My Life, My Love, My Legacy

by Coretta Scott King

  “Gosh, I would like to go,” I remember saying. Martin said, “You can’t go because you are not invited. It’s against protocol.”

  I thought to myself: protocol, the devil! Why couldn’t I go?

  If the president had been LBJ, who wasn’t a stickler for protocol, it wouldn’t have mattered, I thought.

  “Martin, if I don’t meet him now, it may never happen,” I said, not knowing how prescient those words would be.

  In any event, Mrs. Wilkins and I rode with our husbands only to the White House gate. Then we got out of the limousine, hailed a cab, and returned to the Willard.

  Isn’t this awful? I thought as I rode back to the hotel. Later I joked about the new women’s movement that was forming. “I need to join it,” I quipped.

  I fought not to allow these minor personal rejections to detract from the beautiful glow of the day’s momentous events. But I must admit that I was hurt by the missed opportunity to meet President Kennedy, who had befriended me when I sorely needed him. The missed opportunity would become even more painful. Three months later, he was assassinated.

  The tragedy of Kennedy’s death affected me deeply. On that awful day, November 22, 1963, Martin saw the news bulletin flash across the TV screen at our home in Atlanta. “Corrie, I just heard that President Kennedy has been shot, possibly killed!” he called. I rushed up the stairs to Martin, and we held hands, praying and hoping together that the president would pull through. We felt that he had been a friend to the cause and a friend to us personally. When it was announced that the president had died, Martin was strangely silent. When he did speak, his words sent chills through me: “This is exactly what’s going to happen to me. I keep telling you, this is a sick society.”

  For a moment, I couldn’t find my voice. When I did, I had no words to comfort him, to assure him that it wouldn’t happen. I felt he was right. I moved closer to him and grabbed his hand more tightly, holding on for dear life.

  Yoki, who was eight at the time, had heard the news at school. She came running in the door and into my arms. “Mommy,” she sobbed, “they killed the president and he didn’t do a single thing to anybody. We’ll never get our freedom now.”

  As best I could, I shared with her my belief that the president had had a divine purpose, that he was meant to help bring about a just and fair society. Like the Bible said, I truly believed that “All things work for the good of them that love the Lord.” Kennedy’s unearned sacrifice and undeserved suffering would be redemptive for the entire nation. And indeed, his death moved the nation in such a way that the Congress felt legislation advancing the cause of the least fortunate, legislation that included our Civil Rights Bill, should be passed as a tribute to his memory. Some eight months after President Kennedy’s death, on July 2, 1964, Lyndon Johnson would invite Martin and other civil rights leaders to the White House to witness the signing of the historic bill, which would, among other things, once and for all outlaw racial segregation and discrimination in all publicly or privately owned facilities open to the general public.

  But at President Kennedy’s funeral, victory was far from my mind. I watched Jackie Kennedy and felt a great sense of pain for the loss of her husband and the father of her children. As I kept thinking about Martin, I identified with her ordeal. Many people considered Martin’s work to be more dangerous than that of the president. If they could kill a president, what did that say about Martin’s chances for survival in America? In a strange way, Kennedy’s funeral further prepared me to accept what I knew in my heart would be our own fate.

  TWELVE

  Heartbreak Knocked, Faith Answered

  ALTHOUGH I AM a woman of strong faith, I admit that my spirit sometimes struggled to overcome the heaviness of the tragedies around me. When heartbreak knocked on my door, I learned to let faith answer. Things would get better. Evil would not prevail. It was something I had to train myself to believe in order to keep on going. I also learned that I had to hold on to the good and empowering moments, so that I could return to them and steady my grip when the inevitable next tragedy struck, such as when we got the horrible news of the infamous Klan murder of three Freedom Riders: black Mississippian James Chaney and two white New Yorkers, CORE staffer Michael Schwerner and volunteer Andrew Goodman.

  Still, even in the wake of shock and sorrow, we took solace that these heroes had not died in vain and that the fruits of the movement’s success were apparent. Breathtaking changes were rippling across America. Imagine the newness I could see, taste, and touch as I witnessed changes I had once thought would not happen in my lifetime. As a result of the Civil Rights Act, visible signs of forced racial separation were coming down. On trips through the South, I could enter through the front door of many restaurants and expect to be served. I could use the public restrooms and ride city buses as well as Greyhounds. There were hotels that would admit me. I could take my children to a movie and not be segregated in the balcony.

  These experiences, which sound ordinary today, were so extraordinary in 1964 that they felt comparable to the first man landing on the moon. In a sense, that is what it was: a landing at a new frontier, a new step for humankind. There was still resistance, but we could now have a healthy anticipation that one day separate “White” and “Colored” water fountains would be mere relics of a shameful past. Then, on October 14, 1964, came an especially exciting achievement. It was a day that seemed to fall out of the clouds of heaven. After a staggering speaking schedule that took Martin from one end of the country to the other, as well as to Germany, I urged him to check into St. Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta for a much-needed rest. At about nine that morning, after he checked in, I was at home, busy screening his calls. Most were from supporters or admirers concerned about Martin’s health. And then there was the steady flow of harassing and vulgar phone calls—the usual.

  Then came one caller with a deep, official-sounding voice: “This is the Associated Press. I would like to speak to Dr. Martin Luther King.”

  When I told the reporter that I was Mrs. King, he said, “We have just received word from Norway that your husband has been named the recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for 1964.”

  I gripped the phone, trying to remain calm. The press had announced that Martin was high on the list for the honor, but no one thought he had one iota of a chance of winning.

  As soon as the reporter hung up, I called Martin: “How is the Nobel Peace Prize winner for 1964 feeling this morning?”

  “What’s that?” he asked sleepily.

  “Martin, the Associated Press just called us. It’s official: you are the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.”

  He was stunned. He said, “Okay,” and hung up. Moments later, he called back to check if the news was real or if he had been dreaming.

  I was brimming over with joy. The Nobel Prize. He would be only the second African American to receive the prize after Ralph Bunche in 1950. It was exactly the lift Martin and the movement needed. It would push us to new heights, would show that our work was about not just civil rights but human rights, and it would place our efforts on a world stage. I sat by the phone and said a prayer of thanksgiving.

  Then I got dressed so I could join Martin at the hospital. Together, we walked into the glare of flashbulbs and cameras as the media gathered for a statement.

  The reporters hit Martin with a barrage of questions. The inevitable inquiry came up. “Where will the money go?” a reporter asked. The prize came with a $54,000 stipend, which Martin explained would be given to the movement. Later, the prize money was divided among different civil rights organizations, including the SCLC, SNCC, CORE, the National Council of Negro Women, the NAACP, and the American Foundation on Nonviolence. That, of course, was not a surprise to me. Martin generously gave away most of the money he earned.

  When the reporters left, we went back up to Martin’s room to share our thoughts. We were tremendously happy but recognized the burdens in store: the prize and all the publicity would detract from our
time together, which, as it was, was quickly being winnowed away.

  News of the prize came in October. We did not leave for Oslo until early December. In the meantime, while the Oslo events were the icing on the cake of a long and arduous struggle, a clandestine effort was under way to hack the cake itself to pieces.

  With the announcement of the award, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s heavy-handed smear campaign to ruin my husband’s reputation and destroy our marriage swung into high gear. While the public saw Martin being feted internationally with the highest, most noble honors, out of sight, Hoover’s knives were being sharpened, and traps were slowly and methodically being set to try to engineer Martin’s demise.

  On November 18 we began to understand just how deep-rooted the suspected FBI spying against Martin and our movement was, and to understand at least some of the lengths the Bureau would go to harass, intimidate, and ruin us. On that date, Hoover told a group of reporters that Martin was the “most notorious liar in the country.” This statement reverberated in the press, among supporters and detractors alike. At the time, Martin was in Bimini, an island in the Caribbean, working on his Nobel address. His peaceful seclusion was shattered by an invasion of helicopters carrying members of the press. Martin had no idea what was happening until Dan Rather disembarked from his helicopter and began firing questions at him. Martin told me he was upset as he carefully denied Hoover’s denunciation of him; he was also careful not to blast Hoover, for violent speech only begets violence.

  Apparently what had ticked Hoover off was the Nobel Prize itself. We later learned that Hoover grew furious when he learned that Martin had received an honor that Hoover thought he himself deserved. For years, Hoover had urged his friends in Congress to nominate him, to no avail. Moreover, Hoover did not take kindly to Martin’s criticism of the FBI for not aggressively pursuing the assailants who were killing, intimidating, or denying the constitutionally protected rights of civil rights workers.

  Because of the furor in the press over Hoover’s attack on Martin, when Martin returned from Bimini, we had a heartfelt talk, bringing up concerns we had not told each other before. Each of us had been discounting as “paranoid” our suspicions that our home phones as well as our office phones had been tapped. Now we put two and two together.

  I recalled a suspicious incident from the Albany campaign when Juanita Abernathy; Andy Young’s wife, Jean; Dr. Anderson’s wife, Norma; Wyatt Walker’s wife, Ann; and James Bevel’s wife, Diane, had planned to lead a march to protest the jailing of demonstrators. Surprisingly, Martin, Ralph, and several others were then given suspended sentences and released, thus defusing our march. At the time, I felt as though someone had been eavesdropping on our strategy meetings.

  For his part, Martin told me that in June 1963, JFK had taken him aside in the Rose Garden of the White House, where they were meeting to discuss civil rights legislation. President Kennedy warned Martin that Hoover thought Communists controlled the SCLC. Martin said it was clear from their conversation that the president did not buy Hoover’s story, but the very fact that he passed on the warning outside the White House, where no monitoring devices could record their conversation, showed Kennedy’s grave concern. Although the bugging of our homes and phones could not have gone on without the president’s knowledge, he did not speak of his own role in the bugging operation, or that of Bobby, the attorney general.

  Martin talked about how many of the movement staff had reported being followed by men with the military bearing of FBI agents. We talked about how Atlanta police chief Herbert Jenkins, a friend of Daddy King’s, had told Daddy King that the FBI was planning to wage a campaign against Martin. Jenkins said that Hoover had even asked him to cooperate.

  Jenkins advised Daddy King, “You tell your son to be careful, because if Hoover’s men cannot catch him in some compromising position with women, they are going to frame him.” Then he added, “If I hear this again, I am going to say it’s a lie.”

  After he retired from the police force, however, Jenkins wrote his memoirs and cited this very conversation with Daddy King. It was amazing how many people, from presidents to police to members of the press to the ordinary man on the street, feared Hoover.

  Martin and I were not naïve. We talked about the many ways in which the system tried to destroy leaders. It started by trying to convince people you were a thief. This had already been attempted with Martin, and had failed. The next step was always character assassination, usually with allegations of sexual wrongdoing. If that didn’t work, physical destruction followed.

  We did not go ballistic over Hoover’s schemes, however, even though the writing was on the wall. We knew he had a vendetta against us, but we felt that we were the good guys, fighting to ensure democratic beliefs for all Americans. We took the regrettable position that we didn’t care if the FBI followed us. Maybe one day it would even do its job and protect civil rights workers, instead of adding to our troubles.

  It was so like Martin to think well of people, to appeal to their higher principles. He thought if he could just meet with Hoover, he could convince him that they were both working for the betterment of the nation. With the help of Archibald Carey, a black Chicago attorney who knew Hoover, a meeting was set for December 1, eight days before Martin would be honored in Norway. Martin, Ralph, Walter Fauntroy, and Andrew Young attended the meeting at the Justice Department offices on Constitution Avenue in Washington, DC. They went specifically to discuss Hoover’s “notorious liar” statement, but instead, Hoover spent the hour-long meeting rambling on about the virtues of the FBI and how difficult it was to find “qualified” black agents. He even politely congratulated Martin on being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Martin said that no mention was made of the FBI surveillance, charges of Communist activity, or the sexual escapades that our friends in the media had warned us were being planted in the press.

  In fact, Martin thought the meeting was cordial. “I can’t understand the controversy around Hoover, because he treated us so warmly,” Martin told me. “Hoover kept emphasizing that the agency had identified the assassins of the three civil rights workers and was close to making an arrest.”

  Yet, to our shock, as reported in the press and, later, revealed in the secret recordings of JFK, Hoover gave an entirely different version of events. He claimed that he confronted Martin about his Marxist philosophies and lectured him for an hour about his lack of morals. He implied that Martin had engaged in extramarital relations. He even reported that he told Martin he was not “going to take any lip” from him. Martin said that none of those things was ever discussed.

  Hoover and his evil machinations were the last thing on my mind, however, on December 4, when our party of about thirty people left Atlanta for Norway. We took two separate flights; I led one delegation and Martin the other. We had stopped flying together as a means of protecting the children.

  It was a remarkable trip. On the first leg, Martin preached a sermon in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Except for the Nobel ceremony itself, this was the high point of the trip. Martin was the first non-Anglican to address this august body. His message, entitled “Three Dimensions of a Complete Life,” was one of his favorite sermons, and it had sentimental significance for me: it was the first sermon I heard him preach after we met in Boston.

  On December 8 we arrived in Oslo for the ceremony itself, which was two days later. The first evening, there were no official engagements. So, over dinner, family, friends, and SCLS staff and supporters took the time to rejoice and to recall our long struggles in making such an uphill climb. Present with us were Mama and Daddy King, A.D., Christine, Carol Hoover, Andy Young, Harry Wachtel, Ralph and Juanita, Bernard Lee, Wyatt T. Walker, and Freddye Henderson. It wasn’t often that we could sit together and reflect. We were always in the vortex of a crisis: someone was going to jail, being beaten, or having their churches and/or homes bombed. After dinner, Martin, Andy, Ralph, Wyatt, and Bernard Lee formed a quintet and sang freedom songs. This was some
thing we had often done in the midst of a storm, but that night, it was a moment of unblemished joy.

  It was Daddy King, however, who brought us all to tears when he talked of his struggles to rise up from the depths of life as a sharecropper. He talked about how hard it was for him and Mama King to live with the knowledge that what Martin was doing was so dangerous. He talked about the threats the two of them had endured. “You don’t know how it feels when a stranger calls you on the phone and tells you he wants to kill you, or kill your son.”

  Caught up in the emotion of his talk, we all cried, mostly from the realization that a people who had started so far back in life, as farmers, sharecroppers, and servants, could come so far—and not by ourselves. It was as though our whole race were running with us.

  The next morning, December 10, we woke early to get ready for the ceremony. Martin had to wear formal dress, striped trousers and a gray tailcoat. We fussed a lot with his ascot. Despite his vow “never to dress up like that again,” he looked very handsome, so young and eager, almost like a boy going to his first dress-up dance.

  The formalities were held at Oslo University in a long, narrow auditorium decorated with hundreds of white flowers. The hall held about seven hundred people, with several thousand gathered outside, trying to catch a glimpse of Martin.

  First in the hall was King Olav, with Crown Prince Harald. Everyone stood, and the Norwegian Radio Orchestra played the Norwegian national anthem. The ceremony was brief, shorter than some of my husband’s regular Sunday Ebenezer services. We smiled graciously, but were amused when, in an effort to honor the African American community, the orchestra played selections from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. The refrain of “Summertime and the livin’ is easy” was much too bucolic to capture the scenes of fire hoses and police dogs in Birmingham.