But the question remained: Would I move out of the way and let them have him, or would I take him as seriously as he was apparently taking me?
Again that night, after the party, he talked about marriage. And again I tried to keep a level head. This time when he took me home and walked me to the door, we embraced, and for the first time I felt that here is a man I really could fall in love with, if I could just let myself.
In our subsequent dates, Martin proved so much fun to be with. He was a great tease and a good dancer; he could do everything from the jitterbug to the waltz (though after he became a pastor, we had to give up dancing). He loved concert music, too, and early in our courtship he took me to a concert by the great pianist Arthur Rubinstein at Boston’s Symphony Hall. I was touched that Martin, who knew how much music meant to me, would think of such a perfect date.
The more I was with Martin, the less I could find not to like about him. There was no question that he was compassionate, held deep moral convictions, and sincerely wanted to change the conditions of the less fortunate. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that these qualities were far more important to me than his age or height, and I chastised myself for initially making these quibbles so important in my assessment of him.
It was clear that in some way he wanted to take the abstract, ethereal concepts floating in his head and apply them to concretely change the oppressive state of black America. In his discussions of Karl Marx, for example, he always analyzed Marx within the context of what was best for America’s poor. He told me, “Communism or capitalism. Each holds a partial answer, but neither the whole truth. I could never be a Communist. My father is a capitalist, but I could not be that, either. I think a society based on making all the money you can and ignoring people’s needs is wrong. I don’t want to have a lot of money and own a lot of things.”
As he continued to talk, he seemed to fit nicely into the political scene and sensibility I had embraced at Antioch, where we were all out to save the world. This is so wonderful, I thought, to meet a man who is really serious about changing society. Martin’s love of Gandhi and his dedication to Jesus Christ captivated me, and I eagerly listened to his ideas about how to weave the views of both into a philosophy of nonviolence that would achieve social justice.
Later on, during the movement, Martin often told me that Christ furnished the motivation and inspiration and Gandhi furnished the technique for social change. As he explained it: “Gandhi was probably one of the first persons in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful and effective social and collective transformation.”
From my Sunday school studies and activist days at Antioch, I had developed core beliefs about the principles of Christ and Gandhi. I took very seriously the words, “Thou shalt not kill,” one of the Ten Commandments. I felt it was a sin to kill and that war hardly ever justified it. When Martin and I were tossing around ideas, I saw that my views were more global and pacifist, while his were more focused on direct action to change the oppressive structures of black America. At that time, that difference seemed inconsequential, but one day it would mean that I would become an earlier critic of the Vietnam War than Martin, and would help persuade him to call for a halt to the bombing.
I remember thinking how desperately black America needed a plan for social transformation, but we were only college kids tossing around ideas. Who would have thought that the ideas we discussed as young students would one day evolve into a systematic action plan that would change the circumstance and lives of black Americans, the South, the nation, and many parts of the world?
What impressed me most about Martin was his integrity and how he himself told me about “the other woman,” so to speak. He had been dating a young lady back in Atlanta rather seriously. My friend Mary Powell had already told me about her, but it was so comforting to hear Martin’s confession from his own lips. His honesty was the quality that touched my heart most deeply. I felt he was trustworthy. From the very beginning of our relationship, he was the kind of man who could not keep a secret. If he did something wrong, no matter how big or small, he was so tortured by his conscience that he was miserable until he discussed it and asked forgiveness. He was constantly examining himself to see if there was any sin that had crept into his life. Was he being selfish? Was his commitment as total as it should be? Had he been insensitive? Had he overlooked someone who had done something nice? He was always looking for a sin to clean up, starting with sins in himself.
As our courtship continued, we talked at length about values, morals, and philosophy, and it was clear on all the important things that Martin and I basically agreed; the other issues we felt could be worked out. As we talked about marriage, Martin made it clear that “A man should be able to take care of his wife, and she should not work.” This was the fifties, when it was the norm for men to stake their manhood on their ability to provide for their households. Men worked; wives stayed at home. But in my view, that was such a waste of a woman’s creativity, talent, and energy. “If a woman wanted to work, she should be able to do so,” I countered. That said, it became clear that Martin wanted a stay-at-home wife who was intelligent and well educated, but who would be a homemaker and a mother of his children.
Martin explained that it was his quest to become pastor of a large black Baptist church in the South. He wanted to know if I could adjust to the rigors of the life of a pastor’s wife. He wanted to know how well I could relate to women who were uneducated and unsophisticated. I reminded him that I had been born on a farm and that the most important woman in my life was my mother, who had only a fourth-grade education. Nevertheless, she had enough common sense to run circles around some people I knew who had PhDs.
That said, I understood Martin’s concerns. I carried myself in the ladylike fashion that I had learned from my mother, who always behaved with great dignity. In the South, since black women were so disrespected by whites, our response was to push our shoulders back, keep our heads high, and walk with dignity, looking as if we had oil wells in our backyard. Moreover, I was not on a traditional career track for a black woman. As a budding concert singer, poise and decorum were tools of the art; unfortunately, they could be mistaken for stiffness or for trying to be a prima donna. However, as someone from the rural South who grew up without many cultural advantages, I never had any problem identifying with my heritage. I knew that no matter how far I climbed, I could never forget my origins or look down on anybody.
Though Martin continued to press the issue of marriage, I still resisted a relationship, harboring nagging concerns about what would happen to my own sense of mission if I married. At one point, my own desire to minister to the needs of the less fortunate prompted me to feel that I might be called by God to preach. In this situation, as usual, I relied on God, engaging in serious prayer and meditation to help me settle a matter I felt strongly about in my heart. I couldn’t involve my whole heart until I got a strong signal from God. There was also the issue that Martin’s dad, whom Martin loved and respected very much, wanted him to marry the girl back home, even as Martin told him, “I am going to select my own wife. I know the kind of wife I need.”
Then, in early May, several months after Martin and I met, I had a dream that helped bring clarity. In the dream, Martin’s father, whom I had never met, was smiling at me, and I had this overwhelming sense that he approved of me. When I woke up, I felt as if weights had dropped off my back. I felt this was a miraculous sign, urging me to open myself to a serious relationship with Martin. Finally, I realized I had begun to fall in love with him.
Then came a letter from my sister, Edythe, where she wrote, “Coretta, don’t be silly, girl. You know how difficult it is to find intelligent, stable, well-adjusted men. You won’t have your career as you dreamed it, but you will have your career.” Moreover, I had finally realized that I wanted to have love in my life as well as a family. I understood that having a career without a family and true lo
ve would not make me happy.
There was also the advice I got from my good friend Frances Lucas, whom I had met at the Friendly Inn Settlement House in Cleveland as a second-year student on a cooperative work experience from Antioch College. Fran was a graduate student doing fieldwork at Friendly Inn. Now a New Yorker, Fran knew Martin; she and Martin’s sister, Christine, used to stay at the YWCA in New York City while they were doing graduate work. When I told Fran about Martin’s proposal, she confirmed what I already felt: “You two are ideally suited. Remember how you were so solid in your desire to be a catalyst for social change that you would talk to me way into the night, until I fell asleep? You are both serious thinkers. Both of you are compassionate.”
She understood that I didn’t want to marry someone so soon after meeting him. In those days, you didn’t do that. But Fran encouraged me, saying, “Martin would be fortunate to marry you, because you’re the kind of girl that would be more than a housewife to Martin. You could manage the house, the children, and his affairs. Your background and your experience in the North will give you a broader understanding of the circles Martin will have to travel in.”
All this feedback from people I loved and trusted further cemented my decision, but there was still another hurdle: meeting Martin’s family.
That June, I was going home to see my parents in Alabama. Martin asked if I would stop in Atlanta to meet his family. (I had already met his sister, Christine.) To test him, to see just how important it was that I meet his family, I told him that I didn’t think I could come to Atlanta. He was very upset and snapped at me, “If you don’t want to come, just forget it. Forget the whole thing.”
Hmm, I thought. A good sign. He really wants me to meet his parents. He really cares.
The train that went from Boston to Alabama went through Atlanta; a stopover would not be out of my way. Besides, if I were considering marrying Martin, I needed to know as much as possible about his church and family, so I consented.
During my first meeting with his family, they treated me cordially. Martin and his mother met me at the train station. Alberta, whom everyone affectionately called Mama King, was a short, stocky, fashionably dressed woman. She took my hand, greeting me politely. We went to Martin’s family home, a lovely yellow brick house on one of black Atlanta’s most fashionable streets. Mary Powell, the classmate who had played matchmaker between me and Martin, was home for summer vacation, and I spent the night at her house.
The next day, we joined the King family at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where three generations of Kings had pastored: Reverend King Sr., Martin’s grandfather; Daddy King, Martin’s father; and Martin himself, who had already taken over some responsibilities as associate pastor. There was also A.D., Martin’s brother, a minister. Sitting next to him was his pretty wife, Naomi, who was also from Alabama. The church, which seated 750, was a handsome building on Auburn Avenue, a major artery in the cultural, economic, and political life of black Atlantans. The unpretentious interior was finished in off-white with polished gold-tone woodwork. There were lovely stained-glass windows. Behind the pulpit, the white-robed choir sat on tiers of seats.
So this is the King family, I thought as I leaned into the pew.
I had done my homework on the Kings, and over the years I would continue filling in the missing pieces. Daddy King was the second of ten children, born to sharecroppers James and Delia King in 1899 on a plantation called Stockbridge, a few miles outside Atlanta. At first I thought that since Martin hailed from a great line of preachers, someone in the family must have had the forethought to name him after the great German theologian Martin Luther. But that was not the case. As a boy, Martin Sr. was actually called Mike because of his mother’s insistence that she had named him after Michael, the archangel. With the same intensity, his father, James, insisted that he be named Martin Luther after two of his brothers. Since it was uncommon for blacks to have birth certificates, which could have settled the issue, as a compromise, he was always called Mike. At the request of his dying father, “Mike” took out the necessary legal papers to have his name changed (as well as the name of his first-born, Martin Luther King Jr., who was also called Mike). From then on, he was officially Martin Luther King Sr., or, within the family, Daddy King.
Growing up, Daddy King spent a lot of time plowing behind a mule, so much so that school chums teased him about smelling like one. “I may smell like a mule, but I don’t think like one,” he retorted. That smell that seemed to follow him, however, made him very shy around the ladies. Daddy King had a miserable childhood because of the family’s extreme poverty, and because his father often drowned his troubles in alcohol. Daddy King saw his father get cheated out of his meager earnings at the plantation store, saw whites beat black people unmercifully and even hang one man from a tree.
When Daddy King was a child, a white man stripped him naked and beat him for not giving him a pail of water Daddy King was carrying home to his mother. When his mother, Delia, heard about the incident, she made him promise not to tell his father, fearing he would kill the white man and bring retribution down on the entire community. But far from letting the matter drop, she picked up a club, found the man, and beat him herself. In time, the story did get around, and James King went after the white man with a gun; the Kings had to go into hiding until the controversy blew over.
James King used to regularly beat Mike’s mother, especially after Saturday night binges. After one such episode, Daddy King became so furious he wrestled his father to the floor. Although James King apologized to his son the next day, Daddy King had had enough. At fourteen, he took off for Atlanta with nothing but the clothes on his back, his only pair of shoes slung over his shoulder. In Atlanta, he worked odd jobs, from mechanic to railroad fireman, before returning home for a few years. At eighteen, he left home for Atlanta again. This time he worked in a tire plant and loading bales of cotton and driving a truck. He felt a strong pull to the ministry. Answering the call, he became pastor of two small churches and attended high school at night to earn his diploma. Eventually he graduated from Morehouse College with a bachelor’s degree in theology. He also met and married Alberta, the daughter of the Rev. Adam Daniel Williams and Jennie Celeste Parks Williams.
Rev. Adam Daniel Williams, born just before the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, had literally come up from slavery. Williams took over Ebenezer in 1894, building it into one of the biggest, most prestigious black churches in the city. A strong civil rights leader, Williams helped force Atlanta to build Booker T. Washington High School, the city’s first high school for blacks. In 1927, Daddy King became assistant pastor of his father-in-law’s church.
In the spring of 1931, Dr. Williams died suddenly, on his thirty-seventh pastoral anniversary. In the fall, the congregation called Reverend King to pastor the church. Like Williams, Daddy King had become a civil rights leader and was active in the NAACP. He also became a founding director of the Negro bank Citizens Trust, and amassed interests in other businesses, carving out for himself a respectable place in Atlanta’s black middle-class society.
As I sat in church that June day, I fretted as my mind took off, rehearsing my fears. Despite my dream, Daddy King might not like me. Could Daddy King change Martin’s mind? I thought. What if my parents didn’t like Martin? How would I react to that? What if I didn’t feel comfortable with their church? These questions weighed heavily on my mind. Overall, it was a pleasant and welcoming visit, but as I left to go spend the summer with my own family, I still didn’t know exactly where I stood or if Martin and I had his family’s full blessing.
That fall, Martin and I returned to Boston to continue school. Our courtship and love for each other had grown stronger. Martin and his friend Philip Lenud had conveniently found an apartment near the conservatory. One day Edythe, who had come to visit me, and I stopped over at their flat, and Martin asked if I could cook. Actually, I could “burn,” as they say. From age fourteen, I had learned to take over a kitchen and
turn out fried chicken, collard greens, and sweet potato pies, all the down-home fare that southerners are noted for. So I set out to show Martin my stuff, cooking my specialty, banana pudding, and Martin’s favorite cabbage dish, smothered in bacon; my sister prepared Creole-style pork chops, and we added corn bread. After Martin and Philip dined sufficiently, Martin said teasingly, “Well, you’ve passed the test.” Though I did not like his choice of words, I was pleased that he appreciated my culinary skills.
Finally, in November, the moment of truth arrived. Martin’s father and mother came to visit him in Boston. They could see how serious Martin was about me. He was not seeing any other girls, and he had asked me to come by every day while his parents were in town. Martin wanted his parents to see that I was the only girl around him. But Daddy King had other ideas.
One afternoon at Martin’s apartment, things came to a head. Daddy King began talking about the Atlanta girls. “I don’t understand my son. He’s gone out with some of the finest, most beautiful, intelligent girls from fine families. Those girls have so much to offer.”
I tried to hold my peace, but feeling my temperature rising, I shot back, “I have something to offer, too.”
Daddy King didn’t seem to hear me; he continued talking about the other girls Martin had dated. Martin’s stillness and lack of response to his father irked me as much as Daddy King’s overlooking my fine qualities, which certainly matched those of the women he was praising so highly. Martin sat, not saying a word, grinning like an embarrassed schoolboy. He did not want to challenge his father any more than he had already done. I waited, wondering why Martin wasn’t saying anything, why he wasn’t defending me.
Without saying anything to his father, Martin rose, went into the room where his mother was, and said, “Coretta is going to be my wife.”
My Life, My Love, My Legacy Page 5