The larger purpose of the meeting that drew three hundred citizens to New Bethel Baptist was to discuss the aftermath of the Walk to Freedom. Although the march exceeded expectations in terms of participation, the practical matter of raising money for King’s SCLC and Franklin’s local organization fell short of projections. The reverend had set a goal of raising $100,000, but the latest financial report listed pledges of slightly above $37,000, minus expenses of $5,256, including the cost of renting Cobo Hall. About $18,000 of that amount made its way down to King’s offices in Atlanta, according to the SCLC’s receipt. It was better than nothing, and considering that events of that sort tended to draw more publicity than money, Franklin was not discouraged. His goal, he announced at the DCHR meeting, was to stage another big march the following June.
Houses divided. Franklin’s optimism belied the chaos around him. Amid continued rifts between Detroit’s civil rights factions, his grand coalition was collapsing from pressures left and right. At a national gathering of the NAACP in Chicago in mid-July, where Detroit delegates might have been expected to bask in the glow of the June rally even if their organization did not sponsor it, they instead engaged in an internecine dispute that disrupted the convention. More than one hundred delegates, including Detroit’s NAACP leaders and the national president, Arthur Spingarn, walked out of a session on housing in protest of the presence on the panel of James Del Rio, Franklin’s outspoken lawyer, who had further irritated the Detroit chapter by declaring that the success of the Walk to Freedom was a “direct repudiation” of the NAACP. A Michigan Chronicle reporter covering the convention took note of a “prevailing new mood of militance.” Who knew that a walkout, a tactic usually associated with militants, would be staged by moderates? John Conyers, the activist Detroit lawyer, was quoted saying he was bothered by the walkout and felt the local dispute should not have been played out so dramatically in front of the national host.
On the Chronicle’s op-ed page in that edition, Dr. Broadus N. Butler dismissed Del Rio and his preacher cohorts, Franklin and Cleage, as “by-nighters” and “self-anointed opportunists.” The divisions were becoming more vitriolic and apparent day by day, and not just among Detroiters. On that same page was a column by Jackie Robinson, the baseball legend, deploring the fact that Dr. King had been booed and pelted with eggs earlier that summer by a black crowd outside a church in Harlem. Robinson felt the hostile reception was inspired “in some degree” by Malcolm X, the spellbinding black Muslim leader who ridiculed the concept of black nonviolence in the face of white oppression. The timing of the egg-pelting of King reflected the swirling crosswinds of politics that summer—it came only one day after his triumphant walk down Woodward and the “dream” speech in Detroit.
By August, Franklin was uncomfortably stuck in the middle of all this and unable to find a way out. He greatly admired King and espoused nonviolence, and though he had his own problems with the NAACP his greater problem now was with his militant flank. He felt unjustly accused of being divisive and tried to tamp down criticism of the NAACP by Reverend Cleage and Del Rio. Cleage, angered by what he saw as Franklin’s capitulation to power, was notably absent from the August 2 meeting. It soon came out that he had resigned from the DCHR board of directors and affiliated himself with a new black nationalist organization, the Freedom Now Party. Franklin and Cleage had been working together on the idea of hosting a Northern Negro Leadership Conference in November but sharply disagreed over what it should entail. Franklin saw it is a northern version of King’s SCLC, but Cleage thought it should be more militant, less committed to nonviolence, and more closely aligned with Malcolm X. He wanted the conference to be open to all black groups who were interested.
According to a report of the dispute in Illustrated News, a 35,000- circulation newspaper affiliated with Cleage’s family, “Franklin was afraid it might be infiltrated by ‘black nationalists and other radical groups’ from the East who would hold positions on which he could not agree. ‘This must be prevented at all costs,’ he said. Franklin wanted to keep out the Freedom Now party because as chairman he could not ‘afford to be labeled as a black nationalist like Marcus Garvey.’ Rev. Cleage pointed out that he belonged to the Freedom Now party and had invited national leaders to the conference with approval of the board. Franklin said he could not consider black nationalism or criticism of the theory of nonviolence. He said he was disgusted by an article in [New York–based] Liberator magazine criticizing King’s philosophy and strategy. Cleage said the same fear of offending white people which crowded [the Walk to Freedom] platform with white liberals, labor leaders and politicians now forces it to repudiate the black revolution and its aspirations.”
Here was an early formulation of a dispute that would persist throughout the decade.
Almost beyond dispute was the rising talent of Reverend Franklin’s daughter Aretha. She was twenty-one now, old enough to sing in clubs, and came home from New York that August for a week-long appearance at the Club Stadium at Puritan and Wildemere, described as “northwest Detroit’s newest exciting show spot.” Aretha had married Ted White, a smooth-talking hustler-manager, and was a mother again (Ted Jr. was ten months old; she had had her first child as a young teenager in Detroit), and was telling everyone about how she loved to play golf with Ted and travel with him to her new favorite place, Beverly Hills, California. She was of Detroit, her music arose from the city and from her preacher father and the pitch of his hum, but she was not part of the city like her childhood friend Smokey Robinson. She recorded with Columbia, not Motown. C.L. knew the Gordy family, but he never felt that Berry Gordy Jr.’s enterprise was good enough for Aretha. Since winning DownBeat magazine’s new star award in 1961, she had operated in a different realm from the Motown artists, not selling as many records, not yet, but developing a style that went beyond pop. At Club Stadium she was trying out a new set of blues ballads that had fans lining the sidewalk outside, waiting to get in to listen to her sing.
• • •
In the days and weeks after the Walk to Freedom, Berry Gordy had spent many hours listening to King’s speech at the Motown studios on West Grand Boulevard. He knew a hit when he heard one, and he thought the “dream” might be a hit, with memorable lyrics delivered by a melodious and familiar voice. Motown technicians had recorded it live and were now producing it as an album. This was not a new idea. As early as September 1962, Esther Gordy Edwards had written to King proposing the “the possibility of recording some of your literary works, sermons, and speeches.” It was left to her brother now to work out the deal with the talent, and in this case Martin Luther King and his aides proved touchier to deal with than the most assertive Motown artists. Letters, telegrams, phone conversations—the negotiations went back and forth for weeks, involving everything from the wording of the liner notes to the royalty rates. Gordy considered King a friend and had been flattered months earlier by a warm note the civil rights leader had sent him after he had won a business award. “Your contribution as a purveyor of our culture is as important to the Freedom Movement as your creation of a sound financial institution for the employment of our people,” King had written. “May God continue to empower you with wisdom and energy for this service.” Words to make Gordy proud, but when it came to money and authority, there was still some haggling to be done.
“I became concerned when you called on Wednesday to raise some questions about the production of the album and about the royalty rates,” Gordy wrote to King’s SCLC aide, Wyatt Tee Walker, during the middle of the negotiations. “I can appreciate your concern about the quality of the album and I assure you that we share this concern. We had promised Reverend King forty cents on each album sold and an advance on 1,000 albums when they are released. If you investigate I am sure you will find this is a more than equitable arrangement. We are a growing record company and in the years since our founding we have built a reputation for integrity and a high quality of products. At the present time, we have single records an
d albums that are among the top-selling in the country.”
All to get around to the point that Gordy was not going to budge on the royalty rates. “If we expected a series of conferences on the rates, we would have started at a much lower rate and allowed room to bargain,” he argued, revealing his normal negotiating practice. “We gave you a straightforward, honest deal, considering all of the cost factors involved in producing the album. The starting rate of forty cents per album is the best rate we can give you and hope to realize a profit. Although we were motivated by messianic desires to do the album, as a business option we could not become involved in manufacturing an item of quality without expecting a profit.” That “messianic desire” was one of three considerations that inspired Gordy to produce the record, he acknowledged. “First, we felt that by releasing the album through our domestic and overseas distribution centers, we could make an additional contribution (we made a $500 donation at Cobo Hall) to the cause of human decency and build both Reverend King and the organization internationally; secondly, we wanted your album to be the first in a series of albums that our company will release on the freedom struggle; and finally, because we are an aggressive young company, we like to be the first with the best for commercial purposes.”
The contract was finally signed on August 5, with no change in the royalty rate. A few weeks later Gordy traveled to Atlanta to present the first copy of the album to King at a benefit concert staged in support of the March on Washington. He announced there that the record would be released on August 28, the day of the march, and was to be the first in what he called a Freedom series. “Realizing that in years to come, the Negro revolt of 1963 will take its place historically with the American Revolution and the Hungarian uprising we have elected to record the statements of the movement’s leaders,” Gordy said. “We are delighted that Reverend King’s Detroit speech is to be the first in the series.” Words and music from the big event in Washington might come next.
Detroit was already deeply involved in the March on Washington, with Motown playing its supporting musical role. Gordy was not an overtly political creature. He did not march or speak or lend his reputation to the movement in the same way that Harry Belafonte, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Dick Gregory, and other black entertainers did. As his letter to Wyatt Tee Walker made clear, he was not about to let anything override his business interests. Still, his contribution can be too casually dismissed. Historian Suzanne Smith makes the insightful point in Dancing in the Street that Gordy came closer to fulfilling the black nationalist ideal of self-sufficiency than many other blacks in the music industry who nonetheless are more often associated with movement authenticity. In his own orbit, Gordy did what he could do best: spread the word through recordings and encourage his artists to take part. Little Stevie Wonder, whose “Fingertips (Part 2)” had moved up to No. 1 on the national charts, was plucked from Gordy’s stable of singers to perform at an all-star fund-raising show in New York five days before the march. On the bill with him were Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Billy Eckstine, Tony Bennett, Ahmad Jamal, Carmen McRae, and Quincy Jones and his orchestra. Stevie was only twelve then, but his readiness to assist the March on Washington started a bond with Martin Luther King that would culminate exactly twenty years later with his prominent role in making King’s birthday a national holiday.
Proceeds from the New York event were to help transport people to Washington for the march. Detroit had its own sponsors, including the NAACP (in on this one from the beginning), the Detroit Council of Churches, the Detroit branch of the Congress on Racial Equality, the UAW, and the Trade Union Leadership Council. Reverend Hood and his Plymouth Congregational Church, who marched a hundred strong down Woodward, were assisting with the bus reservations. The UAW and TULC expected at least two thousand autoworkers to make the trip, along with another thousand or more from Detroit churches and civil rights organizations. Most would ride on a fleet of chartered buses or an overnight train that left Detroit at seven on the night of August 27 and arrived at Union Station in Washington a few hours before the event started.
Reuther and the UAW played a more central role in the March on Washington than they had in the Walk to Freedom. At the Detroit event, even though Reuther walked in the front row with King and delivered a speech at Cobo Hall, he was only tangentially involved in the organizing and was not made to feel welcome by Reverend Cleage and the black militant wing of the DCHR. Like many politicians, his status on the national stage was perhaps greater than among the locals. He and his union were also important to King’s nonviolent coalition, both in bringing white support and in funneling money and resources to the cause.
In Detroit it took an after-hours drinking session at the TULC bar to persuade Franklin that Reuther deserved a place in the program, but for the Washington march he and the UAW were there from the start. His mission was much the same in both cases: to broaden the coalition and try to ensure that the march remained peaceful and did not alienate mainstream whites or members of Congress who might support the pending legislation. One key decision that Reuther influenced, working through Jack Conway, his longtime aide, was to move the rally from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, a setting that at once was farther removed from the lawmakers and provided a less threatening and more inclusive historical resonance. A key factor in persuading leaders of the march to agree to the move was that Reuther (using funds from the AFL-CIO’s Industrial Unions Department, which he headed) agreed to pay the nearly $19,000 it cost for a sound system that could be heard over the vast expanse of the reflecting pool below the Lincoln Memorial steps. Here was another example of how Detroit served as the movement’s bank during that crucial summer.
Reuther had wanted the entire AFL-CIO to endorse the march, but George Meany opposed the idea and led a resounding vote against it at an executive council meeting held on August 12. The most Meany would do was issue a release saying the union supported civil rights legislation and that individual unions could act on their own if they wanted to participate. No love lost between Reuther and Meany, ever, and here again was cause for their rupture to go public. Meany’s endorsement, Reuther said, “was so weak that they will have to give it a blood transfusion to keep it alive long enough to mimeograph it.” Several large unions, including the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, did participate, but none more than the UAW, whose leadership virtually moved en masse from Solidarity House in Detroit to a honeycomb of hotel rooms in downtown Washington to work with the coalition of march organizers.
Earlier that year, in April, Reuther had sent a straight wire to President Kennedy urging him to withdraw all federal funding from Mississippi on the grounds that the “constitutional guarantees and rights of so many citizens are being openly and flagrantly violated” by the state’s policies of segregation. In July, when he testified before the House Judiciary Committee on the civil rights bill, he spoke out against any form of compromise, saying, “If you compromise one principle in this bill, if you weaken it one scintilla, you will have failed a nation urgently looking to you for leadership.” Those were two of several instances where Reuther went farther in his aggressiveness than the White House was willing to go. But his philosophy of social change relied on the use of government power for the public good, and he was generally careful not to stray too far from the Kennedys. In the final hours before the Washington rally, he essentially served as their agent in tamping down the rhetoric of one key speaker, John Lewis, president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. A draft of Lewis’s speech found its way to Bobby Kennedy’s Justice Department and Reuther’s UAW staff the night before the event and set off alarms in both places. In the draft of his speech, Lewis disparaged Washington as a place of “cheap political leaders who build their careers on immoral compromises,” dismissed the civil rights legislation as too little too late, and declared, “If any radical social, political, and economic changes are to take place in our society, the people, the masses, must bring them about.” To Reu
ther, as he explained later to his UAW leadership, it sounded as though the SNCC chairman was “calling for open revolution.”
The rhetoric was unacceptable to mainstream white religious leaders who had been brought into the coalition. When Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle, the archbishop of Washington, saw a copy of Lewis’s draft, he said he would not perform the invocation. Reuther forced the issue at a meeting with King and other march leaders on the morning of the march, saying, as he later recalled, “If John Lewis feels strongly that he wants to make this speech, he can go someplace else and make it, but he has no right to make it here because if he tries to make it he destroys the integrity of our coalition. . . . This is just immoral and he has no right to do it and I demand a vote right now because I have got to call the archbishop.” To say that Lewis capitulated would be an overstatement. His speech remained strong and scathing of the establishment, but it was softened just enough that O’Boyle relented, and in the end the day was remembered not for any friction but for King’s dream, the enriched version of what he had said in Detroit.
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