Death of a King

by Tavis Smiley

  Augustine says that the human heart is restless until it reposes in God.

  Doc’s friends note that he is more restless than ever. Haunted by thoughts of ruination—the destruction of his own life, the destruction of his plans to help the poor—he reacts by moving at an even more frantic pace.

  In Atlanta, he attends a summit meeting of seventy-eight “nonblack” minority leaders, including representatives from various Native American tribes, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Appalachian whites. Like every other conference in the past year, it proves contentious and inconclusive. Embittered criticism from Doc’s own SCLC staff remains unrelenting.

  “Now he’s taking our money and giving it to the Indians,” says Hosea Williams.

  From there, Doc rushes to catch a flight to Detroit, where that night he will deliver a major address in the wealthy suburb of Grosse Pointe before the town’s Human Relations Council and a largely white audience. Nearly three thousand people eagerly await Doc’s arrival. Also waiting is an angry throng of screaming protestors with signs that say “Traitor!” and “Commie!” On the final leg of the car trip from downtown Detroit to Grosse Pointe, the chief of police, concerned about a rash of ominous threats, bodily protects Doc by actually sitting on his lap.

  The minute Doc arrives, the jeering picks up. Despite the presence of a riot squad, security guards are unable to keep the dissidents from entering the hall, where they get even louder, heckling Doc throughout his address. Rather than speak over them, Doc pauses and politely allows them to voice their views before returning to his remarks. Getting through his text is a struggle.

  “I’ve been in the struggle a long time now,” Doc tells the audience, “and I’ve conditioned myself to some things that are much more painful than discourteous people not allowing you to speak, so if they feel that they can discourage me, they’ll be up here all night.”

  At one point he invites a particularly boisterous heckler, who has accused Doc of treason, to the stage. The man is a navy veteran who says, “I fought for freedom, not for communism… and I didn’t fight to be sold down the drain.”

  Doc listens courteously. His measured response is simple: “We love our boys who are fighting there and we just want them to come back home.”

  For now, this heckler is stilled. But the others are not. The nasty insults keep coming.

  In spite of the continual interruptions, Doc articulates his argument for his Poor People’s Campaign—in his view, the only way to avert riots this coming summer—before addressing his tormentors head-on:

  “In the midst of the hollering and in the midst of the discourtesy tonight, we see that, however much we dislike it, the destinies of white and black America are tied together.… We must all learn to live together as brothers in this country or we’re all going to perish together as fools.… Every white person is a little bit Negro and every Negro is a little bit white. Our language, our music, our material prosperity, and even our food are an amalgam of black and white. So there can be no separate black path to power and fulfillment that does not intersect white routes. And there can be no separate white path to power and fulfillment short of social disaster without recognizing the necessity of sharing that power with black aspirations for freedom and human dignity. We do need each other: The black man needs the white man to save him from his fear and the white man needs the black man to free him from his guilt.”

  Raising his voice above the intransigent hecklers, Doc invokes the movement’s signature song:

  “We shall overcome because Thomas Carlyle is right. ‘No lie can live forever.’ We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right. ‘Truth crushed to earth will rise again.’ We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right. ‘Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne. Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown standeth God in the shadows, keeping watch above his own’.… We shall overcome because the Bible is right. ‘You shall reap what you sow.’ ”

  The speech concluded, Doc is relieved to have outlasted the dissidents. In the aftermath of so much ugly contention, he says at a press conference that he has never before faced an indoor audience this hostile.

  Only later does he learn that Rosa Parks, now employed by Michigan congressman John Conyers, was in the audience that night too.

  Doc would have loved to have greeted his old friend and fellow soldier—to reminisce about those times, an eon ago, when they met back in Montgomery. So much has changed. So much has not changed. So many victories celebrated. So many defeats suffered. So many obstacles still in place. So much still to be done.

  Doc’s next stop is California. Another long flight over the Rockies into Los Angeles, and then he will be driven down to Anaheim to speak at the Disneyland Hotel, only to return the next day to preach a sermon in South Central Los Angeles.

  Before he arrives at the “happiest place on earth,” he receives advance notice that Bobby Kennedy will be announcing his candidacy for president and opposing Eugene McCarthy as they both seek to stop LBJ’s renomination at the Democratic convention in Chicago, five months from now, in August.

  Knowing that Doc will never support Johnson, Kennedy’s people request that he withhold any endorsement of McCarthy and, short of declaring for Bobby, at least remain neutral. Doc agrees. For the moment, he’s encouraged by the fact that the powerful Kennedys are prepared to take on a president whose war policies he so deeply abhors.

  Discouragement, though, permeates the tone of his remarks in Anaheim.

  “A riot is the language of the unheard,” he says. “What is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that promises of freedom and democracy have not been met. 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.”

  While in Los Angeles, Doc has dinner with former Dodger pitcher Don Newcombe, one of the first Negroes—after Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella—to integrate the big leagues in the late forties.

  Newcombe is alarmed that Doc looks so haggard. His voice is strained and his eyes are filled with fatigue.

  “You need some rest, Doc,” says Newk.

  Doc explains that his schedule won’t allow it. “My brothers and sisters need me,” he tells the pitcher before adding, “Don, you’ll never know how easy you and Jackie and Campy made it for me to do my job by what you did on the baseball field.”

  The comment startles Newk.

  “Doc,” he says, “you’re the one who got beat by billy clubs and bitten by dogs and thrown in jail. And you say we made your job easier—I don’t get it.”

  “You were there first,” says Doc. “I just followed.”

  An overflowing crowd follows Doc’s every word.

  It’s Sunday morning and he’s preaching at L.A.’s Holman United Methodist Church, declaring, “It is midnight in race relations in our country.… Clouds of despair are floating in so many of our mental skies.”

  As in virtually all Doc’s sermons, the emotional movement is from darkness to light; he works to turn the corner from despair to hope. Yet negotiating that turn is increasingly difficult. To realize that turn on this Sunday morning, he contrasts hope with desire.

  “Hope is not desire.… You may desire money, but you hope for peace. You may desire sex, but you hope for freedom. You may desire beautiful clothes, but you hope for the ringing of justice. You see, desire has an ‘I’ quality, but hope has a ‘we’ quality.… I’ve seen people who have lost hope. They wander through life, but somehow they never live life.… They merely exist.… I have seen hate, and all the time I see it, I say to myself, ‘Hate is too great a burden to bear.’ I don’t want to be like that.… It is only through love that we keep hope alive.… Hope is based on faith that life has ultimate meaning.”

  Doc has preached himself into a state of hope. For now the dark clouds have passed and he
can look forward to flying to Atlanta. But then comes the call.

  Memphis is calling.

  Reverend James Lawson is on the line again. Lawson is a man whose integrity Doc cannot doubt. Lawson’s argument carries mighty moral weight. Lawson is telling Doc that the strike in Memphis is a strike at the very heart of all that is wrong with America. The strike is now in its fifth full week. The strike has pitted the haves against the have-nots. The strike has expanded: a boycott of downtown stores has driven down retail sales 35 percent. But the strike needs further backing. Memphis is a microcosm of the great sociopolitical maladies plaguing the country. Memphis merits attention. Memphis merits support. Memphis is the nexus. Memphis requires, deserves, even demands the presence of Martin Luther King Jr.

  Doc wants to fly back to Atlanta.

  Wants to get back to Coretta and the kids.

  Wants to resolve the bickering within SCLC.

  Wants to pour all his energy into his Poor People’s Campaign.

  But how can he ignore Reverend Lawson’s pleas?

  How can he ignore Memphis’s urgent call?

  He wants to go home, he wants to stay on schedule, but how can he avoid Memphis when Memphis stays locked in his mind?

  Memphis won’t leave him alone.

  Yes, he tells Lawson. He’ll come to Memphis.

  He’ll be there tomorrow.

  Chapter Nineteen

  GARMENT OF DESTINY

  Listen, people, listen

  I’m gonna sing you a song

  About a man who lived good

  But didn’t live too long

  He was born in Macon, Georgia

  A poor boy without a dime

  He found his way to Memphis

  Singing “These Arms of Mine”

  The radio is tuned to WDIA, the “mother station of Negroes,” the “heart and soul of Memphis,” where William Bell is singing the tribute that he and organist Booker T. Jones have written in memory of Otis Redding, killed in a plane crash only three months earlier. The loss of Otis—the most luminous star to emerge from Memphis’s own Stax Records—at age twenty-six is especially painful. His last recording, the mournful “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay,” is in heavy rotation.

  Memphis is in heavy mourning. The deep soul of Memphis is aching. The city that sits on the banks of the muddy Mississippi and calls itself the “gateway to the Delta” is torn asunder in a monumental clash between the powerful and the powerless. The usual sweet fragrance of barbecue is replaced with the stink of refuse.

  Doc hears Memphis’s music. He feels Memphis’s pain. He knows this city’s hallowed history and has accepted the fact that the passion and purpose of his own mission have made his journey here inevitable.

  On Monday, March 18, as he is driven to Memphis’s Mason Temple to rally the garbage strikers and their supporters, he gathers his strength. When he arrives at the huge hall, he is told that there is not, as expected, a crowd of ten thousand. The news disappoints him. “No,” says an aide, “there are more than 15,000 supporters waiting to hear you.” Doc is heartened. They’re standing in the aisles, cheering and waving.

  The reception is thunderous. Compared with the contempt that he has endured at the hands of right-wingers in Michigan and left-wing militants on both coasts, here he is celebrated as a conquering hero. But he quickly turns the attention from himself to the striking workers:

  “You are demonstrating that we are all tied in a single garment of destiny.”

  He is also quick to humble himself. Referring to his alma mater, he says, “The man who has been to ‘No House’ is as significant as the man who’s been to Morehouse.… The person who picks up our garbage is as significant as the physician.… All labor has worth.… You are reminding not only Memphis but the nation that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages.… The vast majority of Negroes in our country are still perishing on a lonely island of poverty in a vast ocean of material prosperity.…

  “I will hear America through her historians years and years to come saying, ‘We built gigantic buildings to kiss the sky. We built gargantuan bridges to span the sea. Through our spaceships we were able to carve highways through the stratosphere. Through our airplanes we were able to dwarf distances and place time in chains. Through our submarines we were able to penetrate oceanic depths.’ But it seems that I can hear the God of the universe saying, ‘Even though you’ve done all of that, I was hungry and you fed me not. I was naked and you clothed me not.’ ”

  Doc repeats his prophetic warning that has become something of a mantra:

  America may be going to hell.

  Reaffirming the strikers, he says, “You have assembled for more than thirty days now to say, ‘We are tired of being at the bottom. We are tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. We are tired of having our children attend overcrowded, inferior schools. We are tired of having to live in dilapidated, sub-standard housing conditions… where we don’t have wall-to-wall carpet but so often end up with wall-to-wall rats and roaches. We are tired of smothering in an air-tight cage of poverty… tired of walking the streets for jobs that do not exist… tired of our men being emasculated so that our wives and our daughters have to go out and work in the white ladies’ kitchens’.…

  “So in Memphis we have begun. We are saying, ‘Now is the time.’ Get the word out to everybody in power in this town that now is the time.…

  “Never forget that freedom is not something that is voluntarily given by the oppressor. It is something that must be demanded by the oppressed. Freedom is not some lavish dish that the power structure… will hand down on a silver platter while the Negro merely furnishes the appetite. If we are going to get equality, if we are going to get adequate wages, we are going to have to struggle for it.…

  “You may have to escalate the struggle.… If they keep refusing and will not recognize the union… I’m telling you what you are going to have to do.… You ought to get together and just have a general work stoppage in the city of Memphis. If you let that day come, not a Negro in this city will go to any job downtown. And not a Negro in domestic service will go to anybody’s house or anybody’s kitchen. And black students and teachers will not go to anybody’s school. And they will hear you then. The city of Memphis will not be able to function.”

  His mind moves from Memphis to Washington. He sets out his grand vision to occupy the nation’s capital for weeks on end.

  “I ask you to make this the beginning of the Washington movement—We are going to start moving out.… We’re going to have mule trains moving on up.… We’re going to pick up forces in Alabama.… Those forces will join with Georgia.… Another group come on out of Milwaukee, Chicago… coming out of Pittsburgh… coming on down from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore… moving on into Washington.…

  “Some of the Congressmen will stand at the windows of Congress. They will turn around and say, ‘Who are these people? Where are they coming from?’… I want someone to say, ‘These are they who are tired of years of oppression and denial.… These are they who are coming up out of great trials and tribulation’.…

  “We aren’t going to Washington for one day this time. We’re going to stay.… We’re going to get flatbed trucks and take some shacks on those trucks.… We’re going to take a shack by the Smithsonian Institute so that it can stand as a symbol of American life.… We’re going to build a shanty town in Washington.… We’re going to call it our ‘City of Hope’.… Sunday after Sunday we’re going to march around the walls of Capitol Hill. And we’re going to keep on marching until the walls of injustice come tumbling down.”

  On its feet, the crowd goes wild. Doc has caught the spirit of Memphis and lifted it to new heights. As he leaves the podium, his aides hand him a note. He smiles and returns to the lectern.

  “I want to tell you that I am coming back to Memphis on Friday to lead you in a march through the center of the city.”

  The shou
ting gets louder; the clamor is deafening. It feels as though the roof is coming off.

  Doc is whisked away to the black-owned Lorraine Motel in the shadow of downtown, a favorite spot for celebrities like Ray Charles and Count Basie. The Lorraine is known as one of the few places in the city where blacks and whites can comfortably socialize. Memphis ministers Billy Kyles and Benjamin Hooks are with Doc, reviewing his triumphant address and planning what is certain to be his triumphant return at week’s end. In a fitting conclusion to a remarkable evening, a choir of college women, also staying at the Lorraine, serenades Doc with songs of holy praise.

  The sweet sound of their voices relaxes his soul. It is with both gratitude and resignation that, slipping into sleep, he accepts one inescapable truth:

  His fate is tied to the fortune of this city’s impoverished citizens, this city of Memphis.

  Tuesday morning. The preacher is up, out, and moving on. It’s puddle-hopping time again. A little Cessna will fly him deeper down the Delta, where Doc has scheduled no fewer than eight recruiting rallies over two days in rural Mississippi towns. There’s not a minute to waste.

  The first stop is at a broken-down church in Marks, Mississippi, located in the poorest county in America. Despite the intrusion of an inebriated white man, Doc is moved to tears by the testimonies of women—one who says that her family barely subsists on a diet of pinto beans, another who cannot send her kids to school because they lack sufficient clothing.

  Marks, Doc decides, is where the Poor People’s mule train to Washington will commence.

  From Marks to Clarksdale to Greenwood, where he is still haunted by the women of Marks:

  “I wept with them as I heard them talking about the fact that they didn’t even have any blankets to cover their children up on a cold night. I said to myself, ‘God doesn’t like this.’ And we are going to say in no uncertain terms that we aren’t going to accept it any longer. We’ve got to go to Washington in big numbers.… We’re going to make this nation move again, and we’re going to make America see poor people.”