When Harlem Nearly Killed King

by Hugh Pearson

  As far as King’s recent arrest was concerned, both Wilkins and Spingarn no doubt knew that a telegram to President Eisenhower hoping he would express outrage was merely a cosmetic gesture, intended more to cover their own tracks when someone asked what they had done than anything else. For three decades, Spingarn had consulted with every U.S. president on the issue of civil rights, and knew that Eisenhower was only doing the bare minimum required by the recent decisions of the Supreme Court. He claimed that once, during an audience with the president, in which he asked for a civil rights favor, Eisenhower replied, “I haven’t got the time to do it. I’m too tired. Now today I had to sign fifteen important matters and only had five minutes to make a decision on the fifteenth. I ought to have had two weeks on each.” To Spingarn, this reply indicated that Eisenhower didn’t really know what he was doing as he performed his duties.

  As for the phenomenon of King, Spingarn took the long view. He realized that the NAACP’s expenses had increased tremendously as a result of aiding the budding activism in the Deep South. And he also worried about the activists King was bringing into the movement, fearful that Communists were slipping through. They had long been a problem at certain NAACP local chapter meetings, making outlandish motions while genuine members were present. Then they’d wait until the genuine members left, make the motions again, and get them passed, after which national headquarters would have to send someone down to straighten everything out.

  But this wasn’t the issue at the moment for eighty-year-old Spingarn. The issue now was how to make it clear to the public and press that there was no friction between the NAACP and King since Wilkins wasn’t going to be on the dais at Friday’s Harlem rally. The solution lay in the fact that the following day King was scheduled to sign books right around the corner from where the rally was held: Blumstein’s Department Store on 125th Street. Spingarn, the dean of the NAACP, decided to be there for a public photo opportunity with King. For King to have his picture taken next to Spingarn would be like a young Frederick Douglass taking a photograph next to his elder and mentor, William Lloyd Garrison. Little did Spingarn realize that one of the photos taken of him next to King would, indeed, go down in history. But not for the reasons he had hoped.

  FIVE

  why isn’t king signing books

  at my bookstore?

  IN THE EYES of one of Harlem’s legends, it seemed pretty strange and insulting for King to agree to sign books during his visit in a Harlem department store that didn’t even sell books. On top of that, a department store that wasn’t even Negro-owned. And this in a community that was considered the capital of Negro America. When people around the world thought of Negro accomplishment in literature and entertainment, they thought of Harlem. They thought of the names of those who had illuminated it as the shining beacon of what they viewed as best about the Negro—poet Countee Cullen; poet and author Langston Hughes; the author, composer, and lawyer that the Spingarn’s Amenia Conference bought into the NAACP fold, James Weldon Johnson; singer and actor Paul Robeson; author Arna Bontemps; scholar and librarian Arthur Schomburg; the composer and bandleader who was to play at the rally in front of the Hotel Teresa, Duke Ellington; jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker; jazz vocalist Sarah Vaughan.… And those really in the know when considering Harlem legends also thought of bookstore owner Lewis Michaeux.

  In the 1920s while Arthur Spingarn was still producing, for doubters among his Caucasian contemporaries, books by Negro authors proving Negro intelligence, Lewis Michaeaux was hunting basements in the homes of Harlem friends in search of the same type of books to display on his pushcart and sell to other Negroes. It seemed that pioneering was in his family’s blood. His younger brother, Elder Solomon “Lightfoot” Micheaux, would become known as the “Happy Am I” preacher who allegedly became wealthy from the enthusiastic response to his Radio Church of God, and a real estate empire that included churches worth millions of dollars. Michaeux also happened to be the cousin of a Michaeux who had pioneered in the world of film. Oscar Michaeux’s name would go down in history for his early films about Negro cowboys; domestic bliss and tragedy amongst Negroes; historical films about Negro accomplishment, and so on; before finally succumbing to the monopolistic ways of Hollywood. Had this other Micheaux not been cruelly crushed, had he found the financial and behind-the-scenes support obtained by men with last names like Cohn, Goldwyn, Mayer, and so on, whose studios became Hollywood legends, there is no telling how far Negro achievement in a variety of arenas might have spread. The same could have been said during the height of the Harlem Renaissance for gangsters squeezed out of the clandestine activities they pioneered. In the numbers racket, for example, Bumpy Johnson was replaced by the likes of Mafiosi such as Lucky Luciano, who, in turn, helped finance posh entertainment outlets like the Cotton Club, which featured the music of Duke Ellington and the hedonistic shimmying of the cafe-au-lait Cotton Club dancers for the pleasure of prosperous Caucasians only, eagerly “slumming” up in Harlem. Johnson, too, might have plowed clandestine wealth into the entertainment industry. There were all kinds of “what ifs” to consider when one really stopped to think about things. And Lewis Michaeux, to the consternation of plenty of Negroes considered more pragmatic, was always stopping to think about things and doing something in protest after thinking as long and hard as he thought necessary.

  Born near Newport News, Virginia, in 1884, Micheaux migrated to New York City in his early twenties. After saving enough money from selling books from his Harlem pushcart, in 1930 he opened a bookstore on Seventh Avenue, near the corner of 125th Street, catty-corner from where King was to speak twenty-eight years later at the September 19th rally; the spot became known as Harlem Square due to the constant political activity that took place there. Through the years activists of all kinds harangued passersby with their political agendas (beginning in the 1940s, when 125th Street stores were integrated and the center of Negro Harlem moved from 135th Street and Lenox Avenue to 125th Street and Seventh Avenue, the political street activists moving with the tide). Michaeux called his bookstore the National Memorial African Bookstore and, in the beginning, slept in the back and washed windows for people when proceeds from selling his books couldn’t make ends meet. Eventually, proceeds did make ends meet and he maintained what for most of the next twenty-eight years was the only bookstore in Harlem. During Christmas season, the bookstore would sell as many as five hundred Bibles to the community. It would also earn a reputation as the most comprehensive bookshop on Negroes in the world. Over time it would earn the informal name of “The House of Common Sense and Proper Propaganda”—the words displayed on a sign Michaeux placed in the front window. The National Memorial African Bookstore became a meeting place for students, scholars, African diplomats, and politicians. All kinds of books about Negroes were stacked up to its high ceiling. And there were portraits of famed Negro men and women, too. Harlem Square street activists often stopped in to check historical claims about the Negro before mounting their ladders and haranguing the crowds of pedestrians. Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen often stopped by to discuss with the small, wiry bespectacled Michaeux the hardships of being a Negro writer; others who stopped by included Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson; Louis Armstrong; W.E.B. Du Bois (when he was still living in America before moving to Ghana); and the irascible Harlem congressman and pastor of historic Abyssinian Baptist Church, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

  Yet perhaps it was Micheaux’s reputation for militancy that caused King to avoid signing books at his store. This was the man who featured on his bookshelves not only titles with verifiable facts about the Negro but also those making dubious romantic claims about black African history that any person who thought hard about the Negro predicament would find understandable. You shove an entire people off into a corner with nothing more to glue them together as a group than just one detectable drop of ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa—ancestry from a multitude of West African ethnicities, no matter how much ancestry they harbor from elsewhere
(the equivalent of defining as Caucasian anyone with one drop of ancestry from Western Europe, meaning that under such a definition the vast majority of American Negroes would then become Caucasian)—it only made sense that the said people would feel compelled to find any means they could to be proud of what glued them together. Michaeux’s bookstore was the epicenter of not only respected Negro scholars researching their work but also those who still upheld the ideals of Marcus Garvey (Michaeux himself was still a Garveyite), and those who followed the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, founder of the Nation of Islam. These facts indicate the complexities of Lewis Michaeux.

  One year he featured in the window of his store a large sign about a new book entitled The Goddamn White Man. He received a lot of complaints about the sign. Caucasians began writing him, the local police began bugging him. A Caucasian officer said, “Now, look, you have an institute of learning here, and this is a bad thing for young folks to be seeing—you cursing the white man.”

  “Well, I’m going to sell the book as long as the publisher is publishing it,” replied Michaeux. “You see the publisher and stop them, then I won’t sell the book.”

  Due to his refusal to stop advertising the book in the window, the police department sent him a summons to show cause for not removing the sign. Michaeux showed up in court with a Webster’s Dictionary picking out various words to define the meaning of freedom of speech, successfully demonstrating why he had a right to feature the sign and sell the book.

  It was easy to understand why association with such a controversial man would be a potential problem for an emerging leader like King, who preached nonviolence and echoed Jesus’s teaching to love your enemy, to turn the other cheek. The powers-that-be were already watching King closely for potential Communist infiltration among his ranks. Did it make sense to help launch his book at a Harlem bookstore that might add fuel to their suspicions?

  Micheaux didn’t see things this way. He felt that his bookstore was a natural setting for a book signing by King. So he put in a call to Montgomery inquiring if King wanted to have one. But to his surprise no one called him back. He put in calls to the appropriate people in New York City. Again, there was no response.

  That’s strange, thought Michaeux. Surely this young product of Morehouse College, of the educated Negro middle class, was aware of who he was. And if he wasn’t, certainly there were enough people around him who could have enlightened him. As time passed and each day he heard nothing from King, King’s publisher, or any of King’s emissaries, Lewis Micheaux grew increasingly perplexed, increasingly miffed, increasingly angry. The political rally featuring King, Rockefeller, Harriman, and a host of other notables was going to take place catty-corner from his bookstore, but there would be no signing? And other events were planned for King elsewhere in Harlem. The day before the rally, he was scheduled to sign books at a new establishment in the community called the Empire State Bookstore, operated by the Empire State Baptist Missionary Convention. He would also appear at a Harlem church. Then the day after the rally he would sign copies at Blumstein’s, a Jewish-owned department store around the corner that didn’t even sell books. Upon pondering this obvious snub, Michaeux’s anger became a boiling cauldron.

  Though King had experienced a meteoric rise in popularity among Negroes across the country, he was coming into the community that had set the pace for theorizing on how the collective future of Negroes should proceed, and snubbing the very epicenter for such activity, which was owned by a seventy-four-year-old man who had been fighting for racial justice in his own way a lot longer than King had been. Thus Micheaux felt no qualms about embarrassing King as he visited the community. He felt no qualms about challenging King on why his bookstore was being overlooked. As it became clear that he wouldn’t be hearing from King or anyone connected with him, that’s precisely what Lewis Micheaux prepared to do.

  SIX

  not quite in touch with reality

  AS LEADERS OF the NAACP knew only too well, the other issue turning the minds of the American people upside down in those days was Communism. Communists enjoyed popularity in the country during the Great Depression. Americans of all colors who had been rendered destitute searched for the ultimate safety net. Young idealists in academia, the labor movement, and the arts turned to Karl Marx as the savior. After World War II came, postwar prosperity followed for the victorious United States. At the same time, citizens witnessed the brutal manner in which Communist Russia took over Eastern Europe. The result was a national fear of Communism. Senator Joe McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) dominated the news. From 1951 to 1954, HUAC destroyed the careers of numerous former young idealists now repentant and eager to enjoy postwar prosperity. By 1958, McCarthy’s witch-hunt was dead, yet America was still obsessed with the Red Scare. And since both Socialists and Communists preached institutionalized equality, it was only natural for critics of the civil rights movement to equate civil rights with Socialism and Communism. And just as natural for Socialists and Communists to gravitate toward the civil rights movement.

  As Wilkins and Spingarn knew only too well, civil rights leaders were always being called Communist agents. Hence, Thurgood Marshall’s willingness to spy for the FBI, assuring J. Edgar Hoover of the NAACP’s bona fides. Distinguished Negroes eager to prove they were good Americans were always being forced to straddle the need to assure the powers-that-be that they were good capitalists with their passion for racial equality. There had long been the need to reconcile the theory that private businesses had a right to serve whoever they pleased, with the conviction that no one should be excluded from such service due to race or gender. King’s agenda during the Montgomery bus boycott and the theory under which Brown v. The Board of Education had been won, of course, fell outside of this purview since they both dealt not with private enterprise but with public services. Yet on the horizon for the movement was the issue of Negro treatment by private businesses as well (by 1960 the lunch counter sit-ins at five-and-dime department stores would be launched by Negro college students in North Carolina). As the movement continued to gain momentum, the most respected Negro leaders distanced themselves from known Communists. People like King adviser Stanley Levison did their best to conceal their Communist backgrounds from the general public.

  Simultaneously, paranoids came out of the woodwork to hound leaders of the movement. One was a tall, large-boned, dark-skinned forty-two-year-old Negro woman with a restless nature named Izola Curry. Born near the tiny hamlet of Adrian, Georgia, to a mother and father who were sharecroppers, the grown-up Curry, now residing in New York City, had a taste for baubly earrings and expensive eyeglasses. For that day and age, she was a fashion plate. Izola had been one of five children (three boys and two girls), and attended elementary school in nearby Savannah until the third grade. In 1937 she married. But six months later she left her husband, fled to New York City, and kept the last name Curry. She began dating a man named Leroy Weekes, who eventually asked her to marry him. She refused. Apparently Weekes had become involved to some extent in the NAACP.

  Like plenty of others in those days, Curry believed the NAACP was controlled by Communists. But in her increasingly deranged state of mind, unlike paranoids such as J. Edgar Hoover, she sought no evidence of such a connection. She simply assumed as much. She assumed that Communists were running things in every civil rights organization.

  By 1956 paranoia had gotten the best of her. She began writing the FBI claiming that Communist agents were out to get her. She fled numerous cities, living for a time in Cleveland; St. Louis; Charleston, West Virginia; back again in Savannah; then West Palm Beach, Florida; Lexington, Kentucky; Columbia, South Carolina; Miami; Daytona Beach, and back again to New York City. By September 1958, she was renting a room in a brownstone at 121 West 122nd Street in Harlem, which she paid for by working at various places when she could as a temp maid. And when not working, she continued to express extreme bitterness about two things: Communism and the Negro C
hurch. She especially detested Negro preachers. Curry felt that they were flimflam artists who pimped the community. She believed that boycotts and protests led by Negro ministers were a sham and that rather than follow them into protests, Negroes should appeal directly to Congress to change the racial laws. Thus in Curry’s mind, Martin Luther King, Jr., was a young minister pimping the community for the benefit of Communists.

  To her neighbors she was a very antisocial woman. Curry spoke with a distinct Southern accent, but her words were often unintelligible and ungrammatical. When Curry could be understood, she was often heard expressing not only hatred for Negro preachers and Communists but for “whites,” too. Those around her simply wrote her off as one of the eccentric types. It was hardly unusual to run into her kind in a city the size of New York. She just happened to be Harlem’s contribution.

  Perusing the newspapers, Curry found out about the upcoming trip King was to make to the city and his scheduled appearance at a political rally very near where she lived. She made note of it and decided to attend so that she could give King a piece of her mind. She decided to tail him as much as she could as he toured the community. Izola Curry decided to settle once and for all what she viewed as the silly business of Communist-influenced protests being led by a licentious Negro preacher intent on ruining the country.

  SEVEN

  stride toward critical acclaim

  THE NEW YORKERS King encountered on September 15, 1958, upon arriving in the city were eager to embrace the nascent civil rights movement. As he traveled the city, King would be greeted by predominantly Negro crowds ready to denounce his recent arrest in Montgomery, ready to support the integration of public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, ready to grant points to gubernatorial opponents Averell Harriman and Nelson Rockefeller for taking positions in support of the movement as they squared off against each other. Caucasian New Yorkers, on the other hand, were less enthusiastic, yet not hostile. For the most part they paid lip service to the notion that Negroes were true equals. Outside of the Deep South, where de facto rather than de jure segregation was the rule, even among liberal Caucasians, slow, primarily symbolic progress was as far as they were willing to take things. Most residents, for example, were just getting used to the type of progress made by New York—based Mohawk Airlines in hiring the first Negro flight attendant in the entire airline industry to serve passengers on its DC-3 flights from New York City to Buffalo. This didn’t mean that major airlines intended to make a concerted effort to hire many more Negro flight attendants (there was no such thing as affirmative action back then). It merely meant that a beachhead of slow progress had been established, and for now that was enough.