I thought I was done with TV controversy for a while, but I was wrong. In early March, I flew to Burbank, California, to tape an hourlong special with Petula Clark, the British singer who’d made her name in the United States with the hit song “Downtown.” This was Petula’s first special. Her sponsor dubbed her the Plymouth Girl after their automobile. I was delighted that Pet, as we called her, had chosen to have me as her solo guest. For one of our duets, we sang an antiwar anthem that Pet had written, “On the Path of Glory.” As we were singing, she put a hand on my arm in a spontaneous gesture of solidarity. That, we soon learned, displeased a Chrysler advertising manager who had sat in on the taping to make sure that nothing would mar the sponsor’s image. The manager, one Doyle Lott, feared Petula’s hand on my arm would offend viewers. He told the show’s producer that he found the touch offensive and absolutely unacceptable, and ordered the song reshot without it. The producer, Claude Wolff, who happened to be Petula’s husband, refused. Now Mr. Lott went directly to Pet. She and Claude then took me aside and asked what I thought we should do. I felt Pet’s dilemma profoundly. The larger ramifications of this incident could have serious consequences for her career. Perhaps, I told her, we should pick another fight, another day, at least while her best interests were at stake.
“Forget my best interests,” she said. “What would you do?”
I grinned. “Nail the bastard.”
“So we will,” she replied, and with Claude’s full support, we refused to reshoot.
Word got out well before the show’s airing in early April, and when it did, Mr. Lott called me to apologize. He said he’d been tired and had overreacted, and that whoever he spoke with had relayed his words inaccurately. I said nothing until he was done, and then told him, “Mr. Lott, I think you’re being disingenuous with me. It was you who said those words. And your apology comes a hundred years too late.”
Martin’s plan for a gathering of poor people in Washington, D.C., had taken shape by the time he appeared on The Tonight Show. Instead of a one-day march, he would bring thousands of poor people, both black and white, along with Mexican-American farm laborers from California, Native Americans, and more, to build a shantytown near the White House. There the protesters would remain until Congress passed an economic rights bill to alleviate poverty in America.
Bobby Kennedy had declared for president at last, and said his first goal was to erase “material poverty.” Yet even he was opposed to the plan of a large and sustained public gathering in Washington; Bobby was always worried about the potential for violence. So was The New York Times, which editorialized against “emotional demonstrations in this time of civic unrest.” Martin called his circle together in my home and, with Stan Levison and the rest of us, pondered long and hard, deep into the night, what our options were, along with the potential consequences. We concluded we would move ahead as planned. Martin spoke to large and excited gatherings around the country about his Poor People’s Campaign. On March 27, a week before his assassination, he came up to New York for a big party at my apartment, one of the biggest we had held.
As usual, Martin was late. He always packed too much into his schedule, trying to do it all. This time a stop in Newark, New Jersey, had left him shaken. He’d met with Amiri Baraka, better known as LeRoi Jones, the playwright, essayist, and poet, who had formed a group called New Ark. Baraka identified himself as a black nationalist, and now openly advocated violence. He’d been arrested for carrying a gun during the previous summer’s riots in Newark, and with his new group he was threatening to disrupt the city again. Martin had tried to reason with him, with no success. Baraka and his followers had denounced Martin bitterly. They’d scoffed at nonviolence, and vowed to tear Newark down in a matter of days. Martin was concerned that if Newark did blow, it would distract attention from the Poor People’s Campaign and much that the movement had already accomplished.
None of this, however, Martin revealed when he walked in, because our gathering included journalists—The New York Times’s Tom Wicker and Anthony Lewis, among them. He wanted to stay on point, not muddy the message. As on the eve of Birmingham, we wanted to seed media interest as much as raise money. I sensed Martin’s mood, but saw him push it away. Instead, with all the passion he could muster, he talked up the Poor People’s Campaign. Only when the journalists and paying guests had left did Martin let his feelings show with the inner circle who remained.
Bernard Lee, Martin’s personal secretary and bodyguard, was there that night; he was never far from Martin’s side. So was Andrew Young, the future mayor of Atlanta. Stan Levison was long since back in the circle; his exile had ended when Bobby Kennedy stepped down from being Attorney General. Clarence Jones, Martin’s lawyer and another of his closest confidants, was there. Julie was there, too, her feet tucked up under her, a glass of vodka in her hand. Her opinions were sought and valued whenever the group met in our apartment.
Martin poured his customary Bristol Cream, but skipped the routine of seeing how much remained. His collar open, his shoes off, he sipped pensively at the oak bar, Andy and Stan and Clarence on either side of him, me as host behind the bar. At first, Martin stayed on the subject of the evening. He spoke so quietly that Bernard, lying on a sofa behind him, soon fell asleep. But as he talked about Washington, and what he hoped to accomplish, he grew increasingly agitated.
“What bothers you, Martin?” I asked. “What’s got you in such a surly mood?”
“Newark,” Martin said, and proceeded to tell us of his unnerving visit with Amiri Baraka. “Beyond what an eruption in that city would mean, how it would take us off-course, I’m just so disturbed at what I’m hearing more and more. Somehow, frustration over the war has brought forth this idea that the solution resides in violence. What I cannot get across to these young people is that I wholly embrace everything they feel! It’s just the tactics we can’t agree on. I have more in common with these young people than with anybody else in this movement. I feel their rage. I feel their pain. I feel their frustration. It’s the system that’s the problem, and it’s choking the breath out of our lives.”
In the pause that followed, Andy replied, “Well, I don’t know, Martin. It’s not the entire system. It’s only part of it, and I think we can fix that.”
Suddenly, Martin lost his temper. “I don’t need to hear from you, Andy,” he said. “I’ve heard enough from you. You’re a capitalist, and I’m not. And so we don’t see eye to eye—on this and a lot of other stuff.”
It was an awkward moment. Martin was really angry. But I understood the subtext. Deep down, Andy was ambivalent about the Poor People’s Campaign. All the other goals that we had set for ourselves up to this moment were tangible. Almost all of them were focused on justice. But when it came to economics, the goals were more complicated, the lines more blurred. Andy didn’t believe that all the victims came from the same level of experience. He felt that there was a critical difference between poor whites and Hispanics, on one hand, and poor blacks on the other. This disparity, he felt, could make the Poor People’s Campaign a rocky journey.
The tension peaked. “The trouble,” Martin went on, “is that we live in a failed system. Capitalism does not permit an even flow of economic resources. With this system, a small privileged few are rich beyond conscience and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level.” Taking a sip from his glass, he continued, “That’s the way the system works. And since we know that the system will not change the rules, we’re going to have to change the system.”
At heart, Martin was a socialist and a revolutionary thinker. He spoke not just in anger, but in anguish. His voice dropped to a more reflective tone as he continued. “We fought hard and long, and I have never doubted that we would prevail in this struggle. Already our rewards have begun to reveal themselves. Desegregation … the Voting Rights Act …” He paused. “But what deeply troubles me now is that for all the steps we’ve taken toward integration, I’ve come to believe that we are integratin
g into a burning house.”
We had not heard Martin quite this way before. I felt as if our moorings were unhinging. “Damn, Martin! If that’s what you think, what would you have us do?” I asked.
He gave me a look. “I guess we’re just going to have to become firemen.”
Martin flew down to Memphis the next morning, accompanied only by Bernard Lee. The sanitation workers of Memphis were striking, and Martin wanted to show solidarity with them before going to Washington to kick off the Poor People’s Campaign. Ralph Abernathy was there to greet him; he was the one member of the inner circle who hadn’t been at my home the night before, because he’d been making arrangements for the march that Martin would lead. The crowd was far larger than expected—as many as twenty thousand—but while Martin was greeted with cheers, the mood on the streets was volatile, and the crash of breaking storefront windows, as Martin struggled to find his place at the head of the march, soon made clear that looting had begun. As it spread, Memphis police set off tear gas, and armored personnel carriers rolled in with the National Guard to clear the streets and enforce a state of emergency. The march was a calamity, playing right into the hands of critics who said Martin couldn’t keep the movement from falling into violence. When I spoke with Martin on the phone that evening, I’d never heard him sound so upset. He was distraught. He felt strongly that the FBI had fomented the violence to undermine him. “There are forces of evil at work here, Harry,” Martin said. “I feel it.” Later, FBI files would show that Martin’s instincts were sound. Under J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO (for Counter Intelligence Program), the FBI by 1968 had infiltrated political groups it deemed subversive, planted false reports in the media, set movement leaders against one another, and slapped them with phony charges. Before COINTELPRO was dismantled in 1971, it would also be linked to the murders of numerous Black Panthers. Was it paranoid of Martin to think the FBI had tipped the Memphis march into chaos? I don’t think so.
Martin was in Washington that Sunday, March 31, to deliver a sermon at the National Cathedral. But then he went back to Memphis. In a phone conversation with him, he said he felt honor-bound to return and lead a more peaceful rally. Martin was calmer now, focused on planning; our conversation was friendly, but perfunctory. I said I’d see him in Washington; I would be there to help him launch the Poor People’s Campaign. He thanked me for that; we said good-bye. That was the last time we ever spoke.
In Memphis, Martin checked into Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel under stormy skies, as tornado warnings came over the radio. When he heard that the weather had kept the crowd small at the Masonic Temple where he was to speak, he asked Ralph Abernathy to fill in for him. But when Abernathy got to the temple and saw how disappointed the audience was, he got on the phone and persuaded Martin to come after all.
So many people asked me later if Martin had had some warning that he might be assassinated, if that was why the last speech of his life was so prophetic. I don’t know if he had any warning. I don’t think so. He’d been a target for so long, and made so many prophetic speeches. Perhaps this was just another one. And yet the final paragraph of it stuns me still.
“Well, I don’t know what will happen now,” Martin told that crowd.
We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. I don’t mind…. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
I was in the living room of my apartment the next day, the room where I’d last seen Martin, when our housekeeper, Pearl Gibson, cried out from down the hall in her thick Jamaican accent. “Lawd God, Mr. B., Mr. B., come quick, look at the television.” I ran down and looked at the screen, then fell back in a chair. I was immobile, physically and emotionally and psychologically. When I could finally move, my first thought was to call Coretta.
The line was busy. I tried again but couldn’t get through. I just sat in that chair, my eyes wet with tears, and dialed again and again. Finally Coretta answered, crying. I could tell she was making an enormous effort to be strong. I said, “I’m coming down as quickly as I can.”
Coretta was at her home in Atlanta; she hadn’t been in Memphis with Martin. When I arrived, she greeted me with a hug, too grief-stricken to speak, yet even as she did, the phones behind her were ringing. Everyone wanted her: civil rights leaders, friends, news reporters, the FBI. There, too, were her four children, wide-eyed, silent, needing so much more than any mother could give. “They’re sending his body home,” Coretta managed at last.
Coretta wanted me to help her pick the clothes that Martin would be buried in. Numbly, she led the way back to the bedroom. Martin’s closet held just six or eight suits, all of them dark. With close friends and family, Martin wore jeans and casual shirts. In public, he dressed invariably like the preacher he was: dark suit, white shirt, dark tie, black shoes. I took out one of the suits, and Coretta laid it on the bed like a disconnected shadow.
“Coretta,” I said, “I’m going to help you with everything I can. But there’s something I want to ask of you, too. This country’s going up in smoke, and one of the places it may catch fire first is in Memphis. Some think the march should be canceled. I think the march should go on. I think we need to show that even in death Martin’s movement will not be halted.”
“You do?” Coretta said.
“Yes, but more important, I think you should lead it.”
That snapped Coretta out of her daze. “Me?”
“You’re the only force in the universe who can do it as it needs to be done. The whole world will be watching, and your presence, and what you say, will have enormous impact on what this nation will do. The leadership needs your strength and your resolve.”
There was a long pause, and then Coretta said, “I’ll have to make arrangements for the children.”
George Barrie, the head of Fabergé, made his plane available to us. It wasn’t the first plane offered that day, but I trusted Barrie not to capitalize somehow on the offer. In the end, Coretta decided to take her three older children; they would bring Martin’s spirit and presence with them. The FBI was alerted, and we flew through guarded airspace to Memphis. I stayed with her that whole day—beside her as she led the march, then on the dais as she made a brief, dignified speech that left the crowd in tears. Her presence had a great emotional effect that night on national television, and I think that it helped keep the riots from getting even worse than they did. As it was, Stokely spoke at Howard University in Washington, D.C., the day after Martin’s assassination and warned that violence would break out. Violence did break out, and for three days the inner city burned. So did ghettos all over the country. I remembered Martin’s talk, little more than a week before, about the futility of violence in our community. Here was Stokely, invoking Martin and violence in the same breath, condoning the chaos that damaged or destroyed hundreds of businesses, with a resulting loss of thousands of jobs. Still, if only in Memphis, I think Coretta’s presence helped.
Martin’s body was at an Atlanta funeral home, dressed in the clothes Coretta had chosen, when we got back. From there it went to lie in state, in an open casket, at Spelman College. Julie had arrived from New York, and at Coretta’s request, we went in first, accompanied by Bernard Lee, to inspect the body before other visitors and the press came in. In that eerie stillness, Julie and I went up to the coffin, and saw where the mortician had puttied the open wound. Somehow there was still a large, discolored gap covering the side of Martin’s face, and the tone of his skin on that side was distinctly different from that of his other cheek. It was unsettlin
g, disturbing that the mortician didn’t display greater care. Julie reached into her purse, took out her powder puff, and dabbed gently at the discoloration until she got the tone just right.
A day or two before the funeral, I hosted a strategy meeting in my hotel suite. Clarence Jones was there, I remember, along with Berry Gordy, Jr., the founder of Motown Records, and half a dozen others. I felt we needed to be extremely creative at this moment, to think in larger-than-life terms. The whole country was reeling; marches and protests were unfolding north and south. I felt we should do something to provide a focus for all that rage and sorrow, to send a message and set a tone. We could harness the power of all the celebrities who were in town for the funeral and stage a vigil at Atlanta’s open-air stadium. The political figures alone included Bobby and Ethel Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy accompanied by her brother-in-law Ted, Nelson Rockefeller, Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, and Richard Nixon. There were sports heroes—Jackie Robinson and Wilt Chamberlain—and entertainment figures, including Marlon and Bill Cosby, Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder. I felt I could also get other stars to fly in. Just as at the March on Washington, just as at Selma, the celebrities would swell and inspire the crowd, and turn the nation from violence. And it wouldn’t be just stars. Ordinary people, too, could speak in the course of the night-long vigil about what Martin had meant to them. Together we would celebrate and honor Martin’s fight for civil rights and his commitment to nonviolence, and that gathering would be broadcast all over the world.
We’d talked about the vigil before. Everyone in the room was onboard for it. All but one person—our newest arrival: Sidney. “At this time,” he said, “it just seems too daunting a task, on top of the funeral.” Too daunting a task for whom? With national television cameras focused on this event, the whole world would be watching. Much could be achieved in helping to calm the nation. All those young people who wanted to hit the streets and burn down America—and eventually tried to do just that—would be directed otherwise. That was my thinking. Sidney’s feeling was that if it failed, that would mar the legacy more than any vigil could burnish it.
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