My Life, My Love, My Legacy

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  THE TRAGEDY OF losing their father touched each of my children differently, but sooner or later they all cut their way through their personal thickets. I tried for years to discover how deeply Bernice had been affected by her father’s death. Bernice, whom we called Bunny, was only five when he was taken from us. At that age, she could not put most of the horrible pieces together, but she did finally come to understand that her daddy was not coming home. Shortly after the funeral, I had to go to the bank to transact some business. It was the first time I left home without Bunny. As I walked past the door, she called out to me, “Mommy, don’t go, don’t go, you may get shot.” Her cries jarred me. I said, “Look, I promise. Nothing is going to happen to Mommy.” I hoped to God my words would hold true—at least until my children were adults. Had I been thinking, I would have taken her with me. Once, months later, I asked her if she was still worried about me when I traveled, and she said, “No, because I see you always coming back.” I thought, “Well, maybe she is telling the truth to the best of her ability.” But I always worried about what was going on deep down inside, because Bunny was always the quietest one of my children. After school, the other three would share what they had learned that day, but when it was Bunny’s turn, she would usually say that she had nothing to share. It was a long time before she attempted to emerge from her personal exile.

  Bunny was very attached to her daddy in the last year of his life. Before that, she hadn’t warmed up to him because he was in and out of the house so much. Yet, near the end, Martin invested a lot of quality time in her because he was determined that she would remember him. When he came home, he would stand in the front hall and let her run and jump into his arms. He played little personal games with her. He had a kissing game that he played with the whole family, where he identified on his face what he called sugar spots. My sugar was right in the center of Martin’s mouth, Yoki’s sugar was on the side of his mouth, Marty’s and Dexter’s were each on one of his cheeks. In his last year, he played this game a lot with Bunny; he would say, “Now, where is Bunny’s sugar?” and she would smack him on the spot he had pointed to, which was the forehead. He’d go around and call out each of our names, and she’d identify all the sugar spots. He would do that several times, so she would remember them. And then he would take her and put her on top of the refrigerator and let her jump into his arms, and they would laugh. He would do that with all the children, but I think that Bunny’s getting to know him at that developmental stage and then having him snatched away was terribly devastating to her. Sometimes, in her frustration, she would refer to her father as “that man.” Pointing to the sky, she’d say, “That man up there, I don’t know him.” She really wanted a daddy figure. Once, when she was six or so, a white male photographer was shadowing us for a news article. “Mama,” she asked me, “is he going to my ballet recital tonight?” After I told her that he was, she asked me, “What would be wrong with him being our daddy so he could live with us in our house?”

  In reality, it was very difficult for Bunny to trust people. Standoffish, distant, shy, angry—that’s how strangers described her. But I understood why she was so reserved. For years, everyone she loved and was close to died. First, she lost her father. The next year, in 1969, her beloved uncle A.D. was found dead in his swimming pool under suspicious circumstances. This was shortly after the Fourth of July. Edythe, Pat Latimore, Narissa Neal, A.D. and Naomi and two of their children (Darlene and Vernon), and my children and I had just gone on a two-week vacation in Jamaica. A.D. taught Bunny how to swim on that vacation. But he had to leave after one week, while the rest of us stayed on. As we were packing up to return to Atlanta, I received a call informing me that A.D. had died. Bunny overheard me talking, and blurted out, “I’m not going to any more funerals.” And then her grandmother was murdered in church in 1974. Occasionally, Mama King would take care of Bunny when I was traveling; then, suddenly, Mama King was gone, too. Bunny’s two cousins around her age, Darlene and Alfred, also died suddenly (both while jogging) at the young ages of twenty and thirty-four, respectively. Then Daddy King died. So, even as she grew into adulthood, Bernice resisted getting close to anyone, sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciously, because she was afraid that she was going to lose them. She was protecting herself from pain, fearful of developing relationships because they might lead to her being left again.

  When it came time for college, Bernice, like many teenagers, vacillated between wanting to be independent (maybe even from me) and wanting to be with family. She sampled several different colleges before finding the school that she thought fit. Initially, she accepted a scholarship to the predominantly white Grinnell College, which is about an hour outside Des Moines, Iowa. That opportunity came about through Andy Young, who’d given a speech there and learned from the African American students of their desire to have more black students on campus. I advised Bernice to visit the school before applying, but she jumped at the chance to attend, primarily because her beloved uncle Andy had suggested it and because it offered a change of scenery from Atlanta. It wasn’t long before she admitted that she wished she had taken my advice to visit the college instead of plunging headlong into the new experience. She’d wanted something different, but Grinnell was too much change coming too fast for an eighteen-year-old. Atlanta was a warm climate; Grinnell was often an iceberg. Atlanta offered a lively urban setting; Grinnell was a town of about seventeen thousand, with blacks numbering about sixty-five, all of whom were either faculty or students at the college. At Grinnell, there was not a single black church. The weather, the size of the town, and the lack of groups vying for social justice—all amounted to culture shock for her.

  Once there, Bernice quickly confided, “Mommy, even the black people aren’t black.” By that I think she meant that the blacks she met there did not share the same kind of passion for black culture and the civil rights struggle that she was accustomed to. And I suspect the more staid and somber worship services in Grinnell had her longing for the upbeat gospel songs at Ebenezer Baptist Church.

  Feelings of loneliness, and isolation from her family, drove eighteen-year-old Bernice to tears. For the first few weeks, she cried off and on. She wanted to return home immediately, but upon my advice she completed one semester at Grinnell and came home to attend Spelman College in January 1982. Spelman is one of the top colleges in America for African American women. After Martin’s death, it had offered scholarships to both my daughters. Of course, Yolanda didn’t use hers, but Bernice’s was still available. So this worked out well. Before understanding that often the grass only looks greener on the other side, Bernice tried one more out-of-town experience. It lasted only a matter of days.

  In August 1982 she enrolled at American University and was assigned to a coed dorm, where she would have to share a bathroom with a male and a dorm room with a white female. That kind of closeness in her private space, plus the rigors of the academic load, were too overwhelming at the time. Once again, the more Bernice experienced “different,” the more she seemed to really want “familiar.” She quickly returned to Atlanta to continue her education that fall at Spelman, from which she graduated with a degree in psychology, with a concentration in prelaw, in 1985.

  Bernice was still trying to carve out a path for herself as the daughter of one of the greatest heroes of the century while finding a way to maintain her identity as a private person. I also knew she was still grief-stricken over the loss of her father at such a young age and was struggling not to be angry at whites in general for her father’s suffering and eventual assassination.

  Once home in Atlanta, she became engrossed in advancing her education. After graduating from Spelman, she enrolled in a dual divinity/law program at Emory University. Both ministering and lawyering require strong communication skills, and Bernice certainly has those. Early in her teenage years, she showed promise as an excellent speaker. She volunteered to step in for me on one occasion—she must have been just seventeen�
��and made her first major speech. I had to address the United Nations on the issue of apartheid, but I could not attend because of illness. I was trying to get Yolanda or Martin III to stand in for me when Bernice volunteered. Though it surprised me that she would volunteer, she took my speech and made it her own—and made the front page of the New York Times with it! They treated the address as if it were her speech, but of course I didn’t mind. I was happy she’d done such a good job, even though I hadn’t wanted her to step out into the public arena so soon. Once you do that, you have to be prepared to take the bitter with the sweet.

  Although Bernice was headed down the right career path, she still suffered, I think, from the lingering pain of unresolved inner conflict. Her emotional path was not a straight line; it was jagged, sometimes two steps forward and one step backward. In law school, much to my surprise, Bernice apparently contemplated suicide, although it is hard for me to accept that she really meant to carry it out.

  One evening, I received a startling phone call. It was from Bernice’s roommate and good friend, Alice Eason. Alice told me that she had come down the stairs in the town house where they lived and seen my daughter with a knife in her hand. She thought Bernice was going to cut herself. I knew that the law school had placed Bernice on probation because of below-average grades. I later found out the school had extended that probation and that Bernice was facing the prospect of being released permanently if she did not improve her grades the following semester. At that time, she was already dealing with a heavy baggage of pain. Her father’s death lingered over her like a dark cloud before a storm. But would she have actually committed suicide? She has said since then that she had the knife in her hand trying to figure out how bad the pain would be if she went on with her plan to take her own life, but after a miraculous encounter with the Holy Spirit that night, she felt comforted and changed her mind. When I received the call, I got on the phone with her aunt Christine and we rushed over to see Bernice. We told her how much we loved her and that we would do anything for her. I talked to her siblings and encouraged them to call her more often, and Yolanda absolutely drew closer to her.

  Bernice, like her father, suffered from depression. Is that surprising? Who wouldn’t, considering what Martin and Bernice had to deal with? Martin had the weight of the world on his shoulders, and often went for days without sleeping; Bernice grieved for him for a long time. Thankfully, in time, ministry became Bernice’s salvation. I am very clear about that. She was compelled to follow that call. It was God’s way of saving her life.

  She often talked about how badly she missed Martin and longed to have a conversation with him. Finally, those conversations began happening. Martin came to her in several dreams. In one particular dream, she said he looked just like he did right before he left us. She said that he was sitting in a chair. Yolanda was standing next to him on his right, and Bernice was facing both of them. She told me, “I started pointing my finger at him like I was fussing at him. ‘Why haven’t you been in touch?’ Yolanda answered, ‘He has been in touch with me.’” After looking at Yolanda, Martin looked back at Bernice and said, “You will understand it’s my ministry.”

  Bernice told me that Martin had appeared to her at a very strategic time. “It was an affirmation of my call into ministry because there was still some negative talk about women not preaching. That dream opened up my understanding of why my daddy was no longer with us. His suffering was part of his ministry, and he was telling me, as I continue on in ministry, that I will understand the sacrifice and the price that one will have to make for others.” After that dream, Bernice said she finally found enough peace, understanding, and encouragement to enthusiastically continue on with her life.

  Bernice went on to graduate in May 1990 from the dual-degree program at Emory University, with a master of divinity degree and a juris doctor degree. The same day she received both degrees, she was also ordained as a minister. I never heard any more about depression or suicide attempts. And after experiencing another dream about her father, she was making great progress, I felt, toward inner healing.

  Bernice told me that she began believing that God was calling on her to preach when she was about seventeen years old. I had often wondered if a child of mine would get the Call, although I did not like to bring it up, for fear that it would seem like I was pushing them. Daddy King had expected the call to come for Martin III.

  My heart swelled with pride when Bernice told me that an inner voice had encouraged her to follow in her father’s preaching footsteps. But I understood the difficulties. Because Bernice is the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., her road in ministry would be easier, but not exactly simple. I must be clear: This is the South. Sexism in many black Baptist churches is as normal as passing the collection plate on a Sunday morning. Somehow, recalcitrant pastors and preachers remain; these men ignore Scripture references to Jesus’s resurrection on Easter Sunday, when he came first to Mary Magdalene and empowered her to preach one of the greatest sermons ever given, “He Is Risen.” Moreover, Jesus, who is called the Word in the Gospel of John, came into this world through the seed of a woman, not through the sperm of a man. If a woman can give birth to the Word, certainly she can preach His Word, too. Yet many black Baptist pastors, as well as white pastors in the Southern Baptist denomination, will simply refuse to ordain a woman. At some Baptist churches, if a woman is invited to preach, she is referred to as a speaker and is not allowed to preach from the pulpit; she must preach from the floor.

  My daughter preached her trial sermon from the pulpit, not from the floor, on March 27, 1988, at Ebenezer. Of course, I, along with Yolanda, Martin III, and Dexter, and other immediate family from both Martin’s and my side of the family were there in the congregation for her first sermon. Although Bernice didn’t have the benefit of having Daddy King and Mama King’s presence that day, she was honored that my parents, whom the kids called “Grandaddy” and “Nina,” were there. Her sermon was entitled “Getting Above the Crowd” and was based on the story of Zacchaeus, a short man who had to climb a sycamore tree to get above the crowd to see Jesus.

  Her trial sermon was so good; it was amazing. She fasted for seven days before she spoke, and I felt she had certainly heard from heaven. “Uncle Andy” was there, and he cried like a baby. Afterward, he asked me, “Did she ever listen to Martin’s tapes?” Bernice told me that she had not, yet Andy and I both had heard speech patterns like Martin’s. And she held her fingers like Martin used to, gestured with her hands like Martin. It was there in the way she tilted her head, in her flashes of humor. She was so much like Martin, it was incredible. The sermon, the style, and the substance actually caused Andy to wonder if certain facets of spirituality, not only the preaching, but also the understanding and revelations, are somehow inherited, passed through the bloodline.

  Bernice is always fine when she is in the pulpit. When you see her standing there, you never know how she struggles to get her sermon together. With Bernice, things are black or white, right or wrong. There are no in-betweens. It can be hard to find friends to talk to when you are moralistic. She is not a saint, but she is very definite about her views of good and evil. I stay close to her.

  I encouraged Bernice to pull closer to her two brothers. For the longest time, she felt that they picked on her when she was growing up. Still, she tried to play with the boys. She grew up with more boys than girls; her sister was eight years older than she. Now she is making strong female friends, especially in the ministry.

  I have heard from many sources that Bernice is a mesmerizing, anointed preacher with many ministry gifts. But preaching is one gift, and pastoring is quite another, and she needed pastoring experience. So she went to her pastor, the Rev. Joseph Roberts, and asked if she could assist him at Ebenezer. She hoped to help troubled youth. Bernice is very good at counseling and resolving conflicts, and has a talent for mediation. Sometimes, when Dexter and I were at an impasse, she could come in, cut right to the chase, and help us reach a resol
ution. She thought Reverend Roberts could make use of these gifts and help her gain the necessary experience. But he instructed her to look for apprenticeship elsewhere. This was exactly the same thing he’d done with A.D. and Naomi’s sons, Rev. Vernon C. King and Rev. Derek King, who preceded Bernice into ministry; he instructed them to look for apprenticeship elsewhere. It was quite a historic break. not to have an ordained member of the immediate King family in the Ebenezer pulpit. Fortunately, Bernice found another pastor, Byron Broussard, who was ready to use her gifts and help her gain pastoral experience, at Greater Rising Star Baptist Church, affectionately known as the “Love Center,” located in an inner-city community in Atlanta. And later, Reverend Roberts did have her preach at Ebenezer. If she still feels called to pastor in the future, I think she could certainly start her own church.

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  THEN THERE IS Martin III, commonly known by his family as Marty. A very sensitive and obedient child, at times he seemed the most melancholy and confused about losing his father, but I am happy that he did not grow up to be angry or hostile. Even in talking about James Earl Ray, the man who was convicted of killing his father, Marty says, “I never hated him. I can’t hate or hold bitterness against anybody. Maybe it’s my religion or my family background, but it is just not in me to hate.”