Accepting the prize, Martin said he saw the award as “profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time.” As usual, his message was full of optimism and hope: “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.” He then went on in his Nobel Lecture to present one of his most definitive teachings on nonviolence, teachings that we can still study and be guided by today, including, “What the main sections of the Civil Rights movement in the United States are saying is that the demand for dignity, equality, jobs, and citizenship will not be abandoned or diluted or postponed. If that means resistance and conflict we shall not flinch. We shall not be cowed. We are no longer afraid.” And, “In a real sense nonviolence seeks to redeem the spiritual and moral lag that I spoke of earlier as the chief dilemma of modern man. It seeks to secure moral ends through moral means.… Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.… [I]t is the only way to reestablish a broken community. It is the method which seeks to implement the just law by appealing to the conscience of the great decent majority who through blindness, fear, pride, and irrationality have allowed their consciences to sleep.”
* * *
THAT NIGHT, THE SCLC family gathered for a private tribute. A case of champagne was brought in, and we all toasted to Martin. When it was my turn, I talked about what a privilege it was to be a coworker with a man whose life had made such a profound impact on the world. We were all straining to reach new heights with our rhetorical flourishes when Daddy King brought us back to reality, rising to say, “We couldn’t have come this far by ourselves, no, not ever. Now I want us to toast the one who made it possible for us to be here tonight. I want to make a toast to God.” It was a hilarious moment to see so many teetotalers trying to offer something so incongruous to God.
Most of us were so proud of him. As I watched Ralph Abernathy, though, I questioned whether he shared our joyous feelings. When the prize was first announced, Ralph talked late into the night with Martin about how he thought it should have been given jointly to both of them, and how he felt the money should have been divided equally.
Ralph’s hurt feeling that he was not getting his just due and was operating in the shadow of Martin had been simmering for years. It was during the Nobel ceremonies that Abernathy’s downcast mood became more noticeable in contrast with the abundant joy of others. For years, Ralph had been complaining about not getting enough attention. This was understandable: Martin’s great intellectual gifts, his charisma, and his oratorical skills caused him to overshadow most of those around him. We were all in Martin’s shadow.
Martin, however, greatly appreciated Ralph’s ability to motivate the masses. He felt that Ralph understood him and his philosophy and would be a good successor if something happened to him. I saw Ralph as a valuable friend and confidant to Martin, as well as a leader in his own right, but as Martin used to say to me privately (usually after a long session during which Ralph complained to him about not getting press attention or about being treated like a second fiddle), “Ralph does not understand his role. He wants us to be coleaders. He does not understand that the people have made me a major symbol and do not respond to a coleadership arrangement. I wish he could understand and accept his role.”
Martin did everything he could to push Ralph forward, but he had no control over how he was positioned in the media. In Norway, he sensed his friend’s rather edgy feelings, but the beauty of the occasion kept his spirits high.
We returned home by way of Paris, where we checked into a hotel for a few days’ rest. Martin’s sister, Christine, his mother, and Dora McDonald, his secretary, all suggested we end the trip with a night out on the town. Martin resisted, reminding everyone that as a Baptist minister, he couldn’t go to establishments where alcohol was served. Others countered that no one in our party would drink anything stronger than ginger ale.
I didn’t join the fray; I simply retired to my room to get ready. When I reappeared, I was wearing one of my concert dresses, a stunning burgundy velvet with an off-the-shoulder neckline. Martin immediately insisted that I change into something more appropriate, by which I’m sure he meant more “matronly.” I was startled, because the outfit was the same one I had worn on other occasions, without any complaints from him. Choosing not to argue, though, I offered to change clothes and stay at home with him. I realized later that it was a good thing I did. Martin was exhausted; he took a sedative and went to sleep.
As soon as he fell asleep, a UPI reporter called to inform us that the suspects in the murder of the three civil rights workers had been arrested in Mississippi. The reporter wanted to interview Martin. I called Harry Wachtel, a New York attorney who served as Martin’s confidant and legal counsel and as the SCLC’s liaison to the U.S. Justice Department. I told him about the UPI request and asked him to provide a statement for Martin to look at when he woke. Wachtel readily agreed. We felt a sense of relief and hope that justice was about to come to Mississippi.
We returned to the States via New York City, which gave Martin a hero’s welcome: fireboats on the Hudson River and jetted streams. Mayor Robert Wagner presented Martin with the Bronze Medallion, the highest award the city could give. Martin and I, along with the members of our party, were also luncheon guests of New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and his wife, Happy.
In further recognition of the Nobel Peace Prize, President Johnson invited us to the White House to congratulate Martin. We were flown from New York City to Washington on the New York governor’s private plane. During the meeting with President Johnson, Martin took the opportunity to discuss the importance of full voting rights in the South and beyond, laying the foundation for the movement’s next major campaign.
After his being the darling of Europe, it was interesting to see the lukewarm welcome Martin received in Washington. There were no receptions or ceremonies to congratulate a man hailed for his greatness everywhere except a few corners of his homeland.
Finally, our weary band of travelers returned to Atlanta. As in DC, while there was a large turnout of blacks waiting to greet Martin, he received a virtual cold shoulder from Atlanta’s white citizens. While some were proud that a hometown guy had won such an honor, others couldn’t deal with its being a black man.
To complicate matters, Martin and the SCLC had been picketing the Scripto Company in a push for better working conditions for blacks. Scripto was one of the largest factories in Atlanta, and the SCLC picketing naturally did not produce much enthusiasm in the business community. In turn, tickets for a city-sponsored dinner to celebrate the Nobel were moving so slowly that Martin soured on the whole event, saying, “I don’t care whether they honor me or not.” (In his book An Easy Burden, Andy Young cites FBI records showing that Bureau officials discouraged many Atlanta businessmen from participating.) Things turned around only after Mayor Ivan Allen called the business leaders to a closed-door meeting at the Piedmont Driving Club, where J. Paul Austin, president of Coca-Cola, described the embarrassment of being in a city that didn’t want to honor its own Nobel Peace Prize winner.
In the end, the dinner at Dinkler Plaza Hotel was a sold-out affair, the ballroom filled with about fifteen hundred people. It was the first integrated event of the kind that the city had ever experienced. The audience was about 65 percent white and 35 percent black. Judges sat next to cooks; porters were seated next to politicians. Five years before, an event such as that would have been unthinkable in a southern city.
It was a wonderful evening, but again, the glow couldn’t last for long. In opening the mail that had been piling up in the months before our trip to Norway, I came across a package postmarked from Miami dated November 2. The package contained a reel of audiotape and a letter, which I opened. After Martin spoke, he was often sent an audiotape of
the event, to keep for his records. But the poorly typed letter in this package read:
King, we’ve found you out. This is just a sample of the goods we have against you. Your end will come soon. You are done for, there is only one way out for you. You better take it. You have thirty-four days before you will be exposed and publicly defamed.
The letter had been sent some thirty-four days before Martin was set to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. There was no question in my mind that it was prodding Martin to commit suicide. Under stress, Martin often suffered from depression. In the sick minds of those who’d sent the letter, I’m sure they thought they were pushing my husband over the edge.
Through the grapevine, I had heard rumors that Hoover’s FBI had prepared a suicide letter and a doctored tape to embarrass Martin. “This must be it,” I said to myself. I set up our reel-to-reel recorder and sat down to listen. Although I have since read scores of reports talking about the supposed scurrilous activities of my husband, there was nothing at all incriminating on the tape. It was recorded at some social event and was of very poor quality. I recognized Bernard Lee’s voice, but on the entire tape, I didn’t hear Martin’s. People were laughing, talking. Now and then I heard a dirty joke, some profanity. But there was nothing about Martin having sex or anything else that resembled the lies Hoover and his people were spreading. “Oh, this is nothing,” I said to myself, cutting it off. I gave the tape to Martin. He and several staff members, including Ralph and Andy, secretly met and listened to it together.
Later, we learned what great lengths the FBI had taken to prepare the suicide package. Hoover had ordered that the doctored tape be mailed from a southern state; an FBI agent flew to Florida with the small package, mailed it, and returned to Washington. Hoover reasoned that I would confront Martin and then leave him, putting him in such a weakened state that he would become ineffectual to the movement. An impending divorce would also reduce his stature. Despite my refusal to fall for any of the bait, rumors spread through the media claiming that we’d had a screaming match and saying I was on the verge of walking out. Once again, nothing could have been further from the truth. Martin and I did not have the slightest argument over the tape.
There are so many stories about Martin and me and our life that were fabricated, pure and simple. For example, there was a rumor that Martin had a secret bank account stashed away in Switzerland—which was ridiculous, because we often did not have enough money to pay our bills. In Oslo, when the entire family was there, the FBI claimed they picked up a bug on Martin that proved he was cavorting with prostitutes and running buck naked down the hall with them. As ridiculous as that might sound, it’s a typical example of what we were up against. Can you imagine that Martin, with his father and mother; his wife, sister, and brother; his staff and all his friends there, would pick this opportunity to do something so out of character?
But I understand, the question everyone wants to know is this: Do I believe my husband was unfaithful? All I can speak for is what I know. I don’t have any evidence, and I never had a gut feeling that told me he had strayed. I never experienced any feelings of being rejected. I believe that women know if their husbands are unfaithful. They feel it. I understand that men can become very indifferent and cold, but I never sensed anything of that sort from Martin. I’m not saying that Martin was a saint. I never said he was perfect. Nobody is perfect. But as far as I am concerned, our marriage was a very good marriage, and it was like that all the way to the end.
Why is it so hard to believe that—in light of everything we know about the FBI and Hoover’s counterintelligence operation (COINTELPRO), which was tasked to eliminate black groups such as the Black Panther Party, and of other vicious tactics—that the Bureau would not do something like spread false rumors about Martin Luther King, a man Hoover hated so much that he tried to push him to commit suicide? Why is it so hard to believe that Martin was not guilty and the FBI was? Why is it so hard to believe that he was not unfaithful to me when I am the one who would know?
There are people who like to feel that everybody is fallible, and that Martin was like everybody else. I don’t think he was like everybody else. I think Martin was a much more moral person than most of the people around him. Again, I’m not saying he was a saint, but I really do believe that it’s the sickness of our society that leads people to look so desperately for someone or something to bring down.
Those who really knew Martin knew he had a guilt complex. If he did anything wrong, he felt compelled to confess it and repent. I was often the one to whom he confessed his private wrongdoings. This is one of the main reasons I do not believe any affairs took place. All that exists about my husband is innuendo and hearsay. No one has ever been able to prove anything.
Were any of us perfect? No, we all fell short. But when speaking of historical significance, it is important to note that when the ultimate question is asked about who the real sinners or saviors of this century were, the answer clearly shows that Martin Luther King Jr. helped transform America. That is the end of that matter.
THIRTEEN
Securing the Right to Vote Was a Blood Covenant
“YOU HAD BETTER enjoy yourselves, because when we go into Selma, someone is going to get killed.” Martin spoke these words while we were in Oslo. Throughout that entire trip, he had talked as if he’d had premonitions of more supporters from our movement becoming martyrs. From the mountaintop of Norway, we sensed that we were returning to a valley, where tragedy surely awaited. The name of the particular valley was Selma.
A medium-size town between Montgomery and Birmingham, some thirty miles from my hometown of Marion, Selma was originally a cotton center and slave market. During the Civil War, it was second only to Richmond, Virginia, as an arsenal and supply depot for the Confederate Army. It had few equals, however, in its resolve to maintain the ideology of white supremacy.
For blacks, Selma was rock bottom, a place where words such as democracy, representative government, and citizenship had no meaning. Most of the black population had never participated in governmental business as citizens, even though their roots, like those of many other African Americans, stretched back three hundred years.
Think what it means to have no vote in the major political, economic, and social policies that govern your life. In Selma, victims of brutality couldn’t even say “ouch” too loudly; the town was nothing more than a police state. Keeping blacks in line were the White Citizens’ Council and Jim Clark, the Dallas County sheriff, whose counterpart was Birmingham’s Bull Connor. Clark and his posse savagely used cattle prods on blacks “uppity” enough to try to exercise their constitutional right to protest or speak out against disenfranchisement.
While the majority of the folks in Dallas County (57 percent) were blacks, less than 1 percent of that majority was registered to vote. In comparison, two-thirds of whites were registered. Neighboring counties were even worse. For example, in nearby Lowndes County, not a single black in the entire county was registered to vote.
In 1965, all that would begin to change.
The next big movement campaign was a push for voter registration and voting rights—an attempt to secure for blacks the freedom white men and women earned by being born. Entrenched racism made the assignment seem as difficult as desegregation of public schools had been in the 1950s.
When, on our way home from Oslo, Martin met with President Johnson to discuss the importance of the right to vote in safeguarding all other rights, LBJ tried to convince Martin that the time wasn’t suitable. It was similar to the way in which President Kennedy initially dismissed our efforts to secure equal public accommodation. “I can’t get a voting bill through because I need the votes of the Southern bloc, and they won’t give it,” Johnson said. “It’s just not wise and expedient.”
But we were not to be deterred. In Selma, I would march with Martin as often as I could. I was also raising funds for the movement through my Freedom Concerts and continuing my work as a peace advocate. But
my highest priority was back home in Atlanta, with my children. For their sake, I tried to shield them from the terror and the blood being spilled in Selma.
In a slight taste of what was to come, only a week after the Selma campaign began Martin was attacked. The first day he was there, a white man followed him. The stranger’s behavior did not alarm Martin’s staff because the man seemed rational. He followed Martin into the Hotel Albert; as Martin was checking in, he hit Martin on the head so hard that Martin staggered and would have fallen to the floor if a staff member had not grabbed him. The man was held until police arrived to arrest him. Although Martin was not seriously injured, he suffered terrible headaches from the blow. The incident worried me greatly, for I saw how easily someone who meant Martin harm could hurt him.
The first casualty of the voting rights campaign was not in Selma but in Marion. We had been holding mass meetings and demonstrations in my hometown. One night, in the middle of a march, the streetlights were suddenly turned off; in the darkness, the police and their white racist buddies charged the demonstrators, clubbing and beating them. Eighty-two-year-old Cager Lee was beaten bloody. His grandson, twenty-six-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson, pushed his grandfather and his mother, Viola Jackson, into a café to escape further harm, but several troopers followed them. When a trooper hit Viola, Jimmie Lee struck back and was shot in the stomach. Eight days later, he died.
Jimmie Lee’s aunt, Juanita, was a former teacher, and had been one of my best friends in high school. Jimmie Lee was his mother’s sole supporter and had never been convicted of any crime. Ironically, the “crime” for which his life was taken was written in the Constitution as an inalienable right to peaceably assemble, but for us, that promise was penned in invisible ink.
My Life, My Love, My Legacy Page 15