Pillar of Fire
Page 1
More praise for Pillar of Fire
“Pillar of Fire is a magisterial history of one of the most tumultuous periods in postwar America. Branch’s storytelling is strong, his storytelling colorful. Reading Branch, it is easier to see why even the most remarkable revolutions are never complete.”
—Jon Meacham, Newsweek
“Politics and personalities, ambition and imagination, triumph and tragedy.”
—Jeff Shesol, The Washington Post
“One part biography, one part history, one part elegy…a vast panorama…powerful.”
—David M. Shribman, The Wall Street Journal
“As he did in Parting the Waters, Branch brings to these events both a passion for their detail and a recognition of their larger historical significance.”
—Alan Wolfe, The New York Times Book Review
“Magnificent…the birth of a masterwork akin to Carl Sandburg’s Lincoln or Shelby Foote’s Civil War.”
—Scott Ellsworth, The Oregonian
“Branch has an uncanny ability to penetrate the most obscure nooks and crannies of the past to provide a whole new perspective on the Sixties…”
—Ray Jenkins, The Baltimore Sun
“Pillar of Fire, a history of symbiosis and epiphany, records King’s vision and the disparate moral currents that forced America to redefine itself in light of its failures to live up to its own principles of freedom.”
—Bill Maxwell, St. Petersburg Times
“The strength of Pillar of Fire lies in Branch’s unsurpassed ability to bring the reader into the moment, enabling one to almost feel the tension of the times.”
—Trevor Coleman, Detroit Free Press
“Pillar of Fire is truly a great book, one that everyone should read and that every library should place on proud display.”
—Ray Rickman, The Providence Sunday Journal
“A book of far-reaching political and cultural dimension, dense and comprehensive, riveting despite its length, and recounting the fits and starts of the battle for equality for all Americans regardless of color.”
—William W. Starr, The State (Columbia, S.C.)
“Pillar of Fire is truly an epic.”
—William McKeen, The Orlando Sentinel
“Pillar of Fire’s great strengths are Branch’s mastery of detail and his powerful insights, gained from so many years of research and almost 2,000 interviews. The result is a familiar story made fresh—and one that Americans of all races and colors would do well to know and understand.”
—Harry Merrit, Lexington Herald-Leader
“This is epic history, and the events chronicled herein still resonate today.”
—Patrick Beach, Austin American-Statesman
“Branch wonderfully brings alive the times and the tensions. Pillar of Fire is an important detailed work of history that describes one of the most crucial periods of American history since the Civil War. Branch movingly captures a time when people felt compelled to take risks and take action. It is a book that should be read.”
—Deirdre Donahue, USA Today
“Branch’s narrative is rich in historical ironies. At all levels Branch’s scholarship reveals a nation whose unexamined ideals are about to collide with unanticipated realities. In his upcoming final installation of America in the King Years, Branch faces the challenge of resolving dissonances with a unifying fugue. Until then, be grateful for two-thirds of a monument.”
—R. Z. Sheppard, Time
ALSO BY TAYLOR BRANCH
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63
Labyrinth (with Eugene M. Propper)
The Empire Blues
Second Wind (with Bill Russell)
Blowing the Whistle: Dissent in the Public Interest
(with Charles Peters)
Copyright © 1998 by Taylor Branch
All rights reserved,
including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form.
SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are
registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Branch, Taylor.
Pillar of fire: America in the King years, 1963-65/
Taylor Branch.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Afro-Americans—Civil rights. 2. Civil rights
movements—United States—History—20th century.
3. King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968. 4. United States—
History—1961-1969. I. Title.
E185.61.B7915 1998
323.1’196073—dc21 97-46076 CIP
ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-5870-5
ISBN-10: 1-4165-5870-5
Visit us on the World Wide Web:
http://www.SimonSays.com
FOR CHRISTY
Contents
Preface to Pillar of Fire
PART ONE
BIRMINGHAM TIDES
1 Islam in Los Angeles
2 Prophets in Chicago
3 LBJ in St. Augustine
4 Gamblers in Law
5 To Vote in Mississippi: Advance by Retreat
6 Tremors: L.A. to Selma
7 Marx in the White House
8 Summer Freeze
9 Cavalry: Lowenstein and the Church
10 Mirrors in Black and White
11 Against All Enemies
12 Frontiers on Edge: The Last Month
PART TWO
NEW WORLDS PASSING
13 Grief
14 High Councils
15 Hattiesburg Freedom Day
16 Ambush
17 Spreading Poisons
18 The Creation of Muhammad Ali
19 Shaky Pulpits
20 Mary Peabody Meets the Klan
21 Wrestling with Legends
22 Filibusters
23 Pilgrims and Empty Pitchers
24 Brushfires
PART THREE
FREEDOM SUMMER
25 Jail Marches
26 Bogue Chitto Swamp
27 Beachheads
28 Testing Freedom
29 The Cow Palace Revolt
30 King in Mississippi
31 Riot Politics
32 Crime, War, and Freedom School
33 White House Etiquette
34 A Dog in the Manger: The Atlantic City Compromise
35 “We see the giants…”
36 Movements Unbound
PART FOUR
“LORD, MAKE ME PURE—BUT NOT YET”
37 Landslide
38 Nobel Prize
39 To the Valley: The Downward King
40 Saigon, Audubon, and Selma
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations Used in Source Notes
Notes
Major Works Cited in Notes
Preface to Pillar of Fire
THERE WAS NO historical precedent for Birmingham, Alabama, in April and May of 1963, when the power balance of a great nation turned not on clashing armies or global commerce but on the youngest student demonstrators of African descent, down to first-and second-graders. Only the literature of Passover ascribes such impact to the fate of minors, and never before was a country transformed, arguably redeemed, by the active moral witness of schoolchildren.
The miracle of Birmingham might have stood alone as the culmination of a freedom movement grown slowly out of Southern black churches. Yet it was merely the strongest of many tides that crested in the movement’s peak years, 1963-65. They challenged, inspired, and confounded America over the meaning of simple words: dignity, equal votes, equal souls. They gripped Malcolm X along with President Johnson, buffeted the watchwo
rds “integration” and “nonviolence,” broke bodies and spirits, enlarged freedom.
This is a continuing work, which follows Parting the Waters, an account of the King years from 1954 to 1963. To introduce impending elements as well as continuing ones, it begins with five chapters that approach Birmingham from afar, sometimes unconsciously. The characters include Orthodox rabbis, sharecroppers, Muslim prisoners, and a dispirited Vice President, in settings from North America’s oldest Christian settlement of St. Augustine, Florida, to its western frontier in Los Angeles. All had reached points of crisis by Birmingham spring, when the young marchers released collateral forces that drew them together. Seekers of the black vote in rural Mississippi, who literally could not move in 1963, rose to dominate the pivotal year of 1964.
I try to employ nomenclature authentic to the historical period. People of African descent are “Negroes” until the prevailing term of self-reference changed, or when characters at the time spoke differently. Muslim mosques appear as “temples” when the members called them so. My mission statement for the trilogy, the last volume of which will be At Canaan’s Edge, remains expressed by the following words from the preface to Parting the Waters.
Almost as color defines vision itself, race shapes the cultural eye—what we do and do not notice, the reach of empathy and the alignment of response. This subliminal force recommends care in choosing a point of view for a history grounded in race. Strictly speaking, this book is not a biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., though he is at its heart.
I have tried to make biography and history reinforce each other by knitting together a number of personal stories along the main seam of an American epoch. Like King himself, this book attempts to rise from an isolated culture into a larger history by speaking more than one language.
My purpose is to write a narrative history of the civil rights movement out of the conviction from which it was made, namely that truth requires a maximum effort to see through the eyes of strangers, foreigners, and enemies. I hope to sustain my thesis that King’s life is the best and most important metaphor for American history in the watershed postwar years.
Baltimore, Maryland
November 1997
PART ONE
Birmingham Tides
1
Islam in Los Angeles
ON APRIL 27, 1962, Muslims gathered for the Friday evening prayer service at Muhammad’s Temple No. 27 in South-Central Los Angeles, east of Culver City and west of Watts. Some two hundred followers of Elijah Muhammad sat in folding metal chairs, separated by sex—the women wearing head coverings and floor-length dresses, generally white, and the men in distinctive dark suits with suspenders and bow ties, their heads closely shaved. Facing them from the podium, a blackboard posed in large letters the thematic question of the Nation of Islam: “WHICH ONE WILL SURVIVE THE WAR OF ARMAGEDDON?” To the left, framed by a cross, an American flag, and a silhouette of a hanging lynch victim, the blackboard offered a grim choice labeled “Christianity, Slavery, Suffering, Death,” in pointed contrast to the alternative proclaimed on the right: “Islam, Freedom, Justice, Equality.” Thus, explained the quick-witted Minister John X Morris, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad answered one of the central puzzles of all religion—how to reconcile unmerited suffering with the existence of a benevolent God. Allah had permitted the Christian nations to bring Africans into slavery—“chewing on men’s bones for three hundred years,” as Muhammad put it—to test the will of the victims to reestablish their religious dignity.
Muhammad’s Nation of Islam demanded that followers assume full responsibility for their own rehabilitation, and give whites due respect for enterprise if not for morals. “You are the man that is asleep,” Elijah Muhammad scolded through his new newspaper, Muhammad Speaks. “The white man is wide awake. He is not a dummy by any means. He has built a world. His knowledge and wisdom is now reaching out through space.” Even Assistant Minister Arthur X Coleman, who spoke that night, acknowledged the human cost of following the Nation’s exacting discipline. His own wife had left him for home back in Tennessee not long after he had thrown all the sweet potatoes and pork products out of their refrigerator to follow the Muslim diet. Although Coleman scoffed at some teachings from the beginning—he told his grandfather he doubted claims that Mr. Muhammad had conversations directly with God—he struggled toward a new identity through an eclectic regimen that included Dale Carnegie public speaking courses, military-style fitness exercises, a program of readings on ancient civilizations, and what amounted to a second job selling Muslim newspapers and “fishing” for prospects on the streets.
The typically rough, streetwise membership of Temple No. 27 included few with any higher education. Among these, Delores X Stokes was a minor celebrity as a lifelong Muslim who had actually seen and talked with Elijah Muhammad himself. Her father, though far too old to serve in World War II, had entered federal prison voluntarily with Muhammad to protest the white man’s wars, and then in 1945, when Delores was a girl of ten, had gone to Michigan to establish one of the Nation’s first farms, always sending a portion of the crops to feed the membership in the cities. Delores remained frail after a severe case of childhood rickets, with a small soft voice and tentative movements, but she excelled first as a student and then as a strong-willed teacher, married to one of the first college-trained men in the Nation of Islam, Ronald X Stokes of Boston. After their wedding in August of 1960, they had come west to help shore up the Nation’s outpost in Los Angeles, both of them working days for the county government but spending many of their off-duty hours at the temple, where Ronald served as secretary. Within the tiny colony of Muslims, the young couple were admired for serene, spiritual qualities that transcended the hard fixation upon vengeance more common among the regular members. Ronald Stokes was taking lessons in Arabic, the better to appreciate the poetry of the Q’uran in its original tongue.
The prayer service went past ten o’clock that Friday, after which fiscal “Lieutenant” William Rogers, a parking lot attendant who aspired to become an accountant, counted cash donations that ran to some $500, mostly in small bills. Men were required to bring cars around to the door as a protective courtesy for women, who supervised children during temple events. Mabel Zeno wondered what was taking her husband, Charles, and their three grade-school children so long. Not knowing they had stopped to buy gasoline for their Ford station wagon, she left Delores Stokes at the women’s waiting area and walked to the front entrance, scanning the Broadway traffic. Although most of the congregation had dispersed, Monroe X Jones stayed on to complete a clothing sale. As a delivery driver for S&M Dry Cleaners, he had occasional access to abandoned or discarded items, for which the temple was a good resale outlet because even the poorest Muslim had to dress formally in public. About eleven o’clock that night, he invited Fred X Jingles, who shined shoes at Ward’s Shoe Shine Stand in Long Beach, two inspect an old suit with a hole in the pants. Jones had obtained two repair estimates: one for a cheap patch, another for a reweaving job that might cost a few dollars more than the suit itself.
Officers Frank Tomlinson and Stanley Kensic were driving south on Broadway when they passed two Negro males standing behind the opened trunk of a 1954 Buick Special, examining what appeared to be a plastic garment bag. Their first night together as partners was special for both young policemen—the eve of Kensic’s wedding and Tomlinson’s last shift of the one-year rookie probation. Given their good moods, only an afterthought prompted Kensic to suggest that Tomlinson back up for a burglary sweep. Tomlinson double-parked, turning on the cruiser’s flashing lights, and as they exited Kensic asked the two men if they were Black Muslims. “Yes, sir,” came the clipped, businesslike response, which matched the intelligence reports passed along lately at roll call about the dangerous new cult. The officers frisked the two suspects for weapons and compared the Buick’s tag number with those on the stolen car hot sheet, coming up negative. Before calling in their names to check for outstanding warrants, they asked
where the clothes came from. The two Muslims had only begun to tell of the reweave-or-patch choice on the suit when Kensic decided to split them up for individual accounts. According to subsequent conflicting testimony, his approximate words to Jingles were either “Come with me” or “Let’s separate these niggers.”
The commotion was attracting a small crowd. Roosevelt X Walker, a city garbage worker and escort lieutenant, on post to escort unattended women from the service, ducked inside the temple to call Clarence X Jingles, saying, “Your brother is in trouble,” and they ran down Broadway. Officer Kensic later conceded that he detected no belligerence in Fred X Jingles while walking toward the front of the Buick, and certainly no flight or resistance, but Kensic did object to a take-your-hands-off-me attitude, or gestures, which so challenged his sense of command that he swiftly put Jingles into the police hold, twisting his arm behind him and wrapping an elbow around his neck to lift him in the air and fling him facedown across the Buick’s hood. Instead of going limp in submission, Jingles surprised Kensic by screaming and writhing. He managed to twist out of the hold and fought upward to get off the hood. Just then, Monroe X Jones bolted from Tomlinson and pulled Kensic off Jingles. A fistfight broke out, and as a stunned Tomlinson ran from the back of the Buick to assist his partner, Roosevelt X Walker raced up with fellow Muslims and grabbed him, too. Tomlinson would retain an indistinct memory of being twirled above their heads like a trophy.