Killing King

by Stuart Wexler

Jackson, Miss., May 12–14—About 1,000 Negroes at Jackson State College protested the arrest of a Negro student; the National Guard quelled the disturbance in which one Negro was killed; Willie Ricks of SNCC told the crowd: “An eye for an eye, an arm for an arm, a head for a head, and a life for a life.”

  Houston, Texas, May 16–17—Hundreds of students at predominantly Negro Texas Southern University rioted after clashing with police while protesting the arrests of student demonstrators; 487 were arrested; one policeman was killed and two others were shot . . .

  Boston, Mass., June 2–4—More than 1,000 persons in a predominantly Negro neighborhood rioted after a group of mothers staged a sit-in to urge reforms in welfare and contended they were beaten by police; at least 60 were injured, 90 were arrested and property damage was estimated at $1 million . . .

  Tampa, Fla., June 11–13—Negroes rioted in a 60-block area after a white policeman shot and killed a Negro burglary suspect who refused to halt; 16 persons were injured and more than 100 arrested; property damage was estimated at $95,000.

  Cincinnati, Ohio, June 12–18—Negroes rioted in three predominantly Negro sections, hurling Molotov cocktails, smashing store windows and looting; one person was killed, 63 were injured and 276 were arrested; property damage was estimated at $2 million; on June 15, the third night of rioting, [SNCC leader] H. Rap Brown arrived and said that the city “will be in flames until the honkie cops (National Guardsmen) get out.” In another speech that day he said that “SNCC has declared war.”

  Dayton, Ohio, June 14–15—Negro youths threw rocks and smashed store windows; four persons reported injured and 23 arrested; on the night of June 14, Brown urged a crowd to “take the pressure off Cincinnati.” The same day, he had told a crowd in Dayton: “How can you be nonviolent in America, the most violent country in the world. You better shoot the man to death; that’s what he’s doing to you.”

  Atlanta, Ga., June 18–21—Rioting in the predominantly Negro Dixie Hills section followed a speech by Stokely Carmichael at a rally held to protest the shooting of a Negro by a Negro policeman; Carmichael and SNCC aides were active throughout the riot; Carmichael said: “The only way these hunkies and hunky-lovers can understand is when they’re met by resistance” and he told a rally: “We need to be beating heads.” One person was killed, three were injured and at least five were arrested.23

  As violent as some of these incidents were, they would be eclipsed by two of the worst urban riots in American history in the middle of July. In Newark, false rumors that a black cab driver had died in police custody sparked four days of rioting from July 12 to July 17, requiring massive intervention by local and state police as well by the National Guard. The urban combat that commenced resulted in 23 dead and 750 injured. Follow-up studies indicated that law enforcement, including the National Guard, had expended 13,319 rounds of ammunition in pursuit of snipers who may not have existed.24 A week later, Detroit, Michigan, experienced the single worst urban riot in the history of the nation: after five days of rioting, 43 people were dead, 1,189 were injured, and over 7,000 were arrested. Sandra West, a UPI reporter who lived her whole life in Detroit, described the chaos:

  Sunday I saw sights I never dreamed possible . . . Raging fires burned out of control for blocks and blocks. Thick black smoke and cinders rained down at times so heavily they blocked out homes as close as 20 feet away.

  Looters drove pickup trucks loaded with everything from floor mops to new furniture. Price tags still dangled from the merchandise.25

  Riots also struck Birmingham, Chicago, and Milwaukee, among other major cities. In sum, during the “long hot summer” of 1967, the United States experienced 158 different riots, resulting in 83 deaths, 2,801 injuries, and 4,627 incidents of arson.26

  With national press reports that “guns—hand guns, rifles, shotguns—are selling as though they were about to close down the gun factories,”27 King continued to insist on nonviolence. But in August of 1967, he told a crowd of frustrated young civil rights activists that blacks “still live in the basement of the Great Society” and observed, some months later, that a “riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”28

  The urban violence and King’s dissatisfaction with the “plight” of not just the “Negro poor” but America’s lowest economic strata as a whole would, by December of 1967, become the basis for the Poor People’s Campaign, a planned mass march from Mississippi to Washington, D.C., to call for a massive expansion in social spending. It became King’s last mission, but one that, in continuing to cling to nonviolence as a principle, would struggle for grassroots support. It was King’s murder on the eve of the march, unfortunately, that galvanized support for the effort in ways that King could not by moral suasion and charisma.

  Civil unrest came from more than just disaffected, poor urban youth. Increasingly, Americans became more and more disturbed by America’s involvement in the war in Vietnam. Most of the protests in 1967 dealt with the quagmire in Southeast Asia. King saw the war as perhaps the chief contributing factor in the social upheaval plaguing the nation. It not only diverted resources away from President Lyndon Johnson’s social uplift programs under the Great Society, it “poisoned the soul” of America with violence, in King’s mind. He did not find it surprising that domestic America could be so violent when, as the minister famously announced in his landmark antiwar speech in April 1967, the American government was “the greatest purveyor of violence” in the world.

  But his outspokenness against both the Vietnam War and the lackluster government commitment to social spending alienated King from Lyndon Johnson. This had implications not only for King’s political influence but also for his life. Johnson, at times, insisted that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover provide additional protection for King, something Hoover chose not to do, on his own initiative, after 1965. As was detailed earlier, Hoover resented King for, among other things, publicly criticizing the FBI’s efforts at solving civil rights–related murders. King’s opposition to the war certainly did nothing to encourage Hoover to reverse his policy of keeping threats on King’s life from reaching the ears of King’s entourage. (Hoover, instead, told his agents to inform local police agencies.) Government attention did increasingly turn to issues of civil unrest, but not with the aim of providing social programs to pacify the urban poor. The FBI, CIA, and military increasingly—and covertly—pushed back against the black power and antiwar movements that they feared could inspire a domestic revolution; a homegrown

  “Tet Offensive,” as historian Gerald McKnight put it.

  Developed in response to the 1967 riots, the army’s “Civil Disturbance Plan,” known as Operation Garden Plot, allowed for “Federal forces to assist local authorities in the restoration and maintenance of law and order in the 50 states,” and, until 1971, as many as two army brigades remained on call specifically for this purpose.29 The official plans observe that:

  Civil Disturbances which are beyond the control of the municipal or state authorities may occur at any time. Dissatisfaction with the environmental conditions contributing to racial unrest and civil disturbances and dissatisfaction with national policy as manifested in the anti-draft and anti-Vietnam demonstrations are recognized factors within the political and social structure. As such, they might provide a preconditioned base for a steadily deteriorating situation leading to demonstrations and violent attacks upon the social order. The consistency and intensity of these preconditions could lead in time to a situation of insurgency should external subversive forces develop successful control of the situation. Federal military intervention may be required to preserve life and prop
erty and maintain normal processes of government.30

  The prospect of an American insurgency was not limited to planners in the Pentagon. By the end of 1967, the fear found a voice in the mainstream media. U.S. News & World Report ran an interview with Richard Stanger, a career State Department officer who specialized in studying foreign insurrections. Asked if an “open insurrection [in the United States] is within the realm of possibility,” Stanger answered:

  Yes, it is well within the realm of possibility. The evidence is that we are now in a transition. We are passing from mere nuisance demonstrations over civil rights and the Vietnam War to something much more violent and dangerous . . . I fear we have witnessed only a beginning. The demonstrations may well become more violent and the rioting [may] get worse, unless something drastic is done. Invariably violence feeds on itself—and it is habit-forming.”31

  Like the biblical prophets he quoted so often in his sermons, King occupied a unique position in a country that seemed on the brink of some kind of sectarian civil war in 1967. His country increasingly turned its back on him the more he called on it to repent of its ways. Appeals to “law and order,” from the likes of presidential candidate Richard Nixon, resonated more with white America than King’s calls for equality and justice. He called on black Americans to remember the philosophy and tactics that won them hard-earned gains in the first half of the decade, even as frustration boiled into violence in their hometowns.

  But even as King’s message of nonviolence lost its appeal, and even as white Americans condemned King as an agitator, he retained his esteem as a person within the black community. He remained, by a large margin, the most revered figure in the black community, according to polls. As such he became an almost perfect target of opportunity. The assassination of Dr. King—in as public and dramatic a fashion as possible—could well represent what we now refer to as a tipping point, a single act that could move the nation into widespread rioting and a full-scale white-on-black, black-on-white race war.

  5

  the money

  Not long after his encounter with the Dallas FBI on June 2, 1967, Donald Nissen resolved the mistaken charges filed against him in Sherman, Texas, and was released from jail. After picking up a car that his future boss had left him, Nissen made his way to Atlanta and began working as a book salesman at one of the country’s largest book distributors. When not lured by the criminal lifestyle, Nissen was an excellent salesman. At least for the moment, he looked to avoid criminal behavior. Atlanta offered a chance to make legitimate money.

  In July, not long after his arrival in Atlanta, Nissen thought nothing of it when Floyd Ayers, a fellow salesman, approached him with a request. Ayers wanted Nissen to deliver a package to a real estate office in Jackson, Mississippi. Nissen barely knew Ayers, but in the field of traveling sales, such favors among colleagues were common and, as it was on his trade route, Nissen agreed. Nissen was surprised to find that the address was a private residence that functioned as a business. He delivered the package to a tall, blonde, middle-aged woman, barely talking to her and not exchanging names.

  Nissen never asked Ayers about the contents of the package, but after he returned to Atlanta, Ayers revealed something shocking to Nissen. An eccentric who stood out even in a field known for strong personalities, Ayers divulged its contents and purpose: the package contained money for the murder of Martin Luther King Jr.

  Nissen had not been thinking about the King bounty offer since his meeting with the FBI. And at the time he failed to understand a number of things that were going on around him. Most importantly, he failed to consider the possibility that he did not realize that the Floyd—Ayers—who had approached him in Atlanta could be the same Floyd mentioned as a go-between for McManaman. For one thing, he did not know the last name of the “Floyd” he referenced to the FBI in Dallas in June. More to the point, both Nissen and the FBI assumed that the Floyd referenced by McManaman lived in Mississippi because of the context of the bounty.1 The others mentioned in the bounty, notably the White Knights, all operated in Mississippi. But McManaman never specified where “Floyd” was from. In retrospect Nissen’s experience makes it obvious that McManaman’s Floyd was Floyd Ayers, someone who, unbeknownst to Nissen until after King’s murder, did enjoy close associations with the Ku Klux Klan. Nissen did tell the FBI the full name of a woman in Jackson, Mississippi—another go-between—but he did not get a name from Ayers, only an address. And only now, with the benefit of released documents and follow-up research, is it apparent that the woman whose name he divulged to the FBI that June, Sybil Eure, lived in and sold real estate in Jackson—operating her business out of her home.2

  Ironically, Nissen had unknowingly involved himself in the exact plot he had worked to avoid, having gone so far as to warn the FBI about it. He had delivered a package with money from one of McManaman’s go-betweens, Floyd Ayers, to another, Sybil Eure, in Mississippi. This accident of fate owed itself to the most important and faulty assumption Nissen made: that because he had not said yes when McManaman asked him to join a King murder conspiracy in Leavenworth, he was “in the clear.” But Nissen also had not said no to the bounty offer, and apparently McManaman took this as tacit consent. Having revealed the plot to the FBI, Nissen put it in the back of his mind. Hence, he saw nothing sinister when Ayers gave him a nondescript package to deliver on a normal route.3 Ayers likely took Nissen’s agreement to deliver the package as final confirmation that the ex-convict had, in fact, willingly joined the conspiracy. These mutual misunderstandings would be why Ayers would feel safe in discussing the content’s package with Nissen.

  Having already reported the plot to the FBI, Nissen decided not to risk a second contact with the Bureau in Atlanta, trusting that they would be following his lead. His faith was misplaced.

  Shortly after Nissen delivered the package to a real estate office at 423 Raymond Road, in Jackson, Mississippi, the FBI knocked on the same door. As noted earlier, the FBI prematurely dismissed Sybil Eure as a potential suspect in the King murder plot; a respectable Southern businesswoman, they reasoned, could not possibly have anything to do with criminals or the Ku Klux Klan. But it appears using someone of Eure’s gender and social status was as much a conscious decision to misdirect a potential investigation as the decision to use someone as self-aggrandizing and as eccentric as Floyd Ayers.

  Ayers’s revelations about the package spooked Nissen. If, before, he feared possible retribution from someone in law enforcement—recall that the third go-between, per McManaman, was connected to the U.S. Marshals office—now Nissen worried about criminal repercussions. However unwitting it may have been, in delivering the package, he helped advance a murder plot. A jury might not be sympathetic to his pleas of ignorance. He could now add a possible return to prison to physical reprisals if he said anything more. He simply buried himself in his sales job, hoping that the FBI would unravel the King plot. It appears that the FBI’s visit to Eure did force the plotters to lay low. But the Dixie Mafia was a brazen group who would do anything for money, and Sam Bowers and his network of Christian Identity colleagues were just as zealous for a race war. When it became evident that the FBI investigation died after agents visited Eure, the plot resumed. Only now, as it became clear that Nissen was a snitch rather than a participant in the plot, the conspirators had to find someone else to assume one of the two roles described by McManaman. The “caser” who could stalk King. Or a shooter.

  The transfer of money from Georgia to Mississippi becomes a very important part of understanding the machinations that eventually led to King’s murder. As noted in an earlier chapter, the White Knights did not have the resources to front a $100,000 bounty. But Sam Bowers asserted that the White Knights belonged to a larger network of racists. It is worth remembering that several unsuccessful bounties had originated in the Southeast, specifically in the Atlanta area. At least one was specifically connected to James Venable, the leader of the National Knight
s of the Ku Klux Klan, the second largest Klan organization in America, with chapters in states across the nation. Venable headquartered his group in Stone Mountain, Georgia, the site of a famous cross burning that literally and figuratively ignited what historians call the second Klan revival. Largely dormant since the end of Reconstruction, a combination of nativism and nostalgia for the values of the Old South (inspired by the release of the popular and racist film Birth of a Nation), relaunched a new Klan that attracted millions of followers across the nation in the 1920s. By the 1950s and 1960s, Stone Mountain remained a mecca of sorts for the Klan, and Venable was one of the longest-serving KKK leaders in the country.

  In some ways, Atlanta also became the spiritual center for the civil rights movement. Martin Luther King Jr. made his home there, and the organization he led in his fight to end segregation, the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC), was headquartered in Atlanta. The white citizenry in the city that was supposedly “too busy to hate” vociferously opposed the civil rights movement, publicly harassing nonviolent protestors and sometimes resorting to acts of violence and terrorism. Civil rights protestors were opposed not only by the Klan, but also by more “respectable” hate groups—White Citizens Councils.

  Following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, a decision whose implications for the end of Jim Crow stunned Southern leaders, groups of influential and wealthy whites formed Citizens Councils to fight desegregation in almost every major Southern city, Atlanta included. Claiming to support legal and political challenges to integration, the Citizens Councils nonetheless were known to privately back Klan activities, even as they publicly eschewed violence. As Professor Chester Quarles noted:

  The Citizens Council was well known among law enforcement officers as a “rich man’s Klan.” Many meetings of the White Citizens Council were dismissed with fervent prayer; then the Klan leaders went back into a smaller room and had a real meeting.4