My Life, My Love, My Legacy

by Coretta Scott King

  Martin and I felt that if the rioting continued, America would either fall into the throes of anarchy or become a right-wing police state. Of course, neither was acceptable, and Martin felt that something had to be done to steer the nation away from this deadly intersection. While he condemned the violence, he also understood that moral and economic issues lay at its root, issues that America might not have the resolve to fix.

  During each of those harrowing hot summer days, Martin took the rioting to heart. It was so like him to be his own toughest critic. Here he was, a prophet of nonviolence, watching as values entirely opposite of his moved to the forefront. The movement had accomplished so much (civil rights bills had passed; schools, lunch counters, and housing were being desegregated), but maybe it wasn’t happening fast enough. So little time, so much to be done. If the riots continued, there would be only more bloodshed, and Martin worried that people would give up on nonviolent protest and direct-action campaigns in response.

  In those times of desperation, I prayed for him. I kept trying to find the right words, ones that would help him see past the cities in flames and connect with the millions of people who had faith in him and were convinced he was their best hope. When I could make him stop in his tracks and look at me, I would hold him and say, “I believe in you.” I would see the spark coming back into his face, but, still, he agonized.

  Not only did he agonize, he was haunted. Martin was haunted by the faces of poverty that he had seen in rural Mississippi, and in the ghettos of Chicago. He had left Chicago, but Chicago wouldn’t leave him. Far too often, he had seen little children with clothes too skimpy to protect them from the city’s harsh winds. A closer look revealed mucus in the corners of their eyes, a reminder that, although they were surrounded by some of the finest medical centers in the world, vitamins and flu shots were luxuries their families could ill afford. Martin had seen an apartment where rats attacked a baby in his crib, a scene that spoke to the flimsy, filthy housing conditions in a state we liked to call Up South. In Mississippi, too, Martin replayed searing images in his mind: ill-clad children sitting in one-room schoolhouses without books or lunches, malnourished in a state where corporate farmers were receiving billions not to plant food or cotton. The problems of the poor were invisible: out of sight, out of mind. Martin wanted to make the plight of those in the lower classes visible to the world. He wanted to dramatize the hidden face of American poverty. We believed that just as segregation was immoral in a democracy, poverty was immoral in a nation as wealthy as the United States.

  Fortunately, as Martin and the SCLC were mulling over the issues of the poor, Marian Wright (later Edelman, founder and president of the Children’s Defense Fund) helped Martin make a way out of no way, as the gospel lyrics promise. Wright, an attorney, was director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in Mississippi. She visited Martin in his Atlanta office, bringing with her four black farmhands, men who had been jobless since the government farm programs began paying farmers not to grow crops. Wright proposed that Martin and other religious and labor leaders lead a protest in Washington, with a sit-in and fast at the office of the secretary of labor, W. Willard Wirtz. The plan was to protest until the problems of the chronically unemployed were addressed. As Martin and the SCLC mulled Wright’s proposal, the fast and sit-in were thrown out, but the concept of dramatizing the extent of poverty in America seemed workable.

  The effort would be called the Poor People’s Campaign; it would not be solely about blacks, but would include Puerto Ricans, Native Americans, Mexicans, and poor whites. The prospect of establishing a rainbow coalition that could eventually see beyond racism and challenge the systems that demeaned all persons excited Martin. The overall objectives were “economic security, decent sanitary housing, and quality education for every American.” The planning team decided to focus on ten cities and five rural areas.

  Martin threw himself into these efforts. It was not unusual for me to awaken before daybreak and see him at his desk, deep in thought or scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad. I knew he was getting little sleep, but he seemed like a man with no time to rest. It was as if he were racing against a clock, one that was ticking off precious minutes all the while. The faster he ran, the faster the clock. Martin performed as if a great force were driving him onward, forcing him to find solutions to the problems that tormented him before time ran out.

  He and I both felt tragedy moving swiftly toward us. It was a sensation I’d had for years, but it had recently become more intense. Ever since the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the heat of terrorism had been bearing down, stalking us. It felt like just yesterday that terrorists bombed my front porch with me and our baby Yoki in the house. I suffered through Martin being jailed, through his being taken, handcuffed and chained in the backseat of a police car, down dark Georgia roads—places where black men and women had no doubt been lynched. I had answered countless phone calls to hear someone threatening to kill Martin, me, and our family. We knew that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had labeled my husband a public enemy, a threat to the United States of America. How could we not know we were living on borrowed moments?

  Death was something that neither of us welcomed, but it did not paralyze us, either. Guided by the writings of the Apostle Paul and the life of Jesus, we knew that Christians are often called by God to participate not only in the victory of a risen Christ, but in His agony and His suffering. Martin sometimes even placed himself in the historical context of Jesus, especially when he said he would be “crucified for his beliefs.” As he told me, “If I am crucified, remember to say, ‘He died to make men free.’” He also told me, “I probably don’t have a long life ahead of me, but if I die, I don’t want you to spend your time grieving. You go on and live a normal life.”

  In an effort to build support for the Poor People’s Campaign, Martin went on a series of what we called “people-to-people tours” to recruit poor persons from across the nation for a peaceful demonstration to be held that summer in Washington, DC. Everywhere he traveled, people came in large numbers to hear him and to pledge their support. Martin also came up with the novel idea of having a lowly mule train go from Marks, Mississippi (which was in Quitman, the poorest county in America), to the nation’s capital.

  I thought the campaign was actually the most difficult project the SCLC had ever attempted to organize: instead of mobilizing a city, we were mobilizing a nation. There was scarcely a power center that our campaign would not touch.

  On March 10, 1968, I went to the press conference at Atlanta’s Paschal’s Motor Hotel at which the Poor People’s Campaign officially launched. In January, I’d had surgery to remove fibroid tumors. I was supposed to recuperate and stay off my feet for about three months, but I felt an urgent need to press on and attend the news conference regardless, and to continue my efforts to personally record and document important events.

  Leaders of about seventy nonblack groups representing Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Native Americans from reservations, and poor Appalachian whites were at the press conference that day, countering the criticism that we were planning an all-black crusade against the economic power structures of America. Cesar Chavez, the cofounder of United Farm Workers, was ailing, and sent a representative. Wallace “Mad Bear” Anderson spoke for a poor Iroquois confederation from upstate New York; and Peggy Terry, reportedly raised by a Kentucky KKK family yet now a member of CORE and SNCC, was also there.

  Despite this diverse group of fired-up people who had traveled across the nation to the heart of black Atlanta to address an American problem, the press coverage was negative—as I’d anticipated. Now that the movement was showing enough muscle to unify protesters across a broad spectrum of ethnic and economic groups, we had become the enemy. We were opposed not only by much of the media, but by members of Congress and some of the Johnson administration, although LBJ himself had been very supportive of our past efforts.

  As I attempted to rest in the wake of my surgery, Martin decided that he, too, would ta
ke a short break. The doctors had been ordering it; he knew he needed a rest, and everyone around him agreed that he was pushing himself too hard. Sometimes he would keep his inner circle (Andy, Bernard Lee, and Ralph) up until 4:00 a.m. probing and pushing for the correct course of future actions. Andy once wondered aloud if Martin had declared a moratorium on sleep. At the suggestion of his doctor, he finally decided to take a short vacation. On March 12, right before he left, he phoned me from his office and asked, “Corrie, did you get the flowers?”

  “Not so far,” I told him. He explained that he’d gone to a florist and picked some out especially for me. I eagerly awaited their arrival, and indeed, as he returned home to pick up his bag to go to the airport, the flowers arrived. They were beautiful red carnations, but when I touched them, I was surprised to discover that they were artificial. Martin had never given me artificial flowers before. It seemed so unlike him.

  That night, I complimented him on their beauty, but asked whether the florist had picked artificial flowers by mistake.

  It was not a mistake at all. “I wanted to give you something that you could always keep,” he said.

  Those red carnations were the last flowers I ever received from Martin. Did he have a premonition of what was to come? I will never know for certain, but the flowers certainly suggested that he did. They were his prelude to good-bye.

  When he returned from vacation and refocused his energies on the Poor People’s Campaign, a garbage workers’ strike in Memphis grabbed our attention. On February 23 a small, peaceful march by the sanitation workers union Local 1733 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) was broken up by police officers using clubs and mace, the squad cars charging in like a cavalry. This outraged not only blacks but some whites as well, including the predominantly white AFL-CIO labor union. At the invitation of Jim Lawson, who headed the SCLC’s Memphis affiliate, Martin agreed to lead a protest march on March 28.

  Before the protest, however, on March 23, Martin took advantage of an opportunity to take Marty and Dexter on a people-to-people trip through rural Georgia. Whenever he could, he tried to include the children in his work; we wanted them to have an understanding of his commitment and the cause he championed. As much as I wanted them to take the trip together, I do remember how worried I was when they were late returning. My concern was complicated by their flying in a small chartered Cessna. When they finally arrived, four hours behind schedule, the boys were exhausted, though flying with their father and hearing the crowds applaud him was hugely exciting for them. Martin was also exhausted, but after putting the boys to bed, he immediately went back to work. Increasingly, he seemed to be trying to fill every waking hour with something productive.

  In retrospect, I think that trip was one of the greatest gifts Martin could have given the boys. I am sure it was Martin’s hope that they would freeze the memory and carry that picture of their father’s commitment with them for the rest of their lives. It was like a snapshot of his character. After all, Martin had no money to leave behind. All he could implant in their consciousness was an outline of his character.

  On March 28, Martin went on to Memphis as planned. I was in Washington, participating in a press conference with the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. In my statement, I discussed the ways in which the Vietnam War, which I had been very vocally against, was negatively contributing to the urban crisis. Social programs for food, housing, and health were being raided to foot the cost of an ever-expanding war. The situation appalled me.

  Shortly before I boarded the plane for home, I called our Washington office to touch base. As soon as I said who I was, a staff member told me that violence had broken out in Memphis while my husband was leading the march.

  I needed to know if Martin was all right, so I called Rev. Walter Fauntroy, who headed the Washington office. “Yes, he’s fine, but he is terribly depressed,” I was told. I felt relieved, but I also knew how badly Martin was hurting. He abhorred violence, and I knew that he would be blaming himself.

  Later that evening, Martin told me what had happened. He and Ralph arrived late to the march, which had attracted about eight thousand demonstrators. The unrest had already started when they arrived, and almost immediately Martin sensed that something was wrong. His staff had not taken time to perform the nonviolence workshops that customarily preceded a march, and he saw Black Power signs scattered throughout the crowd. There was no proper lineup, and Martin told me he could sense a lack of discipline.

  As it turned out, things were worse than he thought. Some of the younger black nationalists, from a group called the Invaders, had threatened to tear the place up if their agenda did not receive immediate attention. Martin said he soon heard the sound of breaking glass, followed by shouts and screams. In the distance came the sound of sirens. People were running in all directions. Martin said he yelled to Lawson to call off the march because it had turned violent. Ralph, Martin, and Bernard Lee were spirited away by a black woman driving a Pontiac. She took them to a Holiday Inn near the Mississippi River. When Martin turned on the nightly news, he saw that the scene was pandemonium, a mini-riot.

  As I’d guessed, Martin was extremely despondent. “I feel responsible,” he told me. “This is terrible. I can see the headlines now. Now we will never get people to believe in nonviolence.”

  The national press was unrelenting in its berating of Martin for the violence and in its declarations that the era of nonviolence had ended. An editorial in the Memphis Commercial Appeal stated flatly, “King’s pose as the leader of a nonviolent movement has been shattered.” Much later, however, we received confidential information that the youthful Invaders, who were at the root of the trouble, had been infiltrated by the FBI, which used them to discredit my husband. It seemed that Hoover had vowed that King would never have another peaceful demonstration. Memphis offered an opportunity to prove it.

  At that point, Martin felt he had no choice but to return to Memphis and lead another march to prove the efficacy of nonviolence. That march was scheduled for April 8.

  Although he sounded so very low that night—a feeling that showed at the evening press conference—the next morning I learned that he’d had a miraculous turnaround. A different Martin appeared. The fire was back; the words and ideas flowed again. I understand he did a yeoman’s job explaining to the press what he thought had gone wrong, in defining the frustrations of the black leadership and restating his commitment to nonviolence. Bernard Lee said, “I had seen him in a lot of press conferences, but rarely was he as profound and eloquent.”

  One perplexed reporter who had been to the earlier press conference noticed the change and asked, “Dr. King, what has happened to you since last night? Who have you talked to?”

  Martin answered, “I have only talked to God.”

  On April 2, Martin met with the SCLC staff and reiterated his belief that a peaceful march in Memphis was key to a successful Poor People’s Campaign. The meeting was very lively. It was a little like the Last Supper, at which Christ told Judas that he would betray Him and spoke to Peter and the rest of his disciples. Most of the staff were not supportive of Martin’s going back to Memphis. They felt it was getting in the way of their bigger project, the Poor People’s Campaign. When Jesse Jackson continued to press his objections, Martin barked at him, “If you’re so interested in carving out your niche, go ahead, but for God’s sake don’t bother me.” The meeting became heated, and Martin got upset, but it ended well, with a decision to go to Washington by way of Memphis.

  On April 3, Martin prepared to return to Memphis on a 7:00 a.m. flight. Ralph came over to pick him up at our home. As was usual when Martin traveled, I rose early to prepare breakfast, but neither Ralph nor Martin ate. I followed Martin to the door, kissed him good-bye, and wished him well. The children were still asleep and didn’t see him leave. It was an ordinary farewell, like thousands of others. As always, Martin promised to call me that evening.

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p; We later learned that Hoover had leaked a story to the local media in Memphis deriding Martin for staying at the Holiday Inn, then considered too “fancy” for a black leader. Martin, ever sensitive to criticism, checked into the black-owned and -operated Lorraine Motel.

  As promised, Martin called me that night. He explained that although Memphis mayor Henry Loeb had obtained a federal injunction against the march, he was going to lead it anyway. He told me that he was going to address a mass meeting that night at the Mason Temple.

  Then Martin said, “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  In one of those inexplicable ironies of history, he wasn’t feeling well that night, and decided to let Ralph speak in his stead. When Ralph arrived at the Mason Temple, the headquarters of the Church of God in Christ, about two thousand people had gathered, rather than the hundreds expected given there was a violent rainstorm raging. A tornado had also been sighted in the area, but even such inclement weather couldn’t keep the people away. The congregation was cordial, but Ralph sensed they were hungry for Martin. He called him at the hotel and explained the situation, asking Martin to come and address the waiting crowd.

  My husband’s entrance in the giant hall at Mason Temple created tremendous excitement. Cheers and applause rang out as he walked in the door and down the aisle to the pulpit. Instead of the standard introduction, Ralph took the time to do a lengthy, rather unique summation of Martin’s life from birth to his present involvement in Memphis.

  Then all eyes focused on Martin, and he spoke for nearly two hours without notes. He gave his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech, which hit such high notes of oratory prowess that it can be compared to Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address or the Farewell Address of George Washington. Martin spoke solemnly about the fate of prophets, which had not changed much from the Old Testament era. Most of the biblical prophets and disciples of Christ met tragic ends.