Parting the Waters

by Taylor Branch

  The speech before the enormous assembly of AFL-CIO delegates fulfilled several complementary objectives of King’s recent past. It was a coup for him—an honored forum at the pinnacle of the labor movement—and a welcome sign of recovery from his private disaster at Kansas City. The Alabama libel case against the SCLC and The New York Times lent an urgent practicality to King’s speeches to organized labor. Having spent more than $27,000 in the early appeals stage of that case, with much larger expenses ahead, he stressed to labor groups that a loss in the Supreme Court would threaten to cripple union organizing as well as civil rights. If the judgment was sustained, he warned, no union leaflet or fund-raising appeal would be safe from a libel suit, especially in the hostile South. Using this theme of common defense, King had recruited a group of labor specialists headed by New York lawyer Theodore Kheel. Stanley Levison, who hoped that King could begin to join the power of a rejuvenated labor movement to the cause of civil rights, was excited enough to write King’s speech for him and then follow him to Miami to witness the result.

  “Negroes are almost entirely a working people,” King said. “There are pitifully few Negro millionaires and few Negro employers.” He likened the sit-ins to the pioneer sit-down strikes of the 1930s. Chiding the labor delegates gently for their persecution of Randolph, he summoned them to “admit these shameful conditions” of segregation within unions and to “root out vigorously every manifestation of discrimination…. I am aware that this is not easy nor popular,” he conceded, “but the eight-hour day was not popular nor easy to achieve” either. Nor were child labor acts or minimum wage laws. “Out of such struggle for democratic rights you own both economic gains and the respect of the country,” said King, “and you will win both again if you make Negro rights a great crusade.”

  It was a “white” speech, restrained and formal, but by then he had long since disarmed a skeptical, even hostile audience. The huge assembly of meatcutters, pipefitters, carpenters, and steelworkers came to their feet as in the old days. Gone for a moment were the dull pension plan reports and the wage increase targets, replaced by an orator who revived the energy of a less bureaucratic era. Some of the Negro unionists, who had quarreled bitterly with George Meany earlier that day, wept openly in the hall. Everyone knew instantly that this was not the ordinary beer chaser of a speech; King had budged the center of gravity of organized labor, with all its political tonnage. Among professional politicians, the AFL-CIO speech was received as the most important development concerning King since his Time cover in 1957 and his Atlanta arrest just before the 1960 election. Such events stretched King’s influence beyond his given constituency. Even those analysts inclined to minimize the significance of the Negro vote now had to consider King’s demonstrable impact on organized labor.

  His speech was a minor news item of the day, far behind Eichmann’s conviction in Jerusalem, President Kennedy’s departure for South America, riots in the Congo, and Zulu chief Albert Luthuli’s acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize in Stockholm.* Also that day, two U.S. Army helicopter units landed in South Vietnam as the first overt American participants in that country’s war against Viet Minh guerrillas. For King, none of these events matched the immediacy of a news story that appeared on his television the night he returned home from the Bal Harbour convention: he saw long lines of Negroes marching through the rain in Albany, Georgia, two hundred miles south of Atlanta. He immediately called Ralph Abernathy, who was freshly reunited with him in Atlanta, installed at his church across town on the prestigious West Side. Knowing that Abernathy was a friend of Rev. E. James Grant (who had grown up a member of First Baptist in Montgomery, and had joined King as a speaker for Abernathy’s testimonial in November), King asked whether Abernathy could find out what was behind the events in Albany. Abernathy was already talking with Grant, and also with Albany Movement president William G. Anderson, who had been a college friend at Alabama State. Anderson had been an aspiring disc jockey in those days, Abernathy recalled, but he was a good talker. Abernathy promised to scout Albany by phone.

  Late Wednesday night, those leaders of the Albany Movement who were not in jail gathered in a private home following the mass meeting. After two consecutive days of mass arrests, the strain showed beneath their excitement as they discussed what to do next. Of the three hundred still in jail, every leader knew at least a dozen who were desperate to get out to preserve their jobs, their sanity, or the cohesion of their families. But the two hundred already released on $100 cash bonds had soaked up nearly all the loose cash in Negro Albany. No one knew how to get the others out. On another front, an effective boycott of both the downtown merchants and the city bus line now supported the Albany Movement’s demands, but the leaders doubted their ability to organize alternative transportation during a money crisis. In short, many of them confessed that they were amateurs in the protest business, and they proposed to seek the help of those who had engineered the legendary victories. Dr. Anderson, seconded enthusiastically by Bernard Lee, suggested Martin Luther King and the SCLC. The local NAACP president suggested Roy Wilkins and the NAACP. No one thought to suggest SNCC, because much of SNCC’s national staff was already there. Besides, everyone knew that SNCC lacked the money to keep its volunteers in regular bus fare and doughnut money.

  Under pressure of this dilemma, the Albany Movement that night began to twist into political knots. James Forman, recently bailed out of jail, spoke against the idea of inviting King to Albany, saying they already had a strong “people’s movement” that could only be weakened by a preacher of such renown. People would look to King as a messiah, and less to themselves. Charles Jones remained silent, knowing that such objections to King would sound petty and arcane to this group of fervent admirers. He also sensed a sharp edge of competitiveness against King glinting through Forman’s speech. C. B. King chided Forman for exactly that reason, saying that the real question was not King’s alleged demerits but whether the Albany leaders were in over their heads, as he believed. Albany Movement secretary Marion Page spoke up to say that he was against inviting King or any other outsiders to town. This was the same argument that Page still used against the SNCC workers, but now Page joined Forman to oppose King as a newer newcomer than SNCC. A sturdy, conservative retired railroad postman, Page told the group that it took a long time to learn how to grow the distinctively flavored Albany potato, and that they should be patient with their own soil. Over his objections, a motion to appeal for King’s help by telegram passed overwhelmingly.

  Mayor Kelley summoned his courage the next morning to ride out into the fields of a Baker County plantation in search of Governor Vandiver. Apologizing profusely for barging in on the gubernatorial bird-hunting party, Kelley said that the emergency left him no choice but to ask for the immediate dispatch of a National Guard unit to deter or quell race rioting in his city. More confidentially, he asked Vandiver to send in undercover revenue agents—the whiskey boys—to infiltrate the angry white groups known to be meeting in the outlying counties. If one of them shot a demonstrator, Kelley warned, it might set off the powder keg. When Vandiver reluctantly agreed, the mayor stopped by his house and told his wife to go with their children up to their weekend place on Lake Blackshear, and to stay there until advised that it was safe to come home. From city hall, Kelley introduced himself by telephone to Burke Marshall at the Justice Department in Washington. The two men exchanged anxious variations on the same theme—no violence, no federal intervention.

  At Shiloh, where committees of women were working to send food caravans to the various jails, rumors of violence climaxed with a visitor’s report that Sheriff Z. T. “Zeke” Mathews had beaten Charles Sherrod in the Terrell County jail. This news caused a panic, on top of five consecutive days of arrests. Emissaries of the Albany Movement took their alarm to Chief Pritchett, who surprised them with an offer to exhibit Sherrod to them in person. The Thursday mass meeting swelled to a large crowd by late afternoon. This was the heart of the movement, pumping spirit a
nd information through Negro Albany. A constant flow of runners moved in and out of the church, and speakers and singers streamed to the front in an endless series. One burly layman stood among his family to speak out loud from his pew:

  We pray, oh Lord

  That oppression will end

  That domination will end

  That prejudice will cease.

  Thou who

  Overruled the Pharaohs

  Overruled the Babylonians

  Overruled the Greeks and Romans

  You alone is God

  Always have been God

  God in man

  God in love.

  May our suffering help us.

  For the Lord is my shepherd

  I shall not want

  He maketh me to lie down…

  The crowd joined spontaneously to complete the Twenty-third Psalm. Then someone rose to sing a hymn, followed by young people with stories of joyous suffering in jail. Suddenly, a muffled commotion interrupted the proceedings. Charles Sherrod appeared in the back of the church, then was hustled solicitously to the front.

  “Did they beat you up?” called a voice that spoke for the crowd.

  “No. They slapped me a couple of times,” said Sherrod, answered by groans of relief mixed with pain. “It cut my lip. A man named Zeke…[wanted] no singing or demonstrations in that jail.”

  “Did you pray?” someone called.

  “I prayed to myself,” Sherrod replied, to murmurs of approval. “I answered him ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ I didn’t put a handle on it. He wanted me to say ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no, sir.’ I was not badly beaten. I was struck twice in the face while under arrest.”

  The crowd learned that Sherrod had appeared on a gentleman’s agreement with Chief Pritchett. Soon he left for the Albany jail in the custody of the officers who had been waiting outside. When he was gone, a man in the crowd was moved to speak. “It is a funny thing,” he said. “As much hell as we’ve caught here in Albany, I still love it. It’s home. I love to fish, to pick the magnolias, to pick blueberries. I love peanuts. I like pecans.”

  Elsewhere in the city, some 150 National Guardsmen gathered in the armory on stand-by alert that night, and indirect negotiations continued by caucus and messenger relay. City officials, who refused to bargain directly with Negroes, worked through the buffer of three white private citizens, who themselves refused the social risk of sitting down in the same room with the Negroes. Other factors impeding this cumbersome arrangement included a pronounced slipperiness of language. To the Albany Movement’s demand for compliance with the ICC desegregation ruling, the white negotiators replied that the city already respected the ruling and had made arrests only under laws protecting the public order. From there, the two sides debated riddles of definition, precedent, and jurisdiction before adjourning late in the night. Marion Page announced that there would be no further demonstrations “as long as the other side keeps the faith.”

  Friday, December 16, brought the first morning in a week without marches or arrests. The Albany Movement leaders found that the spirit of the mass meeting was difficult to preserve. Their people were in jail, losing jobs. Reaching for a settlement, they sent through their negotiators the mildest four-part proposal they could tolerate: (1) free, unfettered use of the bus and train facilities by Negroes beginning thirty days hence; (2) acceptance by the city of property bonds instead of cash, which would enable those already out of jail to get refunds, and would make it possible to secure the release of the others; (3) appointment by the city of a biracial commission to discuss, without precondition, other aspects of segregation in Albany; (4) a permanent moratorium on demonstrations. As time dragged on without a response to this package, fears grew that it was so weak as to encourage the whites to filibuster in the hope that the Albany Movement would collapse.

  Into these anxieties arrived midday news that Slater King had been beaten in the Albany jail. Songs went up for him at Shiloh. The Albany Movement pulled its trio from the negotiations pending inquiry, and the roving corps of reporters soon intercepted Chief Pritchett as he darted between Shiloh and city hall. It seemed that Slater King had refused his food, Pritchett reported, whereupon the jailer had shoved him so roughly back into his cell as to bang his head into the bars. The injury was not serious, Pritchett added, but he had recommended that the jailer be fired. “I don’t want a man like that in my jail,” he said. Negotiations resumed after he allowed Albany Movement representatives to verify his story with Slater King, but the mood at Shiloh stiffened in spite of some kind words for Pritchett as an honorable adversary. Everyone knew Slater King. No one could understand exactly why the Albany Movement’s settlement proposal did not insist upon his release. Nor, on reflection, could anyone satisfactorily explain why their settlement would acquiesce in the permanent suspension of the two Albany State students. Their proposal now seemed supine, and the negotiators amended it by letter that day to include college reinstatements and a pardon for Slater King.

  Albany Movement president Anderson perceived that his biggest enemy was not the chaos at hand but the heavy silence of time. Pressure kept driving him to call his friend Abernathy in Atlanta. They urgently needed a commitment from Dr. King, he said. Their movement would stand or fall on their ability to convince official Albany that the Negroes had the will to sustain even more arrests if their settlement conditions were spurned. King’s presence, like nothing else, could lift the Negroes and shake some sense into the whites. Anderson made his case to Abernathy and to King himself when King returned from a speech in New Orleans, stressing that it had to be that day, that night, or it would be too late.

  McCree Harris made her decision as soon as the rumor reached her inside Monroe High School. She dismissed her Latin class early and slipped into Shiloh just after three o’clock, making sure she would have a seat when Martin Luther King appeared at eight.

  The ensuing clash lasted only seventy-two hours. A little more than a year after flying north from Reidsville State Prison on the eve of the Kennedy-Nixon election, King headed south from Atlanta toward Albany. Abernathy and Wyatt Walker were with him again, along with the regional NAACP director, Ruby Hurley. In Albany, congestion slowed their approach to the mass meeting. More than fifteen hundred people packed both Shiloh and Mount Zion to the rafters. Because the speakers of the hastily rigged sound system had been placed facing Mount Zion, everyone knew that King would first appear at Shiloh, and some of the Mount Zion congregation were hanging out the windows to catch sight of him. Parked cars were jammed up on the curbs for blocks around. A small fleet of police cars occupied a parking lot next to Shiloh. The officers were not directing traffic or providing any obvious service, although their presence may have deterred a few carloads of hostile whites circling the area. To the congregations, the police seemed to be lurking in surveillance. Any Negro who responded to the occasional beckonings from the police officers drew suspicion as a possible informant.

  The singing held everything together, even the two churches, which swayed in time to the same song, sending only a heartbeat of an echo back and forth across Whitney Avenue. King’s progress through the nearby streets seemed to pass by conduction upstream through a river of sound. When his group emerged from the cars, the singing was a freeform spiritual chant to the tune of “Amen”:

  FREE—DOM

  FREE—DOM

  FREE—DOM, FREE—DOM, FREE—DOM!

  As the party entered the church and King was sighted on his way down to the pulpit, the sound exploded into cascades of rapture:

  Martin King says freedom

  Martin King says freedom

  Martin King says FREE—DOM

  FREE—DOM FREE—DOM!

  Let the white man say freedom

  Let the white man say freedom

  Let the white man say FREE—DOM

  FREE—DOM FREE—DOM!

  Then, toward the end of a verse, Rutha Harris of the Freedom Singers, the group formed in Sherrod’s workshops, mov
ed to the center of the platform and the din ceased abruptly, just in time for her overpowering contralto to switch songs:

  I woke up this morning with my mind

  And above the faint echo of Mount Zion, which could be heard making the transition in the background, the crowd finished her line:

  SET ON FREEDOM.

  I woke up this morning with my mind

  SET ON FREEDOM.

  Three times she led them in this call and response, and then they all raised the one-word chorus:

  HALLELU—HALLELU—HALLELUJAH!

  The verses kept rolling forth until without signal the sound collapsed all at once into silence. Pious souls would maintain long afterward that they thought the Lord Himself had arrived, so awed were they. More skeptical observers were hardly less stupefied. Pat Watters, a newly arrived Atlanta Journal reporter, was so undone by his first exposure to a Negro mass meeting that he scribbled notes furiously to keep hold of himself. For posterity, he later wrote on the cover of his notebook: “Includes the night Dr. King entered the church.”

  King began slowly and sonorously with points about the relevance of the concurrent independence movement in Africa. He told the crowd that time was neutral to the history of moral causes. They could not sit back and wait for an inevitable march of progress—it was possible for race relations to hurtle backward, as Chief Luthuli said South Africa had done since the creation of apartheid in 1948. Democratic morality was nothing more or less than what they made of it, and it was an internal as well as an external state. He went on to draw his usual distinctions between love and justice, between changed hearts and regulated behavior, and then to describe nonviolence as the application of Christian ethics to worldly politics. The lecture had the effect of dampening the mood of the crowd. It established a sober atmosphere of history and great responsibility before King wound to the purpose of the suffering in Albany. “They can put you in a dungeon and transform you to glory,” he said. “If they try to kill you, develop a willingness to die.”