Parting the Waters

by Taylor Branch

  By morning, Montgomery was saturated with talk of the scandal. Every undisputed detail of the story—the hatchet-waving chase out of the church and down a city street in broad daylight—was so spectacular and so irretrievably public as to let loose a torrent of gossip on the most taboo of subjects, sex and the clergy. Davis, known to nearly every Negro in town as “Big Two,” a nickname of obscure origins, had been the star halfback on the Alabama State football team a few years earlier. After college, he had served a hitch in the Air Force, and had just returned home to become a schoolteacher. His career pattern placed him squarely in Montgomery’s Negro middle class, but many doubted that his personality was suited to the decorum expected of a teacher. “Big Two” had a reputation for flamboyance, womanizing, and fits of jealousy. Many re membered his famous reply to a request by his Alabama State coach that he give up an extravagant romance in order to conserve his strength for football. “Hey, she’s giving me a house and a car,” Davis was said to have told the coach. “What are you doing for me?” For this sort of attitude, Davis was appreciated as a character, but not taken too seriously, certainly in comparison with a preacher of Abernathy’s stature. This weighed against the credibility of his accusation. On the other hand, he was precisely the kind of person who, if he believed someone was cuckolding him, might do something as crazy as a hatchet-and-gun assault inside the city’s oldest Negro Baptist church.

  Some years later, King confided to a colleague that he not only had known of Abernathy’s extramarital liaisons in Montgomery but had joined in some of them himself. This confession, if true, dated King’s own infidelities back to his tenure in Montgomery, and thus the Davis scandal must have touched some of the deepest secrets and most piercing fears in his own life.

  Early on the morning of September 3, King went to the Montgomery Recorder’s Court at city hall for the preliminary hearing in the Davis case. The courtroom was jammed by a predominantly Negro crowd, with lines of jostling would-be spectators backed up through the corridors and onto the sidewalk. Inside, a white judge tried to preserve order and a white prosecutor prepared to outline a case brimming with salacious facts, while the audience waited eagerly to hear what the Negro antagonists would say about each other under oath, in a contest that pitted Montgomery’s only two Negro lawyers against each other. Abernathy, although formally a prosecution witness, had retained Fred Gray to defend him against Davis’ anticipated testimony, and Davis had hired Charles Langford to defend him against the criminal charges. King and Coretta, arriving just behind the Abernathys at the courtroom, found that policemen would admit only Abernathy, who waved a subpoena commanding him to appear. “I’m waiting to see my lawyer, Fred Gray,” King told a police sergeant, hoping Gray could get them a seat inside.

  “If you don’t get the hell out of here, you’re going to need a lawyer,” said the sergeant.

  When King peered into the courtroom to see if Gray was coming to help, the sergeant’s patience snapped. “Okay, boy, you done done it now,” he said, and beckoned to two officers. They seized King roughly from behind, shoving him toward the door. Negro bystanders gasped in horror at the sudden violent treatment of King, which only made the officers tighten their grip. On tenterhooks as they manhandled King down the corridor, the policemen snarled at Coretta not to make a sound of protest: “Just nod your head, and you’ll go to jail, too.”

  A photographer walking toward city hall happened upon an extraordinary scene of King—wearing a gold wristwatch, a tan suit, and a broad-banded snap-brim fedora—grimacing in pain as one policeman pushed him forward and the other twisted his right arm so far around that his hand was positioned behind his shoulder. A procession of Negroes followed in the distance, as the news of what was happening to King drained some of the people and much of the interest from Judge Loe’s courtroom. The photographer kept clicking his shutter as the policemen pushed King up the steps of the police station and pinioned his shoulder to the booking desk. One of them shouted that King was charged with loitering. Minutes later, back in the holding cells and out of the camera’s sight, one of the policemen reached inside King’s shirt collar from behind and pulled backward, choking him while the other officer searched him. Then one put a foot into King’s back and shoved him into an empty cell. King tried to compose himself as he wondered what would happen next. He was grateful when a lieutenant he knew walked by and said quietly that he would not allow anybody to bother King while he was there.

  Allowed soon thereafter to post bond pending trial, King walked out of the police station to find his wife and friends amid a large crowd of supporters, some of them weeping. He addressed them briefly from the steps, saying that he would continue to stand up for the right to be treated fairly, “even if it means further arrest, or even physical death.” Then he told the crowd to go in peace, that he was all right. There was talk of a mass meeting. It was a scene reminiscent of the bus boycott, and the spectators experienced a return of that era’s sensory overload. The news soon arrived from the courtroom that Vivian Davis had stood significantly at her husband’s side. Convicted and fined $25 on her own disorderly conduct charge, she indicated to the court that she would support Edward Davis’ plea of not guilty by reason of provocation. Abernathy, summoned to speak, confirmed that Davis had made the accusations but said they were not true. The judge scheduled for November a full trial on the disputed facts.

  To outside news organizations, the Davis trial was at once steamy, murky, legally perilous, and an unimportant local story. What moved instantly on the news wires were photographs and stories of King’s arrest, which struck with such speedy impact that the next day’s Advertiser carried the text of Roy Wilkins’ outraged telegram from New York. International wire services also picked up the photographs, and messages from everywhere began pouring into Montgomery in volume not seen since the mass arrests two and a half years earlier. The MIA’s executive board convened more or less continuously in special session. King met with roving caucuses of his closest advisers to discuss how he should react to his anticipated conviction.

  Early the next morning, King was quickly tried, convicted, and sentenced to pay a fine of $14 or serve fourteen days in jail. After the pronouncement of the sentence, Fred Gray informed a clearly startled Judge Loe that King elected to serve out the time. King rose briefly to confirm his decision. When the judge agreed to receive a full explanation of his reasons, Abernathy supplied a copy of a prepared text. In tone and substance, King’s statement bore a striking resemblance to Gandhi’s famous declaration before Justice Broomfield on March 18, 1922, in Ahmedabad, during Gandhi’s first (and last) trial by a British court in India. “Your Honor, you have no doubt rendered a decision which you believe to be just and right,” King began. “…My action is motivated by the impelling voice of conscience.”

  The courtroom buzzed in reaction to King’s decision. Reporters and spectators clamored for copies of the statement, which Abernathy handed out freely. Together with Coretta, Abernathy then made his way to the street, where a large crowd voiced disappointment over not seeing King himself. Abernathy tried to explain why King was not coming, but the police would not allow him to make a speech. Abernathy then shouted out, “Let’s walk to Dexter!” This march of seven blocks to King’s church had been planned to recapture the old “walking city” spirit of the boycott, and Abernathy was as expansive in that role as he had been subdued two days earlier. He presided over an impromptu mass meeting of testimonials to King, including one from Coretta, then announced plans for MIA members to maintain a vigil outside the city jail in continuous shifts throughout the fourteen days of King’s sentence.

  These solemn plans contributed to what was later called a logistical comedy. Back at city hall, King sat in the holding area making friends with his fellow defendants of the day who were heading for jail, but when the paddy wagon pulled up to transport the first load, an officer barred King from entering. Nonplussed, King went back to the holding pen and waited for a second group to ac
cumulate, only to be turned away again. This time, he was told to go home—someone had paid his fine. King insisted that there had been a mistake. He questioned people back up through the court hierarchy until he finally protested to Judge Loe himself in chambers, saying that he wished to serve the time. Shrugging, the judge replied that he was powerless to change the fact that an anonymous person had paid the $14. Locked out instead of in, King soon found himself standing outside city hall alone—blocked from entering the same forbidding place outside town that had so terrified him after his first arrest, and frightened him still. Now, somewhat deflated by the role reversal, he rushed to the Dexter meeting but arrived too late. The crowd had dispersed to take up the vigil outside the jail. Meanwhile, back at city hall, reporters finally cornered Police Commissioner Clyde Sellers with reports that it was he who had paid King’s fine. Sellers admitted it. He had paid the fine out of his own pocket, he declared, to save the taxpayers the expense of feeding King for fourteen days. Calling King’s courtroom statement “just another publicity stunt,” Sellers quipped that King was trying to boost sales of his forthcoming book.

  The mass meeting that night at Bethel Baptist Church drew five hundred people—a modest crowd by boycott standards, but a sizable one given the day’s confusion. Laughing uproariously at word that Sellers had paid the fine, the crowd showed good news sense, as the novelty of a Southern police commissioner paying the debts of a Negro he plainly loathed, just to keep him out of jail, featured prominently in news accounts about King’s decision to choose a jail sentence over a minor fine. The laughter relieved an otherwise grim mood about racially skewered measures of Alabama justice. People at the mass meeting told of seeing the officer nearly break King’s arm, and of other brutalities rumored and real, and their impact was magnified by King’s extraordinary emotional bond with his MIA supporters. Even the Edward Davis case folded into this emotional solidarity. Charles Langford was withdrawing as defense counsel, leaving Davis to substitute the white lawyer who had represented the city of Montgomery during the boycott. The chemistry of the case was being realigned so that Davis was perceived to be the lone stooge allied with the prosecutor, the judge, and other white powers against Abernathy, the victim. At the mass meeting, the crowd gave Abernathy a standing vote of confidence without dissent. King rose shortly thereafter to deliver a speech of passion and yearning tinged with self-reproach. “I am happy that I could suffer just a little bit,” he declared. “I am happy that I could suffer…It makes me feel a closer part of you.”

  Illustrious preachers in King’s world took a more professional view of the tribulation. A few days later, at the National Baptist Convention in Detroit, J. Raymond Henderson cornered both Abernathy and King for serious pastoral counseling. Henderson, who had been Daddy King’s first rival at Wheat Street twenty-seven years earlier, and who of late had brought money and support to the bus boycotters, feared that the famous young preachers did not appreciate the degree of their risk. His first night back home in Los Angeles, worries about them kept Henderson from sleeping, and before dawn he wrote a letter to each of them warning against a host of dangers—plots, tax scandals, violence, and especially the “damning influence” of women. “They themselves too often delight in the satisfaction they get out of affairs with men of unusual prominence,” Henderson wrote King. “Enemies are not above using them to a man’s detriment. White women can be lures. You must exercise more than care. You must be vigilant indeed.” Henderson wrote with a sense of urgency, calling King “a marked man” and recommending that he move himself and his family out of Montgomery. He was friendly, even tender, and yet hard-headed. His letter ignored a preacher’s Christian duties, let alone the feelings of the women who might be hurt. All its warnings looked narrowly to the issue of King’s public reputation.

  King flew to New York to celebrate the publication of Stride Toward Freedom, which marked the end of a literary ordeal. He sent autographed books to Eisenhower, Nixon, Chief Justice Warren, Harry Truman, and Reinhold Niebuhr, and asked Stanley Levison to send complimentary copies to a number of other prominent people—including Dwight Macdonald, George Meany, Helen Gahagan Douglas, and Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor emeritus of the Riverside Church—and to assorted preachers, congressmen, and the members of the new Civil Rights Commission. Harris Wofford, who finished reading his copy on the day he saw news photographs of King being manhandled by Montgomery police, wrote Levison that the segregationists might make a bestseller of a book Wofford found too tepid.

  On September 17, King promoted the book in New York, appearing live on network television with Dave Garroway of the “Today” show. That weekend he appeared at Blumstein’s department store in Harlem to inscribe buyers’ copies. It was an unusual book-signing party in that Blumstein’s did not sell books. King was set up behind a desk in the back of the shoe department. To this rather humble setting flocked a number of New York’s civic leaders, mostly Negroes and Jews, nearly all of them dressed smartly in their best clothes, hats, and jewels. A photographer hired by King’s publisher had just taken a picture of NAACP president Arthur Spingarn standing next to King and was steering others into position when a woman wearing baubly earrings, sequined spectacles, and a blue raincoat stepped out from the milling crowd of some fifty people. “Is this Martin Luther King?” she asked.

  “Yes, it is,” King replied easily, as though greeting a fan.

  The woman’s hand came from under her raincoat and flashed in an arc. King reflexively yanked his arm up just enough for the razor-sharp blade to cut his left hand as it plunged deep into his chest. A quick-witted woman next to King knocked the attacker’s fist from the handle before she could pull it out for a second stab. The attacker stepped back, making no effort to flee, and shouted, “I’ve been after him for six years! I’m glad I done it!”

  Her shriek cracked the instant of silence. Pandemonium erupted with shouts of “Grab her!” and “What happened?” rising above the grunts of those trying to subdue the woman, who was spitting out shrill obscenities about King and the NAACP. Nettie Carter Jackson, Grand Daughter Ruler of the Elks and one of the sponsors of the promotion, spoke sharply to those whose attention was riveted on King. “Don’t touch that knife!” she ordered. Its hilt protruded from King’s chest at a point a few inches below and to the left of the knot in his tie. King sat down in the chair behind him. “That’s all right,” he said in a stony calm. “That’s all right. Everything is going to be all right.” Nettie Jackson told him to hush, he should not talk. Then, as security guards hustled the attacker outside to the police and the screams and shouts died down, Jackson daubed the blood from the minor wound on King’s left hand. A score of bystanders who had nothing else to do with their residual panic concentrated furiously on her every movement.

  Forty-five minutes later, police detectives escorted the attacker—now identified as Izola Ware Curry, a forty-two-year-old native of a tiny Georgia town called Adrian—into the emergency room of Harlem Hospital, where King lay waiting on a gurney with the blade still in his chest. Fearing that he might die of the stab wound, the detectives wanted to get his identification of the woman on record. They negotiated successfully with the nervous doctors and then maneuvered the woman cautiously within King’s view. Before he could speak, Curry cried out, “That’s him! I’ll report him to my lawyers!” She stood rigidly erect and haughty, proud as a queen. Such behavior worsened the detectives’ other fear—that they might lose their criminal case to the asylum. Curry had been raving incoherently about persecution and torture and her anger at King for having undermined her Roman Catholic faith. If she was a loony, the detectives knew, she was a dangerous one. A police matron had discovered a fully loaded Italian automatic inside her blouse. King, still calm and lucid though growing weaker, identified Curry before she was hustled off again.

  King was still awaiting treatment an hour later when New York governor Averell Harriman, then in the heat of a losing reelection contest against Nelson Rockefeller, arrive
d at Harlem Hospital. As Harriman patted the victim softly on the hand, King gamely assured him that everything would be all right. The delay, Harriman learned from the doctors, was caused by the critical position of the blade, which X rays showed to be lodged between the heart and a lung. A team of surgeons was being assembled to remove it. The governor waited in the corridors more than four hours, until doctors advised him that the delicate surgery had been successful. They had to remove two ribs and portions of King’s breastbone before they could safely extract the instrument. It had grazed the aorta, they said. One of the surgeons later told King that even a sneeze could have punctured the aorta and killed him.