and Lee White to Lewis, Aug. 9, 1965, Legislative Background, VRA ’65, Box 1, LBJ.

  photograph in the next issue of Life: “Pacifist Protests,” Life, Aug. 20, 1965, p. 31.

  “Sometimes I wish”: WP, Aug. 7, 1965, pp. 1, 14.

  “hyper-militants and the authoritarians”: DeBenedetti, Ordeal, pp. 120–21.

  Muste’s Declaration of Conscience: Powers, War, p. 192; Zaroulis and Sullivan, Who Spoke Up?, p. 20. Muste had been trying to get King to sign the declaration for months. Cf. Muste to MLK, April 23 and July 11, 1965, both A/SC4f44.

  “Negroes better than anyone else”: A. J. Muste, “Assembly of Unrepresented People: The Weekend That Was,” Liberation, Sept. 1965, pp. 28–29; Robinson, Abraham, p. 132.

  King preached at New York’s Riverside Church: Log, Aug. 8, 1965, A/SC29; speech to National Funeral Directors, Aug. 8, 1965, A/KS9.

  John Lewis was arrested: Americus, Georgia, WATS report, Aug. 8, 1965, Reel 16, SNCC.

  “I have my own personal fears”: Stokely Carmichael, “A Working Paper on a South-Wide People’s Conference,” Aug. 8, 1965, Reel 16, SNCC.

  at the first mass meeting yet dared in Fort Deposit: “via Selma,” Fort Deposit WATS report, August 9, 1965, Reel 16, SNCC; Eagles, Outside Agitator, p. 167.

  “the toughest area in Lowndes County”: “Lowndes County Weekly Report,” Aug. 5, 1965, Reel 18, SNCC.

  “run out by the Klan”: Jeffries, “Freedom Politics,” pp. 79–81.

  crowd of some four hundred: Ibid. Also int. Jimmy Rogers, March 7, 2000; int. Bob Mants, Sept. 8, 2000.

  Carmichael told the Sapersteins to lay across laps: Int. Harold and Marcia Saperstein, Dec. 12, 1991.

  golden orator from Dothan: Carter, Politics, pp. 232, 275–76; Lesher, George Wallace, pp. 172–75; Jones, Wallace Story, pp. 54–55.

  “Richmond, we ain’t telling you”: Int. Richmond Flowers, Aug. 9, 1990; “Flowers Puts Klan Issue in Lowndes County Case,” MA, Aug. 22, 1965, p. 1, cited in Mobile FBI report dated Aug. 25, 1965, FJMD-32, pp. 121–22.

  “just sick”: Eagles, Outside Agitator, p. 164.

  by order of General Andrew Jackson: Ibid., pp. 109–10; town of Fort Deposit, official Web site, 2002.

  Three of the county’s four doctors and dentists: Ibid.

  Only forty-eight Negroes: Alabama Voting Rights report, Aug. 13, 1965, Reel 16, SNCC.

  applicants outside Selma’s courthouse: Int. Harold and Marcia Saperstein, Dec. 12, 1991.

  resolve took hold among the teenagers: Int. Jimmy Rogers, March 7, 2000; int. Bob Mants, Sept. 8, 2000.

  “There will be demonstrations”: Jimmy Rogers, “Lowndes County Ala.” WATS report, Aug. 11, 1965, Reel 16, SNCC.

  “Human Rights—Basic Issues—The Grand Alliance”: Program, Ninth Annual Convention, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, August 9–13, 1965, King Archives.

  the same event during the siege: Branch, Parting, pp. 642–46, 653–56.

  “Anything else I can do for you, sir?”: Int. Harvey Cox, May 3, 1991.

  swelling numbers paraded freely to City Hall: SAC, Birmingham, to Director, Aug. 10, 1965, FSC-497.

  They decried the gridlock failure: Sermon, “Selma Insights,” attached to a letter from John Ruskin Clark to Francis X. Walter, Dec. 16, 1965, BIR/FW2f5, p. 3.

  came Mordecai Johnson: Mays, Born, pp. 39, 148; Reddick, Crusader, p. 80; King, My Life, p. 71; Wofford, Kennedys and Kings, p. 117.

  school board in stinging protest: Jet, July 8, 1965, p. 26.

  ecumenical conference on religion and race: Branch, Pillar, pp. 21–32.

  integrate the Midwestern meat plants: Halpern, Meatpackers, pp. 33–42, 110–12, 127–44.

  “You’d be surprised”: Int. Harvey Cox, May 3, 1991.

  FBI agents reported to headquarters: SAC, Birmingham, to Director, Aug. 10, 1965, FSC-497.

  “We are having a good convention”: Wiretap transcript of telephone conversation between Stanley Levison and Bea Levison, Aug. 11, 1965, FLNY-9-663a.

  send in a handwritten note: Wachtel note headed, “Martin—,” Aug. 11, 1965, A/KP25f31. Wachtel included a draft thank-you note to Agger, which would be sent out, “Dictated by Dr. King, but signed in his absence,” while King was in Los Angeles for the Watts riots. MLK to Miss Carol Agger, Aug. 19, 1965, A/KP25f31. The formal approval from the IRS arrived in a letter written to the Gandhi Society for Human Rights, Inc., care of Harry Wachtel, dated Aug. 10, 1965, A/KP25f31.

  Senate confirmation of Thurgood Marshall: Fenderson, Thurgood, p. 114.

  He waited in the hotel lobby: Birmingham LHM dated Aug. 17, 1965, FK-NR, p. 3.

  Wachtel wrote a second appeal: Wachtel to MLK, handwritten, Aug. 13, 1965, A/KP25f31.

  pastor wrung permission from the deacons: Jet, Aug. 12, 1965, p. 48; Rev. John Cross oral history, A/OH, pp. 52–57. Cross recalled that his church member Maxine McNair, mother of Denise McNair, one of the four girls killed by the church bomb, helped sway the congregation with an appeal that she and her husband, Chris, did not lose their only child in order to give up.

  King again faced more than thirty: Minutes, SCLC board meeting, Aug. 9–10, 1965, A/KP29f5.

  Williams himself conceded: Ibid., pp. 5–6, 12–13.

  resolution calling for Vietnam peace negotiations: Wachtel sent an early draft to MLK attached to a letter of July 26, 1965, A/KP25f31. FBI wiretappers overheard King’s conversations about the Vietnam resolution with Wachtel, Rustin, and Andrew Young. Cf. SAC, New York, to Director, Aug. 4, 1965, FK-1693; NY LHM dated Aug. 10, 1965, FK-NR.

  David Garrow would call an “implicit rebuke”: Garrow, Bearing, p. 438.

  “the very survival of mankind”: Andrew J. Young, “An Experiment in Power,” Keynote Address, Ninth Annual Convention, Aug. 11, 1965, A/SC131f1.

  Ronald Frye celebrated his discharge: Horne, Fire, pp. 53–56; Jet, Sept. 2, 1965, pp. 4–22; Jet, Sept. 9, 1965, pp. 14–18.

  One officer would testify: Governor’s Commission, Violence in the City, pp. 10–
12.

  C. H. Watts: Horne, Fire, p. 26.

  “milled around inside the blocked-off area”: LAT, Aug. 12, 1965, p. 1.

  “What do you want”: CBS Reports, Watts: Riot or Revolt?, broadcast of Dec. 7, 1965, T77:0395, MOB.

  “Arrest Causes Near Riot”: NYT, Aug. 12, 1965, p. 15.

  crowds returned to Avalon Boulevard: Horne, Fire, pp. 57–59.

  “and Congress is turning out decisions like sausages”: Transcript of recording, “‘Visions of Things to Come,’ A Panel of the SCLC Convention, Birmingham, Ala., Thursday, Aug. 12, 1965,” JMP.

  “One day Jesus was talking”: Ibid.

  an international peace army into Vietnam: SC, Aug. 20, 1965, p. 1.

  King presented the SCLC Freedom Medal: Program, Ninth Annual Convention, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Aug. 9–13, 1965, King Archives, Atlanta, Ga.; int. Diane Nash, Oct. 26, 1997; int. James Bevel, Nov. 23, 1997; and Dec. 10, 1998.

  citizens’ initiative unmatched: Branch, Pillar, pp. 75–77, 139–41, 245–46, 524.

  the honorees nevertheless were painfully estranged: Ibid., pp. 587–88.

  “Few events in my lifetime”: King statement, Aug. 12, 1965, A/SC28f7.

  including Ho Chi Minh: “Dr. King to Send Appeal to Hanoi,” NYT, Aug. 13, 1965, p. 1; “‘I’ll Contact Reds’: King,” Chicago Tribune, Aug. 13, 1965, p. 1.

  3,500 people by FBI estimate: Birmingham LHM dated Aug. 17, 1965, FK-NR, p. 1.

  mortician A. A. “Sam” Rayner: Int. Richard Morrisroe, Feb. 20–21, 2002.

  Daddy King was the real preacher: Int. Harold and Marcia Saperstein, Dec. 12, 1991.

  Father Richard Morrisroe: Int. Richard Morrisroe by John Morris, Feb. 1966, JDC; Eagles, Outside Agitator, pp. 166–67.

  the next alderman: Anderson and Pickering, Confronting, pp. 316, 326.

  “nearly choked him”: Int. Richard Morrisroe, Feb. 20–21, 2002.

  delivered him to bunk on the porch floor: Ibid.; Mendelsohn, Martyrs, pp. 204–5.