My Life, My Love, My Legacy

by Coretta Scott King

  My decision not to support Chisholm rankled some of those around me. Many of them did not like her, but were too intimidated by the possible negative fallout to support anyone else as long as she was in the race. Even my good friend Harry Belafonte asked me if I anticipated Shirley’s wrath. I assured him, “I don’t have a problem with Shirley. Men have a problem with Shirley, or maybe Shirley has a problem with men, but we get along fine.”

  Before I formally endorsed McGovern, I pulled together several advisers. Together, we mapped out a document that made certain demands on him in exchange for our support. Chief among my concerns were that there be monetary policies to cut the unemployment rate, an increase in the dismal number of black federal judges, and strategies for including blacks in the mix of federal contracting. I also asked that Walter Fauntroy, a movement friend who was the nonvoting congressional delegate from the District of Columbia, give one of McGovern’s nominating speeches.

  Through Yancey Martin, a black aide to McGovern who was handling the candidate’s outreach to African Americans, I sent a message to the campaign saying that I was ready to make my endorsement if McGovern supported and signed the document we had prepared. When McGovern and I had spoken earlier in the year about the potential for my support, he told me, “Coretta, I can’t tell you how important your endorsement is to me. In fact, it will be the most important singular endorsement in this election.”

  “I will be in touch with you when I make my final decision,” I’d said.

  And he replied, “You just have someone call me and let me know.”

  “No, I’ll do it myself.”

  And now, a few weeks later, I was making that call and officially endorsing him.

  Then I received a frantic call from Walter Fauntroy, who had gone to work for McGovern. “Coretta, they’re trying to take the nominating speech from me and give it to Newark mayor Ken Gibson.” (Gibson was the first black mayor of Newark.)

  “No, they won’t, Walter. McGovern made this promise to me, and he will keep it.”

  I immediately called Yancey Martin. “Put me through to Senator McGovern, please.” It took a while to track him down, but while I was holding, I told Yancey, “I know all of you think I’m nice and sweet, but if you renege on your promise to Walter, I am going to show up in Miami and set things straight.”

  In that phone conversation, I exposed an unusual side of myself. Rarely do I get so angry that I resort to threats. However, once I get riled up enough to go that far, I do not make empty threats.

  Very quickly, McGovern called back and explained that he had made the change I wanted. “I just want you to know that Walter will indeed be making a nominating address, and Ken Gibson will do something else with the vice president.” He went on to tell me the whole story, and I noticed that he kept talking and talking, not allowing me to get a word in. When I turned on the television that night, I saw a news clip about McGovern and his courtship of black leaders. The news clip included the conversation he had been having with me. So that explained why he’d kept talking: the conversation was being filmed. Wouldn’t it have been nice if he had told me it was being recorded and would be aired?

  McGovern did secure the nomination, but he lost in November. After that defeat, to my great dismay, we were once again stuck with Richard Nixon. But with the Watergate scandal, which ended with Gerald Ford taking the White House and infamously pardoning Nixon, the Democrats looked like they were in peak shape to retake the White House in 1976. This time, I would be better prepared to fight for the inclusion and representation of African Americans, women, and the poor.

  In the lead-up to the 1976 election, I met with Daddy King; Andy Young, who was then serving in Congress; Jesse Hill, the vice president of Atlanta Life Insurance Company; John Lewis; Rev. Joseph Lowery; and Herman Russell of Russell Construction, probably the wealthiest black businessman in Atlanta, to brainstorm about how we would work to influence the 1976 election. I was surprised to note that as our little group gained ground, the press began referring to us as the Atlanta Mafia.

  We decided to put our weight behind Georgia governor Jimmy Carter. As governor, Carter had appointed many African Americans to statewide boards and offices. His predecessor in the governor’s office was arch-segregationist Lester Maddox. In comparison, Carter was a striking example of “the New South.”

  Rev. Fred Bennette, a top SCLC aide, knew Carter and called him to Andy’s attention. Andy felt that if George Wallace were stopped, Carter would have a good chance of winning. He decided to endorse him. In addition, Carter had asked Daddy King for his support early on. He came to the King home, sat on the front porch, and asked Daddy King if he would support him if he decided to run.

  “Run for what?” Daddy King asked.

  “The presidency,” Carter answered.

  “Of what?” Daddy King asked.

  In any event, Daddy King signed on with Carter. I also liked Carter and was grateful for his generous fund-raising help with the King Center. I had talked with him privately on several occasions, and I was excited that a man who I knew possessed strong moral convictions actually had a chance to become the leader of our country. To me, Carter was a symbol of not only how much the South had changed, but how great walls and barriers of all kinds could come crashing down when the right spirit was released into the universe.

  Unlike LBJ, who as a Texan was considered more western than southern, Carter was Deep South. To some across the Mason-Dixon line, there was little difference between a George Wallace and a Jimmy Carter. Yet, the two were miles apart. Carter understood and had internalized the political changes brought about by the movement and knew he was a direct beneficiary of the emerging black vote. In his campaign stumps, he emphasized the ways in which Martin was a major factor in the changing South. He also discussed the ways in which his views on foreign policy, which had a strong human rights focus, were deeply influenced by my husband.

  Vernon Jordan, an Atlantan whose mother ran a successful catering business in the city, was also early into Carter’s camp. However, Vernon was well aware of the dangers of stepping over the line of nonpartisanship, and he advised me not to endorse Carter. “I don’t think you can continue to get away with endorsing candidates. I’ve been warning you about that ever since you endorsed Ed Brooke,” he said. In 1967, Brooke, a Republican, became the first black elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

  “Well, you know, as long as I can get away with this, I will do it,” I told Vernon.

  As Jimmy Carter’s campaign progressed, the “Atlanta Mafia” moniker hung heavily around our necks. Although I did not relish the term, it did telegraph our weighty role in Carter’s campaign, a role we expected to carry over into his administration. We gave Carter credibility with black Americans, liberals, and progressives, and we would be ready to recommend people to high-level positions and influence policy once he was elected.

  I decided to wait until after the primaries to do most of my campaigning for Carter. When Carter first announced his candidacy, Andy told me, “Daddy King and I can take care of this one; you don’t need to get involved yet.” Andy always had this sense that somebody in our group was going to mess up. If all of us were in the same basket, then there’d be no one to pull the others out if things went wrong. In a way, he was counting on me to come to their rescue if things fell apart.

  Things didn’t exactly fall apart, but they did take a potentially devastating turn when Carter admitted to having “lusted in his heart” in a Playboy magazine interview; on another occasion, he angered blacks with a peculiar term: ethnic purity.

  In today’s context, with all that has gone on in the White House and with the personal affairs in which candidates have engaged, “lusting in one’s heart” would not be even a blip on the scandal meter. But in the 1970s, “lust” of any kind was fairly scandalous. Daddy King defended Carter, while others seized on his stalled momentum for their own advantage. After Carter’s success in the Iowa caucus, the New Hampshire
primary, and the Florida primary, some liberal Democrats feared his success and began an “ABC” (“Anyone But Carter”) movement to try to head off his nomination. Daddy King pointed to Carter’s leadership in ending the era of segregation in Georgia and helping repeal restrictive voting laws that had especially disenfranchised African Americans. Daddy King silenced Carter’s critics by confronting them in his incomparable “stern preacher” style: “Listen, the man has told you he is sorry and asked for forgiveness. Haven’t you ever done anything you needed forgiveness for? So you go ahead and forgive him and leave him alone.”

  The cloud soon lifted.

  At Carter’s request, in 1976 I ended up giving my first address at a Democratic National Convention. I spoke on civil rights in New York City’s cavernous Madison Square Garden. Daddy King gave the Benediction. The crowd’s response was heartening.

  To me, though, these gestures were only symbolic. What mattered to me was what came later. Carter received about 90 percent of the black vote, which made a difference in thirteen states, carrying significant weight in the Electoral College. Carter won the presidency, and the votes of black Americans made his win possible. True to his word and his ideals, he was a good president for America, and especially for African Americans. As a result of Carter’s administration, Andy became the first African American to be named Ambassador to the United Nations; Patricia Roberts Harris, who was black, became the first woman to hold two Cabinet posts, at Housing and Urban Development and at Health and Human Services; Ernie Greene, one of the Little Rock Nine (whose integration of an Arkansas high school changed history), took the reins of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), the administration’s job training program; John Lewis was named associate director of ACTION, the federal agency for volunteer service; and Louis Martin became special assistant to the president, advising Carter on issues crucial to black America. President Carter appointed me to be a public delegate to the United Nations.

  Because of our campaign-year activism and our postelection inclusion in the Carter administration, blacks influenced a good portion of the federal budget, and President Carter fought hard to save the nation’s ailing cities by approving a multibillion-dollar urban policy package designed to increase investment, jobs, and housing opportunities in the inner cities.

  I worked with the president on an area that I considered profoundly important to the direction of this country: the appointment of black judges to the federal bench, especially in nine of the Deep South states, where there was a shocking lack of black representation. In 1949, after Judge William Hastie was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, he remained the sole African American federal appeals court judge until 1961, when President Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall to the Second Circuit in the District of Columbia. Kennedy also made Wade McCree and James Parsons district judges in Michigan and Illinois.

  A delegation of state representatives (some of whom, such as the Texans Eddie Bernice Johnson and Sheila Jackson Lee, went on to serve in Congress) asked me to be the leader in taking up with the president this issue of black judges. I remember a particular meeting at the White House in which President Carter turned to Griffin Bell, his attorney general, and said, “I don’t know about you, but I really think that people who have lived under conditions of oppression and are not being treated as equals should not be penalized now. We should lift those barriers. And I do intend to appoint some black federal judges.”

  Indeed, the most significant breakthrough in history for black judges was made during the four-year Carter administration, when 37 of Carter’s 258 appointed judges were African American. (In the three Reagan-Bush terms after Carter left office, only 19 African American judges were appointed, out of a total of 579 appointments.) Thanks to our lobbying efforts, Carter appointed three black judges in the Deep South, two in Alabama and one in Georgia. In Alabama, we wanted Fred Gray, a young attorney who’d handled cases for my husband and Rosa Parks, to be one of the judges. But white politicians apparently decided to punish Gray for his commitment to civil rights and blocked him. U.S. senator Howell Heflin of Alabama, who had initially supported Fred, did an about-face, saying, “We might be able to help you if you give us another name.” We tried to force the issue, but found ourselves up against a brick wall, so we came up with another name and were able to get him appointed. We considered that a great victory, although he was not our first choice.

  I was pleased with the strides Carter made and felt he was well positioned to be reelected in 1980. However, just as black involvement helped make him in 1976, lack of support from our community proved to be his downfall.

  One of the groups I helped found was the Black Leadership Forum, which harnesses the advocacy and brain power of seventeen member organizations, including the Congressional Black Caucus, the King Center, the National Council of Negro Women, the National Urban Coalition for Unity and Peace, the National Coalition of Black Elected Officials, the National Newspaper Publisher Association, the NAACP, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the SCLC, Operation PUSH, the Urban League, and so on. The forum’s first leader was Vernon Jordan. During a meeting we were holding with the Congressional Black Caucus a few months before the 1980 presidential election, I began to experience a sinking feeling. Carl Holman, director of the Urban Coalition; Rev. Jesse Jackson; Joe Lowery; and others were sitting around saying that they hadn’t yet made up their minds whom they were going to support. The whole scene was so appalling that I spoke up. “Well, who else is there for you to support? The choice is Carter or Reagan.”

  Ironically, one factor that had some black leaders up in arms against Carter was something I’d helped create: the Humphrey–Hawkins Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act. That law was very dear to my heart. It was my first attempt to shape the writing of legislation that would affect the destiny of millions. For a while, it looked as if the measure would die in the Senate, which was especially frustrating because, at the time, unemployment for black and brown people was 12.6 percent, more than double that of the national average (5.9 percent). Many black Americans blamed the president—unfairly, I believe—for the snail’s pace this bill took toward passage, and this caused major disruptions between the White House and black political leaders.

  In any case, not many black leaders were working hard to get out the vote for Carter; nor were they supporting the other blacks in the administration. One day, Andy and I were talking about the large number of blacks Carter had appointed. I told Andy, “You know, it’s tough being the first black in an office or corporation. I understand some of them are having a rough time. They are outnumbered, and they can’t fight that well from the inside. We need to form a coalition on the outside so we can help them. I’m sure they need some support.”

  As usual, Andy turned the tables back on me, saying, “You would be the ideal person to call this kind of group together. I tell you what, why don’t you get the Black Leadership Forum to do it? Bring it up and let this group head the effort.”

  The opportunity to follow up on Andy’s suggestion soon came, at a leadership meeting in Chicago. I arrived with what I thought was a strong proposal: to support and defend our people in government who might encounter problems balancing the interests of the underserved with those of their supervisors. I talked about how these men and women needed our help because they were struggling to fight from the inside, but the forum was unmoved by this proposal.

  I could only surmise that some black leaders sat on their hands because they were envious of some of the other blacks—specifically those Atlanta power brokers, “the Atlanta Mafia”—who were close to Jimmy Carter. Others, such as Hosea Williams and Ralph Abernathy, went to extremes by campaigning for Ronald Reagan, who beat Carter by a landslide.

  Carter carried only six states and the District of Columbia, earning 49 Electoral College votes to Reagan’s 489. Sure, the spectacle of Americans being held hostage in Iran and a faltering economy worked against him, but I still think Carter could
have won if black leaders had closed ranks behind him. I think he felt, although he never said it aloud, that the very people he’d stood up for hadn’t stood up for him. I agree, we didn’t stand up for him. That lack of black support for Carter hurt us, and it hurt for a long time. President Carter had worked so hard for us. And if he had stayed in office another four years, we would not have experienced Reagan’s damaging supply-side economics or his anti–affirmative action budget cuts to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and to the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. Sometimes we are our own worst enemy. People may not like to hear that from me, but it is the truth.

  Reagan had signaled his divisive, mean-spirited politics during the campaign. On August 3, 1980, soon after receiving the GOP nomination, he gave his first major postconvention speech—in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the town where, in 1964, the three civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner were murdered by the KKK. And on that hallowed ground of civil rights martyrs, Reagan’s speech centered on states’ rights, and was a direct appeal to white conservative southern voters, harkening back to the days when the federal government aided and abetted state-organized segregation and looked the other way when the rights of African Americans were being violated.

  With Carter out of the White House, it did not take long for those who cared about blacks, the poor, and the working class to begin agonizing over the nation’s quick retreat from the progressive gains made during the Carter years: The first four years of Reagan’s presidency were disastrous for black Americans. The Reagan administration’s public relations campaigns scapegoated poor blacks and labeled them undeserving of federal education dollars, of housing or employment training programs, of food stamps or dependent children benefits. Reagan’s administration painted a false and tainted image of poor black women as “welfare queens,” who were living large on public assistance. The goal of this dishonesty was to make voters believe that federal spending on social programs was mostly wasted on pointless handouts to black recipients, which was far from the truth. For starters, welfare benefited vastly more whites than African Americans. Beyond that, in the 1980s, more than 85 percent of the federal budget was allocated to defense spending, Social Security, Medicare, and payments on the national debt—all utterly colorblind expenditures. Yet Reagan carefully cultivated the impression that “government spending” meant “free money for black people,” which caused a decrease in support and compassion for those in need, including job training, not only for blacks, but for depressed communities regardless of their race.