Four Spirits

by Sena Jeter Naslund

  There was Burke Marshall, white man sent down from Washington. Assistant attorney general, next in power to RFK.

  From the time when he, Shuttlesworth, first invited King to come to Birmingham, Fred Shuttlesworth had known what King wanted—to regain his leadership after Albany, Georgia. Too few folks willing to protest in Albany. Too reasonable a police chief. No Bull Connor in Albany foaming at the mouth like a mad dog.

  Surely it was farther away than just across the room that Fred saw his friends now. Felt like he was only creeping toward them, way over there ’cross the room. Felt like his bones were trying to explain it all to them, but really he was just concentrating to make his bones move. Focusing on covering the distance. There was King, looking defeated.

  Maybe King was finally realizing, now when it was too late, that Albany couldn’t have worked for him. Trial and error. Wasn’t any blueprint to tell how to do what they were trying to do in the South. For the South. You had to learn what made the time ripe for victory. For the country. In Albany, Georgia, nobody had done the groundwork good enough, as he, Shuttlesworth, had done in Birmingham, so that enough people would join in the protests.

  Yes, now King had got Washington’s attention, through Birmingham. King was standing on the ground Shuttlesworth had prepared for him. When Shuttlesworth made it across the room, he would tell him, quietly:No need to be dejected.

  No need because your John the Baptist has prepared the way. Alabama is tilled soil. Seed been dropped and watered. Take the harvest! Take the harvest, man!

  King might be national now, but while Shuttlesworth was walking slowly toward him, holding on to Ruby, King was staring out past the well-to-do antique silk curtains as though he, King, didn’t want to look the local working-class leader in the eye.

  King ought to work on that, Shuttlesworth thought, look any man white or black, anytime, square in the eye. And so what was it about King that was so compelling?

  I got to make it to the chair ’fore I collapse.

  One foot in front of the other. Oh, he knew. One foot in front…He might grumble about King’s style, pick at him, but Fred Shuttlesworth knew there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t forgive the man. He loved the man—that was what he needed to tell him. Needed to give him love.

  King was speaking to him, but what was Shuttlesworth hearing? What was King saying to him: “Fred, we got to call off the demonstrations.”

  No, Fred thought, I must have heard wrong. He felt woozy in the head, his ribs hurt, the medicine confused him. But Martin couldn’t have said what he thought he heard.

  “Say that again, Martin?”

  And King said it again, that the white merchants couldn’t negotiate in the middle of demonstrations. The leadership in the black community had to call off the demonstrations.

  Now Shuttlesworth’s heart leapt in him. Now fury rose like a volcano. “You can’t call them off because you ain’t called nothing on.”

  He wanted to sound more reasonable, but King was going to throw it all away, throw away all Shuttlesworth’s years of work and pain. Shuttlesworth tried to slow down, just remind King who was the invited party here, but the words boiled out: “And you and I promised that we would not stop demonstrating until we had the victory.” (But he knew King was the Man of the Hour. The way Burke Marshall looked at Martin Luther King Jr. was enough to say that.)

  Bitter, Shuttlesworth tried to get up from his chair. Yes, now he was sitting in a chair. “If you want to go against our promise, Martin, you go ahead and do it.” Now he’d got his control back in his voice. “But I will not call it off. And if you do call it off”—his battered, sedated, weary body pleaded with him, but he ignored it—“I’m gonna lead the last demonstration with what little last ounce of strength I got.”

  But Fred Shuttlesworth couldn’t get up. He fell back in his chair. Here was Abernathy. Here was his old friend Ralph Abernathy, kneeling down to talk to him, voice so soothing. “Fred, we went to school together. We can talk. Can’t I talk with you, Fred?”

  “Ralph, get up off your damn knees.”

  But somebody was talking about a press conference, an imminent press conference, and that couldn’t be right either: “Oh, you’ve called a press conference, did you?” Shuttlesworth accused, collapsed as he was in his chair. They’d have to say this about him: Shuttlesworth was plainspoken; he’d said all of it right to King’s downcast face. History would say that.

  But Martin was suffering.

  Shuttlesworth could see the strain in Martin: Martin wanted to lead, still he also wanted to cooperate, be part of a democratic group. But leadership was more important than fellowship or cooperation, finally.

  He, Shuttlesworth, had to corner King. The truth had to be said: “I thought we were always going to make joint statements.” His voice was firm, penetrant as ever, accusing (they would have to remember that, Abernathy, Burke, Drew, Young, wife Ruby—but he couldn’t even lift a finger to point. The arm of the expensive chair would have to remember that; a chair belonging to John Drew would have to remember how the exhausted hand had lain on the upholstery, the finger outstretched to accuse, but unlifted.)

  King’s face went stoic. He had to endure what had to be said.

  “You go ahead with your press conference,” Shuttlesworth said. “Go ahead, Mr. Big. I’m going home, get in bed.”

  While he strove to get his feet under him, to push out of the chair, there was sudden telephone talk with Washington. They must have had a hot line, these national ones. They were telling Washington, “We hit a snag…. The frail one is hanging things up.”

  Frail? You can’t be frail with the power of truth, bitter as gall, red-hot as molten iron, rolling through your body.

  “Burke,” King pleaded, “we just got to have unity.” King said it because he knew it was true.

  (Oh, King’s voice, the tremor in it: no angel could speak more sincere. Not angry. King was accepting the pain. Knowing his flaws, but seeing the light. Leading the way. No doubt King was the most chosen of God, was given the soul and special moral character that made his voice vibrant with humility, made you revere his leadership, even if you thought he was buckling under. A great soul was in that voice.)

  Burke Marshall, down from Washington, D.C., took the cue. He said, “Don’t worry, Fred, they’re going to agree to what you say.”

  Uh! Shuttlesworth struggled upright, walked through that nice house.

  Ruby was beside him, helping him to the car. His own children, his wife, would stand with him. He knew national coverage wasn’t enough. Might be enough for King, but not enough for him, or those who’d endured with him for seven years through beatings, arrests, bombings. His church bombed three times. He’d talk to the youth; he’d talk to the hard-core activists. Maybe he’d telephone that white girl, Marti Turnipseed. Minister’s daughter. She wouldn’t back down.

  The Telephone, the Microphone

  FOR TWO DAYS, SHUTTLESWORTH URGED PEOPLE NOT TO quit, raised a lot of spirits, but King announced a moratorium on the protests. The local folks heard it on national TV. King didn’t say the demonstrations were called off permanently. Moratorium was a compromise with the city and, King added quietly in his national voice, a compromise with the more urgent demands of some increasingly impatient Negroes.

  WITH ALL THE TIME spent in jails, hospitals, and the Gaston Motel, Shuttlesworth had three more places as familiar to him as home.

  On Friday, while he was again at the Gaston Motel, Shuttlesworth learned the value of compromising with the vast majority of white folks: next to nothing. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing on motel TV: King and his inner group surrounded by police, going off to jail.

  After the compromise, after the moratorium compromise King had wanted to give and had given the white merchants, after that, there was still Bull Connor, their henchman, running the police. Shuttlesworth found out for sure what he’d already suspected: it didn’t matter what King and the president’s man said about negotiation and si
gns of good faith. The locals had the power, for better or for worse.

  Why didn’t the federal government help more? But of course that was part of King’s plan—draw in the federal government.

  Bull Connor arresting King, Abernathy—it was there in black and white on TV—and two dozen more were arrested and jailed for having “paraded” without a permit. Bull had a place for King in the Birmingham jail.

  “I’m putting on my marching shoes,” Shuttlesworth told Andrew Young, and Andy didn’t know what to say and didn’t have any time to say it in because Shuttlesworth was almost out the door of the motel owned and named for black Birmingham millionaire A. G. Gaston.

  “Moratorium’s over,” Shuttlesworth said again.

  So Andy grabbed him, resorted to physical restraint as best he could, and somebody else phoned up Washington, D.C., fast as he could.

  It was words, not Andy Young, that stopped a renewed Shuttlesworth in his tracks: “The attorney general would like to speak with you, Reverend Shuttlesworth.”

  And yes, it was Bobby Kennedy. And yes, Kennedy did listen, and yes, Shuttlesworth listened, too. He could understand better now how it was when you talked to Washington. You pressed the telephone against your ear till it hurt. There was an awe to it all. Not one word of that listening could be lost.

  RFK explained:Bull Connor wanted there to be protests. He arrested King in order to provoke the Negroes. He wanted the blacks not to trust the whites. Connor wanted there to be riots. Then Bull would have an excuse for violence. Wallace would get in the act. Governor Wallace would send in Al Lingo and the state troopers.

  When RFK spoke, it was the federal government talking to you. You sat up straight. You held the ballpoint pen tight in your hand, if you needed to write.

  The whites didn’t have any unity. The Birmingham merchants and lawyers were truly trying to make progress. Bull wanted them to seem untrustworthy.

  You looked for whatever fiber in your being you had that could tie to the thread of Bobby Kennedy’s voice. And he listened. Your ideas, too, could be conveyed now, over the telephone, woven into the fabric of Washington. You wanted to be in accord with the voice that was a Kennedy voice. Reasonable, strangely accented, but understandable. Firm voice. Here were ideas that—yes!—you could go along with that! Yes, you held that same ideal.

  Of course.

  Fred Shuttlesworth agreed to help make history as bloodless as possible. Certainly.

  Would try his best to cooperate.

  Not a long conversation at all, but he felt different now.

  THROUGHOUT THE DAY, Shuttlesworth reviewed what he’d learned, asked himself if it really made any difference:The merchants didn’t run the police. You had to think of the city government and the business community separately. Bull Connor embarrassed the rich merchants and white lawyers; they hadn’t invited him to the christening or compromise of whatever it was they had had with Communist-led Negroes. Yes, most southern whites thought the protests were Communist-led. They thought Birmingham-Southern College and Miles College were hotbeds of Communist activity. Naturally, Bull wouldn’t keep the promises the merchants made, wouldn’t acknowledge the compromise the Negro leaders so cautiously embraced. “The man is a hatemonger, Reverend Shuttlesworth, he doesn’t understand the power of love. Don’t let him trick you.” Had Bobby Kennedy said that, or was that Fred’s own voice, wiser, himself teaching himself, not words from the telephone?

  It was an important question. Shuttlesworth knew he was dead if he quit listening to his own voice, the one God sent him so he’d know what to do.

  IT WAS A. G. GASTON, local owner of the Gaston Motel, the Gaston funeral parlor, and enough other enterprises with a black clientele to make his million the equal of any white man’s million, who stepped forward with bail money. That being done, it would be Shuttlesworth’s obligation to be forthcoming on his front. After A. G. Gaston bailed King out of jail, Shuttlesworth would need to say at their joint press conference (he had his local following; King would address the Negroes of the nation) that he still had hope that justice would come, despite the many betrayals, the broken promises down through the years, despite his good friend King’s having been jailed. (Shuttlesworth walked toward the table, the press conference table.) He ought to plan to say that sort of thing, but he wanted to point out that the arrests had occurred “even after King had stopped the protesting, as he’d said he would do.” (He walked toward the TV cameras, their long, thick cables snaking behind them on the floor.)

  But it was hard for the Reverend Shuttlesworth to feel that he was telling his own story anymore. (He wouldn’t say that into the microphone when it was his turn.) He wondered if he were telling King’s story. King was there beside him, already speaking in his strange, calm voice. Almost neutral at times, King’s voice. As though all people could come to his impartial voice and listen as equals. A voice that was not meant to make people mad; one that only wanted to console, inspire, reassure the frightened—black and white.

  Shuttlesworth felt as though he himself had lost the sense of “I” as leading off a sentence such as “I am about to speak into this bouquet of microphones.” He could feel the sweat running down his skin inside his clothes. Whose body? Whose voice? It was as though “he,” Fred Shuttlesworth, was learning to recite a life “he” was living.

  Maybe he knew this much was true: because the president’s brother, the attorney general of the United States, had called long-distance telephone to talk with him, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, he wanted to respond once again with hope. I want to respond with hope, he would say.

  Before he spoke on the radio and the TV (he would be next, soon), he must reach deep in his heart to find a trusting response. (He knew he was scraping the bottom of the mayonnaise jar to bring up some small amount of faith.) But he wanted to believe the national government of his country, truly he did.

  But he’d forgotten to tell Bobby Kennedy about the FBI! How they couldn’t be trusted, how sometimes they made bargains with the Bull’s police to allow so many minutes of beating before breaking things up. He’d forgotten!

  “If there are demonstrations,” Shuttlesworth said into the microphones, his shoulder almost touching King’s shoulder (Lord, those lights were hot!), “they will be limited. We do believe that honest efforts to negotiate in good faith are under way.”

  Ryder Jones

  RYDER JONES HAD HOPED TO SEE HIS BROTHER ON TV. He’d had Bobby, his little son, stay up late, in hopes of seeing Uncle LeRoy. Bull Connor had sent LeRoy’s division downtown, and LeRoy claimed he’d whacked plenty of niggers, but the camera just showed a stupid press conference with nigger ministers, and then replays of the dog-handler police and droves of niggers singing “We Shall Overcome.”Over my dead body, Ryder muttered, his jaw muscles so rigid they hurt. He kissed his son on his cheek and sent him to bed.

  He heard the snip of his wife’s sewing scissors in the kitchen. He didn’t want to talk to Lee; he wanted to be alone, to think about the world and what it was coming to. His feet took him to stand before his bedroom closet. He took down his Klan robe on its hanger and made the robe flutter in the air like a ghost. The way it rippled was noble, like a flag. Over their dead body.

  That first time he had stepped out from behind a tree wearing his white robe, he had relished the man’s terror. When Smith had stepped out, and then another, and another, each from behind a tree, it must have looked as though they were passing through tree trunks. And Ryder himself had said slowly, “Time to teach you a lesson, nigger. Think you can learn a lesson?” Then the black fella saw the whips, the belts dangling from their hands and started to run. But they were on him, dragged him to the cemetery to do it.

  Alone in his bedroom, Ryder lifted his robe high over his head. He wiggled the coat hanger so the air would swivel the cloth. He twirled around in fast circles, bumped his leg against the side of the bed. He wished he really could fly. While he played with his robe, he hummed, “An old cowpoke went riding
out, one dark and windy night.” Ryder sang softly—he really loved that song, this part of it: “Ghost riders in the sky.” He sang the song twice before he flew his robe back into the closet and sauntered back to the living room. Then he felt foolish. That was the way Bobby played, using a towel for Superman’s cape.

  TV was showing some jungle place; he turned it off. Black soldiers under netted helmets.

  He heard Lee’s scissors opening and closing. From a bolt of white cotton cloth she’d gotten on sale, she was cutting out robes on the cook table. She made gowns nice and full and stitched them sturdy—double seams. Starched and ironed them so a man would be proud to wear his robe. They gave them away—Christmas, birthday presents. But this was a rush order. He told her she could stay up till eleven-thirty working on them. All the uppity nigger trouble meant new Klan members. He had told Lee she had to do her part, had to finish up those robes.

  No need to check on her. Ryder was back in their bedroom. Wasn’t much place to go in the house, a rectangle divided into four parts. Quadrants, he remembered his high school math;he’d been good at it. Their bedroom was on the front and opened into the living room. The kitchen also opened into the living room, the three kids shared the smaller back bedroom that opened into the short hall to the kitchen. The bathroom had a window on the back of the house, and its plumbing backed up against the kitchen plumbing of course, and its door opened into the short hall. The two bedrooms were divided by two closets, one opening their way, one opening toward the kids. It was a neat house plan.

  Here he was back in their bedroom. He glanced at the bedside Big Ben, on top of his stack of comic books, and saw it was 10:00 P.M. He had to be ready to pump gas by 6:00 A.M. No, tomorrow was Sunday. Rest. He was already tired because they’d called him in early to the filling station; somebody sick on Ryder’s off-day. He was afraid not to go, afraid he’d lose his job. Some gas stations in white neighborhoods were letting the black window-washer boys start to pump gas. They’d do it for fifty cents an hour instead of sixty-five.