With me, assassinations are not some vague, general topic of discussion. They are the reason I do not have a husband. I do not regard the murder of my husband, of John Kennedy, or of Robert Kennedy as aberrations or random acts by deranged individuals. They were political acts in both motivation and consequence. Is it a mere coincidence that, shortly before their deaths, these eminent public figures were seeking social progress and fighting particularly to end racial inequality and war? If we face the ugly truths that bigotry has not only been abrasive to the black man and dealt a false sense of superiority and entitlement to the white man, but has also generated a spirit of violence that has deformed the internal compass of our whole society, we will begin to understand how those significant forces of violence have shaped us all. To lose great men to assassination and young men and women to the unnecessary violence of war is intolerable. It is a terrible scar on our national character that will continue to haunt us in uncivil, corrupt ways for centuries to come—unless we dare to change.
These thoughts fueled my resolve to continue speaking out against the Vietnam War. On April 27, 1968, less than a month after Martin’s death, I agreed to play a major role in a rally in New York City by the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, a national coalition of antiwar activists. I marched with protesters around Central Park, and then I addressed their gathering. This is what I shared:
My dear friends of peace and freedom, I come to New York today with a strong feeling that my dearly beloved husband, who was snatched suddenly from our midst slightly more than three weeks ago now, would have wanted me to be present today.
Though my heart is heavy with grief from having suffered an irreparable personal loss, my faith in the redemptive will of God is stronger today than ever before.…
I would like to share with you some notes taken from my husband’s pockets upon his death. He carried these scraps of paper upon which he scribbled notes for his many speeches.…
Perhaps they were his early thoughts for the message he was to give to you today. I am sure he would have developed and delivered them in his usual eloquent and inspired fashion. I simply read them to you as he recorded them. And I quote, “Ten Commandments on Vietnam”:
1. Thou shalt not believe in a military victory.
2. Thou shall not believe in a political victory.
3. Thou shall not believe that they, the Vietnamese, love us.
4. Thou shall not believe that the Saigon government has the support of the people.
5. Thou shall not believe that the majority of the South Vietnamese look upon the Vietcong as terrorists.
6. Thou shalt not believe the figures of killed enemies or killed Americans.
7. Thou shall not believe that the generals know best.
8. Thou shalt not believe that the enemy’s victory means communism.
9. Thou shall not believe that the world supports the United States.
10. Thou shall not kill.
These are Martin Luther King’s “Ten Commandments on Vietnam.”
You who have worked with and loved my husband so much, you who have kept alive the burning issue of war in the American conscience, you who will not be deluded by talk of peace, but who press on in the knowledge that the work of peacemaking must continue until the last gun is silent.
In this speech, I went on to address the women in the audience directly:
The woman power of this nation can be the power which makes us whole and heals the rotten community, now so shattered by war and poverty and racism. I have great faith in the power of women who will dedicate themselves wholeheartedly to the task of remaking our society.…
With this determination, with this faith, we will be able to create new homes, new communities, new cities, and a new nation. Yes, a new world, which we desperately need!
After the Spring Mobilization Rally, I delivered a similar message in June 1968, when I became the first woman to deliver a Class Day address at Harvard University. In that address, I continued my opposition to the war and called for an end to our aerial bombing of North Vietnam. Those were the first speeches I gave after my husband’s death, and on the subject of war, I would continue to seek many opportunities and work countless hours to help our nation and our communities choose peace, not violence.
One such effort took place in February 1969. I attended a conference held by the group Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam at the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, DC, a church famous for its activism. Frederick Douglass had spoken there, and so had my husband. After the conference, I led a delegation to the White House for a meeting with Henry Kissinger, who was then serving as national security adviser to President Nixon. The Rev. William Sloan Coffin, chaplain of Yale University, accompanied me. We presented Kissinger with a proposal to grant amnesty to those who had been imprisoned for refusing to accept deployment to Vietnam, as well as those who had fled to Canada to escape the draft.
Not much came from that meeting. Eight years passed before President Carter offered unconditional amnesty to those who had refused to be conscripted into military service during Vietnam. So I was taken by surprise by an encounter I had with Henry Kissinger in the mid-1980s, during the Reagan-Bush administration. After a “get acquainted” visit to Vice President George H. W. Bush, I came out of the meeting to find former secretary of state Henry Kissinger waiting to see me. We chatted briefly, and he reminded me of our 1969 meeting. I was impressed that he remembered, especially since I had been in his company several times since and we had made only polite conversation.
He said, “Mrs. King, you know something? You all were right and we were wrong about Vietnam.”
To hear him say that after all those years was quite remarkable.
* * *
BACK IN THE late 1960s, I not only spoke out against the war but also sent a clear signal that I would always continue to fight for the rights of the poor. In May 1968, I turned my attention to the Poor People’s March, which Martin had envisioned as a nonviolent protest focusing on broad economic issues, as opposed to the racial issues we had campaigned against in the past.
On May 2, I advanced the cause for the Poor People’s March from the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, the very site where my husband had been killed a month earlier. Standing there, I began to relive that awful moment, but I pushed these thoughts away, fighting to keep my focus off myself. After all, I was there doing what Martin would have done. I was furthering the Dream.
The more I thought about this, the stronger I felt. The more I encouraged the crowd, the more I came alive. As I stood there, I felt a strange sense of camaraderie flowing between the protesters and me. Our hopes and aspirations had spontaneously connected in some way.
Perhaps it was then that I truly understood: I could heal as I pressed on. I could not wait until I felt better to heal; I just had to run on and let the healing catch up with me.
A few weeks later, I led the Mother’s Day Parade beside Ethel Kennedy, the wife of Sen. Bobby Kennedy, an event that brought together more than five thousand welfare mothers to march in Washington, DC. We highlighted the plight of poor women and children, showing how, from rural Appalachia to the urban ghettos, children were going to bed hungry, their mothers unable to afford decent medical care. Ethel and I immediately forged a relationship, one that was not just superficial but heartfelt. I could never have imagined that only a month after she and I marched together, we would find ourselves sharing another bond: the assassination of our husbands.
In the wee hours of the morning on June 5, 1968, I received word that presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy had been shot as he walked through the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. As soon as I learned of the shooting, I got on the first available plane to California, where I joined Ethel at Good Samaritan Hospital. Bobby had a devastating head wound, and although we were all hoping for the best, it was almost certain he would not survive. I checked into a hotel with my friend Bernita Bennette
and waited.
It was such a horrible feeling—waiting for someone to die. I’d never had that experience before. I passed the time praying and preparing a statement, and then, at about 4:00 a.m. on June 6, I received the call telling me that Bobby had died two hours earlier. I readied myself to fly back to New York with Ethel and some more of the Kennedy family.
In New York, I checked into the Waldorf, where I stayed to attend the funeral. After the services, we went by train to Arlington Cemetery for the interment. There, the press caught up with me to tell me that the man alleged to have killed Martin, James Earl Ray, had been caught. They asked me to comment, but I did not. I was at Arlington to pay my respects to the Kennedy family, not to become the center of attention.
It was such a tragic time. First JFK, then Martin, and now Bobby. The hate in America kept piling up and striking down our nation’s best and brightest. It was so demoralizing. Black people had lost their great hero when Martin died. Now white people, the liberals and the idealists, had lost their great hero, too. In a profound way, all of us had lost.
Bobby, Ethel, Jackie, and other members of the Kennedy family had been by my side at Martin’s funeral, and now, just a few months later, we were joined again in a ritual that seemed never ending.
After the service, to change the sad tone, Rose Kennedy and I talked about motherhood. Recalling that she had raised ten children, I asked her what her secret for good parenting was.
“You train the older ones well, and they will help you with the others,” she said, smiling.
After Bobby’s funeral, I was drenched in sadness, but it was a consolation to get right back to work fighting for the causes that were important to him and to Martin.
After the Mother’s Day Parade, I started receiving calls from various women’s organizations that, I believe, saw me as a symbol for women. They wanted me to convene and head a coalition of women’s groups across various religions and ethnicities, whose collective membership topped one hundred thousand.
I was certainly in solidarity with their request. I felt deeply that women were the conscience of the family, and we could be the conscience of the nation, too. We were more attuned to protecting the life we had brought into the world; indeed, I felt we were coworkers with God in His creative activity. In the past, I had wanted Martin to organize a women’s auxiliary in the SCLC. Although he was less chauvinistic than most men in the movement, he failed to do so.
Unfortunately, I didn’t see myself playing such a leadership role with these groups.
I prayed about it, but I didn’t feel I had the resources needed to bring this important element together as a whole. And I didn’t feel women were really ready to unite and unify. I was still waiting for God to call me and guide me to what I was to do. There were only so many hours in the day, and I had four young children at home. I had to carefully determine where I would focus my efforts. So I turned down these requests from women’s organizations, though I knew I would always be not only supportive but also proactive in helping women with good causes reach their goals.
One cause close to Martin’s heart, one I chose to make my own, was fighting for workers. Martin was one of the best friends the labor movement had ever had. In fact, he gave his life in Memphis fighting for better wages and working conditions for striking sanitation workers. In 1962 he had also joined workers on the picket line in a Local 1199 drive to organize New York City’s independent hospitals, and he called on New York governor Nelson Rockefeller and urged him to support collective bargaining.
In 1969, I went to Baltimore to help local health care workers, many of whom were African American women and single mothers like me. I felt that lending my influence and support, and encouraging them to join up with Local 1199 (the Service Employees International Union) would help them win a better life.
My help with Local 1199 went beyond making a speech. I walked the picket lines outside Johns Hopkins Hospital on Monument Street. Unfortunately, the news stories gave me much more credit than I deserved, claiming that the decisive moment in the drive came when I stood outside the hospital and met with the workers, who were unsure about the possibility of organizing against one of the city’s largest and most powerful institutions. Even today, the union’s official history states, “When the aides and orderlies of Hopkins showed up to work on that August day and saw Martin Luther King’s widow standing strong outside the hospital, they took heart.” The hospital officials quickly recognized the union and negotiated substantial pay and benefit improvements. While the fight was won, it was not the result of one person’s actions. It was won by hundreds of emboldened nurses, aides, porters, and orderlies.
On the heels of their victory, I agreed to serve as honorary chairperson of 1199’s National Organizing Committee. In that capacity, I spearheaded the invitation for other groups to join us in unionizing South Carolina hospitals, and went to South Carolina myself to help organize striking hospital workers. I led marches and rallies; I worked to inspire the strikers to continue fighting for their rights and the rights of their children to lead better lives. Our initiative established the first unionized hospital workers in Charleston.
For more than fifteen years, I worked with 1199 in major cities such as Philadelphia and New York, remaining a close friend and ally and speaking at its conventions and black history programs whenever I could. I also became a stalwart supporter of other unions, since unions and civil rights went hand in hand. They helped fund our causes; we helped them organize their workers. Over the years, I spoke for hundreds of labor groups, such as the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers, the United Furniture Workers, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the Industrial Workers of the World, and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. I worked with both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. I testified for them when they had important legislation before Congress, such as the Senate Labor Committee’s deliberations on behalf of full employment.
Through my union activities, I began to understand the power and the ministry of presence. Sometimes we win just by showing up.
Harry Belafonte helped me understand this quality, too. One day, he and I were sitting in a conference room in Chicago, waiting to discuss the founding of the Congressional Black Caucus with Rep. John Conyers and author Lerone Bennett Jr. Harry gave me an intense look and said, “Coretta, I don’t know what your public plans are, but you have more power just sitting in a room than most people. You don’t even have to say much. It’s your presence that carries so much weight.”
When he told me this, I was embarrassed; it crossed my mind that maybe this was a nice way of warning me not to make too many waves around male leaders, so as not to deflate their egos. Still, I took to heart what Harry was saying. I thought about the many occasions when I had shown up in all kinds of places, representing so many causes. This was the Ministry of Presence.
Of course, I also understood that when I showed up, the news media would tag me as “Martin’s widow.” How well I understood the power of my husband’s name and what he represented! But sometimes I wondered how and when people would look beyond the name and see me as a woman of substance and commitment, working for the Cause each day of her life. Regardless of this concern, I tried to bring whatever I could that added impact, life, and hope to great causes that were helpful to humanity.
Though Martin was gone physically, I became acutely aware of how much he remained a part of me spiritually. When we married, our hearts and minds were joined together. As he always said, I was only a heartbeat away from him. We did not have a his-and-hers mission. We were one soul, one goal, one love, one dream. The movement had become embedded in my DNA. It was not something I could choose—or refuse. I knew what I had to do. All that was in me had to focus on keeping the Dream alive. Something had a hold of me; something kept me believing. I could not let go. I came to believe that it was my calling, my purpose in life, to help institutionalize and internationalize the movement and M
artin’s work. I felt that serving as Martin’s partner in the struggle had readied me to continue climbing up toward that mountain top, toward that ideal that Martin had seen but could not reach. Most of Martin’s closest aides went on to other agendas and jobs, as would be expected. But I understood clearly that, other than raising my children, I had just one goal: the legacy had to continue. As Martin’s other half and the architect of the King legacy, I could play a crucial role as an agent of change, following dutifully as God ordered my steps.
I would go on to champion hundreds of different ones, but my highest public priority had to be giving birth to my “fifth child”: an institution to celebrate and advance Martin’s cause, mission, and legacy.
SEVENTEEN
My Fifth Child
THROUGHOUT MY LIFE, whenever I didn’t pray, things went badly. I would become frustrated and feel out of sync with the will and purpose of God. But whenever my life was guided by prayer, I felt good about what I was doing, and I was able to reach out to other people with love and understanding. In the wake of Martin’s death, I pondered and soul-searched, trying to determine my future plans and goals, and of course I prayed. It was during this time of prayer that the idea of creating an institution dedicated to Martin’s legacy rose to the top of my life’s to-do list.
My Life, My Love, My Legacy Page 21