Parting the Waters

by Taylor Branch

  Tormented, Wachtel said he had always admired King, but now, having heard him speak, he was resolved to recapture the idealism of his youth and the respect of his daughter: he would resign from Rapid-American. And he would make a splash. He would give a public statement denouncing the hypocrisy of the Northern variety-store owners. “If you say the word,” he told King emotionally, “I will fall on my sword.”

  King hesitated only a moment. “I don’t think you should do that,” he said quietly. “You can’t leave a spot like that for a flare.” He said he was sure Wachtel could help the civil rights movement more where he was than out on the street, and Wachtel, immensely relieved to be spared from career suicide, soon offered as a first step to give King some money. “I’d like to make a contribution of $7,000,” he said, pulling out his checkbook. He asked for the name of the SCLC’s tax-exempt branch.

  “We don’t have one,” King admitted. “We ask people who are worried to give through my church.”

  Wachtel frowned in surprise. He explained why he thought this was dangerous, and listed some people he knew in Washington who could help King get an exemption. It would be easy. King should form a foundation to promote the less controversial aspects of the SCLC’s work. Before Wachtel got very far, King asked whether Wachtel himself might undertake such a project. Not only would he be happy to do so, Wachtel replied, but he did not think any lawyer could do it better.

  “You see there?” said a smiling King. “You’ve already found something you can do.” Wachtel fairly exploded with enthusiasm as he and King fell into discussion of the newly born project, talking of “the foundation” as though it existed already. When King asked whether it might safely raise funds for the Sullivan appeal, which he said was “floating between nowhere,” Wachtel replied that this would be an ideal purpose. In fact, he added, he had some ideas about the Sullivan defense as well, and if King agreed, he would be happy to have his firm work on the case.

  Wachtel jumped swiftly into King’s acquaintance. He and Levison were destined to be paired for years as King’s twin Jewish lawyers. In later years, it became a running joke among the SCLC’s Southern staff that no one could tell them apart. They went in and out of harmony with each other, but Levison actively encouraged Wachtel’s relationship with King because he knew that Wachtel opened new and larger worlds. Whereas Levison knew a host of union officials, ideologues, and activists from the American Jewish Congress, Wachtel knew how to get high government officials on the phone and how to touch corporate officers for five-figure donations to B’nai B’rith. He was big time.

  Twenty-four hours after Levison praised Wachtel in an April 10 talk with King, a summary of the wiretapped conversation was placed on the desk of FBI Director Hoover. “Who is he?” Hoover asked tersely about Wachtel, and his curiosity sent Bureau officials scrambling to investigate. This question and all that brought it to being—the wiretaps, the investigations, the acute political sensitivity that caused the FBI Director himself to spend time scanning these wiretap summaries—were products of a side to King’s life that was clandestine even to him.

  From the point of view of the technicians and supervisors on the Levison surveillance, the operation of the bugs in particular was a painful chore. Unlike wiretaps, for which recorders could be activated automatically by phone calls, the bugs required continuous human monitoring. The sounds could be loud or maddeningly faint, depending on how far away Levison happened to be from the microphones in his wall, and the monitors faced the disadvantage that his visitors, being in each other’s physical presence, did not identify themselves the way callers tended to do on the telephone. It was tedious work. The Bureau’s stringent reporting rules obliged the monitors to make time-keyed notations of every sound they heard—even coughs, rustling papers, and chairs scraping across the floor. If the office was silent, this fact itself had to be recorded at regular intervals. Nothing could be overlooked, as someone might find it to be a clue. Each shift of monitors had to distinguish the various voices customarily heard in Levison’s office. They quickly learned to recognize Levison, his secretary, and the regular run of business visitors and gossipers. In time they learned that the “Clarence” who stopped in to talk politics on many afternoons was Clarence Jones, who had grown close to Levison in King’s service since moving back to New York from California. They discovered that “Jack” was Jack O’Dell. The supervisors expressed special interest in what these two discussed with Levison, as Bureau records showed that Jones had a suspicious political background and that O’Dell was an outright Communist. These two names were investigative coups. Their conversations with Levison went to FBI headquarters by red-flag express for analysis of Communist Party influence.

  The results were almost entirely disappointing along that dimension. Levison’s conversations were full of real estate talk about ground leases, rental payments, and city tax appeals. What he discussed endlessly with both O’Dell and Jones was the SCLC’s fund-raising. He talked of unions that might contribute to the Sullivan defense, of donor lists, test mailings, and other refinements of solicitation. With O’Dell, Levison lamented the inefficiencies and personnel shortcomings of the Atlanta SCLC office. With Jones, he debated how best to cultivate wealthy new supporters such as Harry Wachtel—not dreaming that within two days these comments would prompt action by J. Edgar Hoover himself—and he batted around the names of celebrities who might be willing to serve on the board of Wachtel’s proposed tax-exempt foundation. The foundation had become a priority objective, and was tentatively to be named in honor of Mahatma Gandhi. The FBI monitors heard Levison telling Jones that he objected to the proposed name, Gandhi Foundation, on the grounds that potential union sponsors might find the word “foundation” too corporate in tone. It became the Gandhi Society.

  Levison’s work in King’s behalf, while intense to the point of obsession, turned out to be mundane stuff for an alleged Communist agent. The lack of a Kremlin-style conspiracy did not mean that the surveillance was barren of use to the FBI, however, as it generated usable political intelligence. On March 30, for instance, both the microphone and the wiretap picked up Levison’s incoming phone call from Wyatt Walker, who said that King wanted his opinion about the vacancy on the Supreme Court. Justice Charles Evans Whittaker had resigned the day before, and the morning newspapers said that President Kennedy was considering a Negro appeals judge, William Henry Hastie, as his replacement. King admired Hastie, and wanted advice as to whether he should lobby for him by public statement or “through channels,” by private phone calls.

  “My tendency is for Martin to issue a statement on it, and speak of this as a superb opportunity coming at a critical juncture in our history,” Levison told Walker. King should put President Kennedy on the spot a little bit, especially since Negroes would expect a leader to step forward on the issue. Walker said he was inclined to agree, as King had not gained much by being nice to the Administration. What little pressure he had applied had been directed at Robert Kennedy, not the President, and this was an opportunity to change. Still, Walker said, King was troubled by the thought that a public statement would make him seem to be endorsing Hastie just because Hastie was a Negro. Levison argued that Hastie was “far superior to any of the other candidates” being mentioned in the newspapers. “[Abraham] Ribicoff is a farce,” he said. “He’s no lawyer. [Arthur] Goldberg has been in federal areas a limited time only, and is not of judicial temperament. Here is a man [Hastie] who has been on the court of appeals, is competent and qualified. There is no strain to show he’s qualified…I don’t understand Martin’s point…Hastie is the man even if he were purple.”

  The microphone and wiretap monitors sounded immediate alarms in the New York FBI office when this conversation ended about four o’clock that afternoon. The monitors commandeered stenographers and wired a partial transcript to Washington so fast that an action memorandum landed high in the Bureau that same evening, recommending that Attorney General Kennedy be advised. This was lightning
work, but it arrived hours too late: the White House had already announced President Kennedy’s choice of Byron White to fill the Whittaker vacancy on the Court. Hoover and his top aides were among the few people in the world who could appreciate the irony that the same Byron White who facilitated their interception of King’s thoughts on the Supreme Court appointment (by encouraging FBI action on Levison) rendered those thoughts moot by getting himself named to the Court.

  FBI executives decided to make use of the intercepted material “even tho White’s appointment has been announced.” With Hoover’s approval, a report promptly reminded the Attorney General that Judge Hastie had been “connected” with ten organizations cited as Communist fronts on various lists of subversives, including that of the House Un-American Activities Committee. It went on to advise that King had asked Levison for strategy “in attempting to influence the President to appoint Judge Hastie to the Supreme Court.” Levison’s salty characterizations and other human effects were whittled away to leave a bare spike of danger: that Communist agent Levison had advised Negro leader King to urge upon the President a Negro judge of questionable loyalty.

  The Levison coverage was an instant boon to the FBI’s political intelligence function, allowing Hoover to appear omniscient. He seemed to know what King had done, and to predict uncannily what King would do. Upon learning that Vice President Johnson had joined King at a Justice Department meeting in April, Hoover promptly dispatched by courier a “My dear Mr. Vice President” letter, advising Johnson that the FBI knew all about it. “I thought you would be interested in knowing that King is a close associate of Levison and…O’Dell,” Hoover wrote. To this he appended a capsule summary of the Bureau’s dossiers on the two advisers.

  A week later, Hoover’s courier delivered another “My dear Mr. O’Donnell” letter to the White House. It too was couched in language suggesting both gossip and statecraft. “I thought you would be interested in additional information concerning the influence of Stanley David Levison, a secret member of the Communist Party, on King,” Hoover wrote. He disclosed that the Bureau had learned through “a confidential source”—the surveillance—that Levison was working to create for King a new organization “to be known as the Ghandi [sic] Society for Human Rights.” Hoover added that King and Levison were planning to announce the existence of the Gandhi Society at a high-profile luncheon in Washington on May 17, the eighth anniversary of the Brown decision, and he warned O’Donnell that they might invite Attorney General Kennedy, the President, and numerous other dignitaries. These were the names being tossed around by Clarence Jones and Levison, as picked up by the bug in Levison’s office.

  Any politician so warned about the Gandhi Society might greet King’s invitation with wariness, knowing that the FBI was watching. King did obtain a dismal response to his invitations—getting regrets from Robert Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Chief Justice Warren, Senator Hubert Humphrey, and a host of others—but the FBI influence most likely was not decisive. In the official Washington of that season, King was hardly a commanding political presence even for his admirers in high places. The pace was quick, the mood vibrant, and the focus international. King’s moralism went against the prevailing tides of the middle Cold War period. In this atmosphere, Hoover found it necessary to warn against the rise of King more than to campaign against him. In fact, the FBI sometimes acted as a restraining force.

  Certainly, FBI officials were unhappy when the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee subpoenaed Stanley Levison on April 24 for summary appearance three days later. Some of them grumbled among themselves that the “old man” had talked too freely about Levison in his January appearances before Congress, overly stimulating the segregationists who ran the Senate Internal Security Committee—Senators James Eastland and John McClellan. FBI officials objected that the subpoena was dangerous as well as premature. It telegraphed a warning that the government was targeting Levison, which might drive him into hiding before the Bureau’s eavesdropping had uncovered any damning information on his activities. Nevertheless, the committee issued the subpoena, hoping that Levison would spill out his Communist convictions and a detailed history of his partnership with King, which together might be publicized so as to eliminate King as a threat to Southern institutions.

  The most that FBI officials could salvage from their Senate allies was a promise of strict secrecy and a three-day postponement for consultations, during which the senators agreed not to ask Levison anything about King at least until Levison admitted something subversive. As it turned out, however, the most the committee members could pry out of Levison was nothing. Facing his inquisitors at the classified Senate hearing, Levison made a one-sentence statement: “To dispose of a question causing current apprehension, I am a loyal American, and I am not now and never have been a member of the Communist Party.” After that, he invoked the Fifth Amendment to protect his silence. His refusals to answer enraged the senators, who were loath to admit to the FBI that they had taken the risk for no return.

  The FBI’s eavesdropping devices, having already recorded Levison’s surprised reaction when the deputy marshal handed him his subpoena, and later his consultations with his attorney in preparation for the hearing, now picked up Levison’s relief when it was over. Back in his New York office the next afternoon, Levison told callers how thankful he was that King’s name had not been mentioned at all, and how funny the hostile old senators had looked when they were angry. “I wasn’t as much bothered as McClellan,” he said, recalling how the senator had branded him the worst witness ever to pass through the chamber. “That means I was worse than Jimmy Hoffa,” Levison added wryly.

  Harris Wofford was on his way out of the White House. His status alone was enough to convince King that the opposition in Washington was not confined to the segregationist fringe of the government, as the nerve center of the Kennedy Administration had grown more rather than less wary of civil rights. For Wofford, this meant that the meetings of his subcabinet civil rights group had become listless affairs. Participants quickly realized that Wofford’s White House address did not mean he spoke for the President, because the President left nearly all civil rights decisions to the Justice Department. Power at the subcabinet level flowed inexorably to Burke Marshall.

  Wofford became the custodian of the thousands of pens arriving steadily by mail in the “Ink for Jack” protest. With President Kennedy into the second year of postponement on his campaign pledge to eliminate housing discrimination with the “stroke of a pen,” civil rights lobbyists were urging their followers to mail “Ink for Jack” pens to the White House. They hoped to appeal to the witty President, but the White House courtiers did not take well to the humor. Seeing their President as the butt of a joke, they responded in kind toward Wofford: he became the man to see when anyone ran out of pens. Eventually it was arranged to have the surplus donated to a home for the mentally retarded.

  President Kennedy endorsed all the items on Wofford’s agenda, but he consistently drew back from their execution. Far from engaging him, they caused discomfort in a man who customarily relied on his charm and composure. With other White House aides, he fell into animated, spontaneous political discussions, but to Wofford he habitually tossed a passing wave and a glancing smile, asking, “Are your constituents happy?” Wofford was far too earnest about racial segregation to enjoy the repartee, and by the spring of 1962 the more congenial atmosphere of Sargent Shriver’s Peace Corps was worth more to him than the opportunities at the White House. “The spirit of your administration and your spirit make me want to go and work on a frontier of my own,” he wrote President Kennedy on resigning to take a job in Ethiopia. Wofford could make such parting remarks in good conscience, as he believed that Kennedy “will continue to make history in civil rights,” but the capital’s power experts saw only that the White House specialist on civil rights was going off to oblivion in Africa. President Kennedy resisted a request orchestrated by Wofford, King, Roy Wilkins, and others that he appoint the p
opular Louis Martin as a replacement. Instead, he abolished the post and assigned Wofford’s duties to Lee White, an oil and gas lawyer on Sorensen’s staff. Wofford had been much more of a civil rights man than Eisenhower’s Rocco Siciliano, but their jobs met an equal fate.

  King welcomed thirteen of his thirty-one SCLC board members to the annual board meeting, held in Chattanooga on May 15 and 16. As Shuttlesworth was among them, King reminded everyone of their determination to challenge the grim city of Birmingham by taking the SCLC’s mass convention there in September. Afterward, he called on his staff to give reports on the SCLC’s new projects. Wyatt Walker described the “People-to-People” tours. Jack O’Dell gave facts and figures on the new VEP grants and the numbers of newly registered voters in the scattered SCLC target areas. Praising the Supreme Court’s recent Baker v. Carr decision, which mandated “one man/one vote” apportionment of political representation, O’Dell predicted that the ruling would prove to be as much of a godsend to their cause in voting as was Brown in education.