The internecine squabbles, the discussions and telegrams between Detroit and SCLC headquarters in Atlanta, the doubters who thought the occasion was too important for C. L. Franklin to handle, the fears that something unfortunate would occur along the route—all that was gone now, transformed by King into a redemption story as he stood on his box and spoke of hope and struggle and a dream.
King wended his way to that dream, moving slowly and steadily toward it. He talked about the protests in Birmingham, the cancer of racial segregation, and the rising sense of dignity among black citizens, who had come to realize that “every man from a bass-black to a treble-white is significant on God’s keyboard.” He employed a Motor City metaphor to describe his response to those who say Cool off; Put on the brakes; You’re moving too fast. “The only answer we can give to that is that the motor’s now cranked up and we’re moving up the highway of freedom toward the city of equality.” He expounded on the power of nonviolence as a means of disarming the opponent. “If he doesn’t put you in jail, wonderful. Nobody with any sense likes to go to jail. But if he puts you in jail, you go in that jail and transform it from a dungeon of shame to a haven of freedom and human dignity.” He evoked the martyrdom of the recently slain Medgar Evers and said, “If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.”
He extolled the new militancy in the black community but cautioned that it “must not lead us to the position of distrusting every white person who lives in these United States. There are some white people in this country who are as determined to see the Negro free as we are to be free.” While acknowledging that he understood the motivations of the Nation of Islam, which was founded in Detroit, he urged his audience to reject racial separation, whatever the cause. “Black supremacy,” he said, “is as dangerous as white supremacy” and would not help transform “this jangling discord of a nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.” Working to end discrimination in Detroit was as important as his work in the South. “Now in the North it’s different in that it doesn’t have the legal sanction that it has in the South. But it has its subtle and hidden forms and it exists in three areas: in the area of employment discrimination, in the area of housing discrimination, and in the area of de facto segregation in the public schools.” Detroit could also help the cause by supporting the civil rights bill that Kennedy had proposed and by putting pressure on Congress to pass it. That pressure, he said, included coming to another march, this one to the Lincoln Memorial in the nation’s capital. (Inserted into the official programs for the Walk to Freedom were brochures outlining travel arrangements for Detroiters to attend the March on Washington, leaving by train at seven on the night of August 27 and arriving at Union Station at ten on the morning of the event, at a cost of $28.25 per person.)
All this led to his final prose poem of a dream: “And so I go back to the South not with a feeling that we are caught in a dark dungeon that will never lead to a way out. I go back believing that the new day is coming. And so this afternoon, I have a dream.”
“Go ahead,” someone shouted.
“I have a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.”
This was nine weeks before the March on Washington, when King would deliver another version of the same refrain that would become etched in history, eventually considered the most famous American speech of the twentieth century. What he said at Cobo on that Sunday in June was virtually lost to history, overwhelmed by what was to come, but the first time King dreamed his dream at a large public gathering, he dreamed it in Detroit. His riff at the Walk to Freedom was a planned part of the speech. In Washington, where it earned its fame, it was not even in the official text. The refrain would draw divergent reactions from his inner circle. Mahalia Jackson, his favorite spiritual singer and a confidante, loved its majesty and inspired King to use it in Washington, by some accounts urging him on from her perch behind him at the Lincoln Memorial. Wyatt Tee Walker, executive director of the SCLC, thought it was cliché-ridden and tried to discourage him from falling back on it. When King soared into his dream sequence he was preaching, not lecturing, drawing on rhythms and images more than thoughts and arguments. The people in Detroit took to it heartily. They were hearing it for the first time, but many of them were also hearing familiar rhythms, reminiscent of the pulpit oratory of Reverend Franklin.
I have a dream that one day, right down in Georgia and Mississippi and Alabama, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to live together as brothers.
King would enrich this image in Washington nine weeks later, changing it to “that one day on the red hills of Georgia sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table as brothers.”
I have a dream this afternoon, I have a dream that one day . . .
The Detroit crowd was at church now, applauding, anticipating.
. . . one day little white children and little Negro children will be able to join hands as brothers and sisters.
The Washington version would have a more evocative rendering of what needed to be overcome, extending the dream phrase to say “that one day in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as brothers and sisters.”
I have a dream this afternoon that one day . . .
More applause.
. . . that one day men will no longer burn down houses and the church of God simply because people want to be free.
In his ad-libbed version in Washington, King deleted that line.
I have a dream this afternoon, I have a dream that there will be a day that we will no longer face the atrocities that Emmett Till had to face or Medgar Evers had to face, that all men can live with dignity.
The Evers assassination eleven days earlier was fresh in the minds of the Detroit marchers, many of whom carried signs in his honor. That line was also missing when King spoke in Washington.
I have a dream this afternoon that my four little children, that my four little children will not come up in the same young days that I came up within, but they will be judged on the basis of the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
Here was the most famous phrase in the speech, though its order was flipped for posterity in the Lincoln Memorial version. Just as JFK had delivered a variation of his famous “Ask not” line first in Detroit, but then inverted the words to lend it more rhythmic power in his inaugural address, King enhanced his immortal line between Detroit and Washington, turning it into “they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
I have a dream this afternoon that one day right here in Detroit, Negroes will be able to buy a house or rent a house anywhere that their money will carry them and they will be able to get a job.
Wild applause and shouts of “That’s right!”
The housing issue was about to dominate Detroit city politics that summer. Two members of the Common Council had drawn up open-occupancy legislation prohibiting landlords or house sellers from discriminating on the basis of race.
Yes, I have a dream this afternoon that one day in this land the words of Amos will become real and “justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
This verse from Amos 5:24 appeared again in the Washington speech, but in the main text well before the dream sequence. The refrain introducing it began, “No, no, we are not satisfied, and we cannot be satisfied until . . .” The verse was a staple in King’s greatest speeches. He used it to close his antiwar address, “Beyond Vietnam,” delivered at Riverside Church in New York on April 4, 1967, and returned to it in “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” the emotional speech delivered in Memphis on April 3, 1968, in which he seemed to foretell his own death. He was assassinated the next day.
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br /> I have a dream this evening that one day we will recognize the words of Jefferson that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” I have a dream this afternoon.
In Washington, King opened his dream sequence with a shorter version of that thought, building off the introductory phrase that his dream was deeply rooted in the American dream: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ ” Much earlier in the Washington speech, he had already used the “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” line from the Declaration of Independence, saying it was a promissory note from the nation’s founders that turned into a bad check for blacks that came back marked “insufficient funds.”
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill shall be made low; the crooked places shall be made straight, and the rough places plain; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
In Washington, King ended his dream sequence with that line. In Detroit, he found one final dream:
I have a dream that the brotherhood of man will become a reality in this day.
In Detroit there was only one more paragraph carrying King to the end. In Washington he drew out the climax with a “Let freedom ring!” refrain taking him on a geographic tour of America the beautiful. Both speeches closed the same way, with his call of the spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, we are free at last!”
What do reporters look for in a speech as they write a first draft of history? The Washington Post coverage of the March on Washington failed to take note of “I Have a Dream.” King’s speech warranted only fleeting mention in the fifth paragraph of a story on the day’s rhetoric on page A15, and even there the dream sequence was not quoted. Nine weeks earlier, the Detroit News fared slightly better covering the Walk to Freedom, noting that King “ended his 48-minute talk repeating ‘dreams’ of a better world united in brotherhood.” The final refrains, the News added, “brought a wild response from the overflow crowd and Dr. King was quickly whisked out of the auditorium and to his hotel for a shower and change of shirt.”
Reverend Hood, who never made it inside the arena but huddled with his Congregationalists and thousands of other marchers during the long program as it aired over outdoor loudspeakers, would be asked many times in the ensuing years what he thought of King’s first dream in Detroit. Fifty years later he was asked one more time during an interview for this book. He was ninety then, and one of the sons he had taken with him on the Walk to Freedom had followed him as pastor of the same church. What did he remember about the dream? “In all honesty, I couldn’t even hear it,” he acknowledged. “But I certainly enjoyed the fellowship, the joy, the feeling of freedom. Oh, yeah.” Booker Moten, in his white-on-white fraternity outfit, was closer to a loudspeaker and was able to hear King’s words. He remembered a political type standing near him who, during the middle of the dream riff, blurted out, “God, I wish I could give a speech like that just once in my lifetime!”
Arthur Johnson of the Detroit NAACP, who had watched the march unfold from the Cobo roof, ventured down into the arena to hear King’s speech and came away realizing that his old college classmate had risen to a new level. “Martin’s voice this day in Detroit was never better,” Johnson noted later. “He had worked out the structure, rhythm, and climactic parts of the speech so that it moved like a great piece of music. We were all utterly spellbound.” Johnson encountered King later that evening and congratulated him on the speech. The complications of the civil rights movement, the jealousies between Johnson’s NAACP and King’s SCLC inevitably placed a strain on their relationship, but Johnson realized that he had seen and heard greatness. “We spoke as old friends, and as usual, I addressed him as M.L.,” Johnson recalled. “He wanted my advice on an important matter, but time and his pressing commitments did not permit that conversation then. . . . My former and young classmate at Morehouse College was now, without a doubt, the indisputable leader of the civil rights movement.”
• • •
Four days after the Walk to Freedom, Mayor Cavanagh was at the Sheraton Cadillac, speaking at a noon luncheon of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, which was holding its convention in Detroit. “I know it must have been decided some time ago to conduct this particular meeting in Detroit, but your foresight has brought you here at a high point in Detroit’s history,” Cavanagh said. “Just last Sunday, as you are no doubt aware, Detroit showed the nation and the world that men of goodwill—no matter what their color—can band together peacefully to protest the stifling evil of prejudice.” Cavanagh described the march down Woodward Avenue with Martin Luther King, and how there were white marchers along with blacks, and how the march commemorated a new spirit of fairness and fellowship in the city.
“We Detroiters know that in many ways we are ahead of the nation in respecting the rights of man,” he added. “But we are not so presumptuous that we are satisfied. We know there is much to be done.” The large numbers who attended the march offered reason for hope and optimism. “But consider too another aspect of the march that is perhaps even more significant. . . . This huge crowd of dedicated people, people with fervor, marched through our city without one incident taking place that is worthy of mentioning. Not one. Think of that. Could that happen in a city where there is deep-seated racial distrust, where men fear their fellows of another color?”
Hate letters were arriving by the bundle at Cavanagh’s office as he spoke those words. One out of the many was this:
Mayor Cavanagh,
Never thought I’d live to see the day that a white, Catholic mayor would discriminate as you are doing against the white people. I am ashamed for you—to lead a horrible parade as you did Sunday. Behind that hypocrite—Luther King—at least he does it for money. But you, you are doing it for the Negro vote. Well be careful that by doing so you are not losing the white vote. You are doing nothing but cheapen Detroit, by your actions. I’ve paid taxes in Detroit for 46 years, but at the rate you are allowing the nigger to take over Detroit I want no part of Detroit any longer.
Estelle Thomas, 8903 Birwood, Detroit, Michigan
Ray Girardin, the mayor’s executive assistant, wrote the response:
Dear Mrs. Thomas,
I notice the five cent postage stamp on your letter to Mayor Cavanagh bore the slogan of “Food for Peace” and “Food for Hunger.” Perhaps you didn’t read these when you affixed the stamp. But isn’t that just about what the Negroes were marching for in our city? I am at a loss to explain how you can possibly call a peaceful march in protest against brutalities and inhumanities a “horrible” parade. I trust, Mrs. Thomas, that you will somehow find a way to rid your heart of its bitterness towards other human beings.
The hot summer had begun.
Chapter 13
* * *
HEAT WAVE
MOTOWN WAS ROLLING in the summer of 1963. Berry Gordy Jr. was not just paying his bills, he was turning a profit and expanding his empire, and one indication that he had made it came that June when he bought a five-story neo-Gothic building that occupied most of a city block. The gray terra-cotta structure at the corner of Woodward and Canfield had deteriorated over the past decade, and its glory years seemed long gone, but its ballroom was familiar to all Detroiters and recognized throughout the music world for its rich history.
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That was the vertical sign out front on Woodward. Some at Motown thought the Graystone Ballroom and Gardens had outlived its purpose and needed not just a renovation but a new name. But Graystone meant something special to Gordy. He could be a skinflint businessman, but he was also
a softhearted sentimentalist, and the ballroom touched his romantic side even as it reminded him of Detroit’s segregated past. For more than three decades, from its opening in 1922 until the mid-1950s, the Graystone was the largest and most popular dance hall in the city, its cavernous ballroom hopping and swirling with as many as three thousand dancers at a time. All the big bands played there, from Jean Goldkette to Count Basie, from Glen Miller to Duke Ellington. But off the bandstand, the races did not mix at the Graystone, reflecting the de facto segregation in northern cities that was often as prevalent as Jim Crow laws in the South. The ballroom was for white dancers only on all nights but Monday, which was reserved for blacks.
“It was the most beautiful ballroom,” Gordy recalled in an interview for this book. “The bigger bands went to the Graystone. That was classy. It was just bigger than life. And the people were dressed to kill. It was the place to go Monday nights. Save up and go. And I would just see the most beautiful people and the most beautiful girls. And that’s where I would try to dance with girls. I would go out on the dance floor and see a girl who had just finished dancing and was walking in the other direction and I would walk up to them and say, ‘Can I have the next dance?’ They would always say, ‘No, I’m through dancing for the night. I’m not dancing.’ My best friend, Billy Davis, I would go with. He could dance. And I was square. He was an east side kid, so cool. And they would say to me, ‘No, I’m not dancing anymore.’ And I would walk back with all the people with me laughing at me. And then I came up with the Two out of Ten rule. I said to myself, ‘Look, that’s okay. If I ask ten girls to dance, two will dance. I’m not going to stop.’ ”
Cause and effect is never so simple, but there seems to have been more than a suggestion of the Citizen Kane “rosebud” in that recollection, a clue to the motivation for all that was to follow in Berry Gordy’s life. As a teenager he was short and unprepossessing and could not dance. But he was persistent, developed a plan, and now here he was, chairman of a music empire, author of a song that mocked his adolescent failings, the Contours’s rollicking “Do You Love Me (Now That I Can Dance)?,” and owner of the very ballroom of his humiliation, set to transform it into Motown’s grand rehearsal hall and hometown stage. Do you love me? Now I am back to let you know, I can really shake it down!
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