The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Page 13
Nevertheless, it was strange to me that the federal government was more concerned about what happened in Budapest than what happened in Birmingham. I thought Eisenhower believed that integration would be a fine thing. But I thought he felt that the more you push it, the more tension it would create, so, just wait a few more years and it will work itself out. I didn’t think that Eisenhower felt like being a crusader for integration. President Eisenhower was a man of integrity and goodwill, but I am afraid that on the question of integration he didn’t understand the dimensions of social change involved nor how the problem was to be worked out.
11
BIRTH OF A NEW NATION
Ghana has something to say to us. It says to us first that the oppressor never voluntarily gives freedom to the oppressed. You have to work for it. Freedom is never given to anybody. Privileged classes never give up their privileges without strong resistance.
The minute I knew I was coming to Ghana I had a very deep emotional feeling. A new nation was being born. It symbolized the fact that a new order was coming into being and an old order was passing away. So I was deeply concerned about it. I wanted to be involved in it, be a part of it, and notice the birth of this new nation with my own eyes. The trip, which included visits to other countries of Africa and several stops in Europe, was of tremendous cultural value and made possible many contacts of lasting significance.
Struggling had been going on in Ghana for years. The British Empire saw that it could no longer rule the Gold Coast and agreed that on the sixth of March, 1957, it would release the nation. All of this was because of the persistent protest, the continual agitation, of Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah and the other leaders who worked along with him and the masses of people who were willing to follow.
“A new age coming into being”
So that day finally came. About midnight on a dark night in 1957, a new nation came into being. That was a great hour. As we walked out, we noticed all over the polo grounds almost a half million people. They had waited for this hour and this moment for years.
People came from all over the world—seventy nations—to say to this new nation: “We greet you and give you our moral support. We hope for you God’s guidance as you move now into the realm of independence.” It was a beautiful experience to see some of the leading persons on the scene of civil rights in America on hand: to my left was Charles Diggs, to my right were Adam Powell and Ralph Bunche. All of these people from America: Mordecai Johnson, Horace Mann Bond, A. Philip Randolph; then you looked out and saw the vice-president of the United States.
A handsome black man walked out on the platform, and he was followed by eight or ten other men. He stood there and said, “We are no longer a British colony. We are a free and sovereign people.” When he uttered those words, we looked back and saw an old flag coming down and a new flag going up. And I said to myself, “That old flag coming down doesn’t represent the meaning of this drama taking place on the stage of history, for it is the symbol of an old order passing away. That new flag going up is the symbol of a new age coming into being.” I could hear people shouting all over that vast audience, “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!”
Before I knew it, I started weeping. I was crying for joy. And I knew about all of the struggles, all of the pain, and all of the agony that these people had gone through for this moment.
After Nkrumah made that final speech, we walked away, and we could hear little children six years old and old people eighty and ninety years old walking the streets of Accra crying: “Freedom! Freedom!” They were crying it in a sense that they had never heard it before. And I could hear that old Negro spiritual once more crying out: “Free at last, free at last, Great God Almighty, I’m free at last.” They were experiencing that in their very souls. And everywhere we turned, we could hear it ringing out from the housetops. We could hear it from every corner, every nook and crook of the community. “Freedom! Freedom!” This was the breaking loose from Egypt.
The thing that impressed me more than anything else that night was when Nkrumah and his other ministers who had been in prison with him walked in. They didn’t come in with the crowns and all of the garments of kings. They walked in with prison caps. Nkrumah stood up and made his closing speech to Parliament with the little cap that he wore in prison for several months and the coat that he wore in prison for several months. Often the path to freedom will carry you through prison.
Nkrumah had started out in a humble way. His mother and father were illiterate, not chiefs at all, but humble people. He went to school for a while in Africa and then he decided to work his way to America. He went to the Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, and took his theology degree there. He preached a while in Philadelphia. He went to the University of Pennsylvania and took a master’s degree there in philosophy and sociology.
He always realized that colonialism was made for domination and exploitation. It was made to keep a certain group down and exploit that group economically for the advantage of another. He studied and thought about all of this, and one day he decided to go back to Africa.
He was immediately elected the executive secretary of the United Party of the Gold Coast, and he worked hard getting a following. And the people in this party—the old, the people who had had their hands on the plow for a long time—thought he was pushing a little too fast, and they got a little jealous of his influence. So finally he had to break from the United Party of the Gold Coast, and in 1949 he organized the Convention People’s Party. It was this party that started out working for the independence of the Gold Coast.
He urged his people to unite for freedom and urged the officials of the British Empire to give them freedom. The officials were slow to respond, but the masses of people were with him, and they had united to become the most powerful and influential party that had ever been organized in that section of Africa.
Nkrumah himself was finally placed in jail for several years. He was an agitator. He was imprisoned on the basis of sedition, but he had inspired some people outside of prison. They got together just a few months after he had been in prison and elected him the prime minister. The British Empire saw that they had better let him out. He was placed there for fifteen years, but he only served eight or nine months. He came out the prime minister of the Gold Coast.
“A symbol of hope”
I thought that this event, the birth of this new nation, would give impetus to oppressed peoples all over the world. I thought it would have worldwide implications and repercussions—not only for Asia and Africa, but also for America. Just as in 1776, when America received its independence, the harbor of New York became sort of a beacon of hope for thousands of oppressed people of Europe, I thought Ghana would become a symbol of hope for hundreds and thousands of oppressed peoples all over the world as they struggled for freedom.
The birth of this new nation renewed my conviction in the ultimate triumph of justice. And it seemed to me, this was fit testimony to the fact that eventually the forces of justice triumph in the universe, and somehow the universe itself is on the side of freedom and justice. This gave new hope to me in the struggle for freedom.
At age two, with sister Christine. (Collection of Christine King Farris)
“I have a marvelous mother and father. I can hardly remember a time that they ever argued or had any great falling out.” Martin Luther Sr. and Alberta Williams King at celebration of their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in 1951. (Collection of Christine King Farris)
“It was in my senior year of college that I entered the ministry. I felt a sense of responsibility which I could not escape.” With parents, brother A. D. King, sister Christine, and uncle Joel King, on Morehouse campus in 1948. (Collection of Christine King Farris)
“My devoted wife has been a constant source of consolation to me through all the difficulties.” At wedding party on June 18, 1953 (left to right) father-in law Obadiah Scott, Alberta Williams King, Bernice Scott, Alveda King, sister-in-law Edythe Scott, King Sr., Coretta Scot
t King, sister-in-law Naomi Barbert King, Betty Ann Hill, A. D. King, and Christine King. (Collection of Christine King Farris)
“I began to think of the viciousness of people who would bomb my home. I could feel the anger rising when I realized that my wife and baby could have been killed.” With Coretta and Yolanda at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in 1956. (Photo by Dan Weiner—courtesy Sandra Weiner)
“Ordinarily, a person leaving a courtroom with a conviction behind him would wear a somber face. But I left with a smile.” Greeted by Coretta after conviction in antiboycott trial in March 1956. (AP/Wide World Photos)
Arrested for loitering while attempting to gain admittance to the trial of Ralph Abernathy in Montgomery, Alabama, on September 3, 1958, with Coretta nearby. (Charles Moore/Black Star)
“In 1960 an electrifying movement of Negro students shattered the placid surface of campuses and communities across the South.” Attending a meeting with Atlanta student activists in 1960. (Howard Sochurek, Life Magazine © Time Inc.)
“After they transferred me to Reidsville, Harris Wofford and others strongly urged Mr. Kennedy to try to use his influence to do something about it, and he finally agreed.” Greeted by family and friends after being released from Georgia State Prison at Reidsville, after serving time for a traffic violation in 1960. (AP/Wide World)
“Darling, it is extremely difficult for me to think of being away from you and my Yoki and Marty.” Spending time with Martin III (age three), Yolanda (age five), and Coretta in 1960. (Don Uhrbrock, Life Magazine © Time Inc.)
With the inspiring Jackie Robinson in the 1960s. (AP/Wide World)
“I had used the phrase ‘I have a dream’ many times before, and I just felt that I wanted to use it here.” At March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963. (Archive Photos)
“I met Malcolm X once in Washington, but circumstances didn’t enable me to talk with him for more than a minute.” Encounter with Malcolm X in March 1964. (AP/Wide World)
Wednesday morning the official opening of Parliament was held, and we were able to get on the inside. There Nkrumah, now the Prime Minister of the Gold Coast, with no superior, made his first speech. The Duchess of Kent, who represented the Queen of England, walked in. She was just a passing visitor now—like M. L. King and Ralph Bunche and Coretta King and everybody else—because this was a new nation. After Parliament was open, and Nkrumah drove out, the people standing around the streets of the city cried out: “All hail, Nkrumah!” Everybody was crying his name because they knew he had suffered for them, he had sacrificed for them, he’d gone to jail for them.
This nation was now out of Egypt and had crossed the Red Sea. Now it would confront its wilderness. Nkrumah realized that. For instance, Ghana was a one-crop country, cocoa mainly. In order to make the economic system more stable, it would be necessary to industrialize. Nkrumah said to me that one of the first things that he would do would be to work toward industrialization.
Ninety percent of the people were illiterate, and it was necessary to lift the whole cultural standard of the community in order to make it possible to stand up in the free world. It was my hope that even people from America would go to Africa as immigrants. American Negroes could lend their technical assistance to a growing new nation. I was very happy to see people who had moved in. A doctor from Brooklyn, New York, had just come in that week. His wife was a dentist, and they were living there, and the people loved them. Nkrumah made it very clear to me that he would welcome any persons coming there as immigrants.
I realized that there would be difficulties. Whenever you have a transition, whenever you are moving from one system to another there will be definite difficulties, but I thought that there was enough brainpower, enough determination, enough courage and faith to meet the difficulties as they developed.
When I hear, “People aren’t ready,” that’s like telling a person who is trying to swim, “Don’t jump in that water until you learn how to swim.” When actually you will never learn how to swim until you get in the water. People have to have an opportunity to develop themselves and govern themselves.
I am often reminded of the statement made by Nkrumah: “I prefer self-government with danger to servitude with tranquility.” I think that’s a great statement. They were willing to face the dangers and difficulties, but I thought that Ghana would be able to profit by the mistakes of other nations that had existed over so many years and develop into a great nation.
After meeting Kwame Nkrumah, we stopped in Nigeria for a day or so. Then we went to Europe and then back to America to deal with the problems there.
12
BRUSH WITH DEATH
This was a rather difficult year for me. I have had to confront the brutality of police officers, an unwarranted arrest, and a near fatal stab wound by a mentally deranged woman. These things were poured upon me like staggering torrents on a cold, wintry day.
On a Saturday afternoon in 1958, I sat in a Harlem department store, surrounded by hundreds of people. I was autographing copies of Stride Toward Freedom, my book about the Montgomery bus boycott. And while sitting there, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, “Are you Martin Luther King?”
I was looking down writing, and I said “Yes.” And the next minute, I felt something sharp plunge forcefully into my chest. Before I knew it, I had been stabbed with a letter opener by a woman who would later be judged insane, Mrs. Izola Ware Curry.
Rushed by ambulance to Harlem Hospital, I lay in a bed for hours while preparations were made to remove the keen-edged knife from my body. Days later, when I was well enough to talk with Dr. Aubrey Maynard, the chief of the surgeons who performed the delicate, dangerous operation, I learned the reason for the long delay that preceded surgery. He told me that the razor tip of the instrument had been touching my aorta and that my whole chest had to be opened to extract it.
“If you had sneezed during all those hours of waiting,” Dr. Maynard said, “your aorta would have been punctured and you would have drowned in your own blood.”
It came out in the New York Times the next morning that, if I had sneezed, I would have died.
About four days later, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, they allowed me to move around in the wheelchair in the hospital and read some of the kind letters that came from all over the States, and the world. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. There was a letter from a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. It said simply, “Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School.” She said, “While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”
“Uncertain but promising future”
If I demonstrated unusual calm during the recent attempt on my life, it was certainly not due to any extraordinary powers that I possess. Rather, it was due to the power of God working through me. Throughout this struggle for racial justice I have constantly asked God to remove all bitterness from my heart and to give me the strength and courage to face any disaster that came my way. This constant prayer life and feeling of dependence on God have given me the feeling that I have divine companionship in the struggle. I know no other way to explain it. It is the fact that in the midst of external tension, God can give an inner peace.
As far as the repeated attacks on me and my family, I must say that here again God gives one the strength to adjust to such acts of violence. None of these attacks came as a total surprise to me, because I counted the cost early in the struggle. To believe in nonviolence does not mean that violence will not be inflicted upon you. The believer in nonviolence is the person who will willingly allow himself to be the victim of violence but will never inflict violence upon another. He lives by the conviction that through his su
ffering and cross bearing, the social situation may be redeemed.
The experience I had in New York gave me time to think. I became convinced that if the movement held to the spirit of nonviolence, our struggle and example would challenge and help redeem not only America but the world. It was my hope that we would remove from our souls the shackles of fear and the manacles of despair, and move on into the uncertain but promising future with the faith that the dawn of a new day was just around the horizon.
The pathetic aspect of the experience was not the injury to one individual. It demonstrated to me that a climate of hatred and bitterness so permeated areas of our nation that inevitably deeds of extreme violence must erupt. I saw its wider social significance. The lack of restraint upon violence in our society along with the defiance of law by men in high places cannot but result in an atmosphere which engenders desperate deeds.
I was intensely impatient to get back to continue the work we all knew had to be done regardless of the cost. So I rejoined the ranks of those who were working ceaselessly for the realization of the ideals of freedom and justice for all men. I did not have the slightest intention of turning back at that point.