by Steve Berry
King: None of that was done alone. Many people sacrificed themselves in those struggles. I still feel for those three young people in St. Augustine who spent six months in jail for just trying to order lunch. So many people, Ben. More than I could have ever imagined, who gave of themselves.
Foster: It’s not time for that.
King: For years now I have heard the word wait. It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. Wait till next year. Wait till after the election. Wait until things are calmer. Wait almost always means “never.” I will not wait any longer.
Foster: I can’t do this, Martin. I won’t.
King: Hoover is not going to stop. He hates me, you, and everyone in this movement. He has a massive force of men at his disposal, and he cares nothing about the Constitution or the law. We have to attack this problem from an angle he will not anticipate.
Foster: They make it all about communism. That’s all Jansen talks about. He wants to know anything that might point to a red influence.
King: “A drop of red dye, then another, and another, accumulating to stain the whole country.” That’s how they think. But that’s smoke, to conceal the real fire burning in their hearts. They attack us, Ben, because they hate us. They hate us because we are not like them. That’s not going to evaporate. There is only one thing that can stop them.
Foster: I still can’t do this. I won’t help you die.
King: That’s why this entire conversation is being recorded. I want the world to know that you did this because I wanted it done. In no way were you compliant. You did exactly as I asked of you, being the friend that you have been for these past years.
Foster: Martin, that doesn’t change a thing for me.
King: We started this many months ago. We agreed then on what we would ultimately have to do. To make this record complete, I want to memorialize what happened.
[PAUSE]
King: I suspected that there were people among us spying for the FBI. People close to me. I asked Ben Foster to investigate and find out if that was true. He did as I asked and discovered at least three individuals who had been recruited by an FBI agent named James Jansen. Instead of compromising those traitors, I decided to use them to our advantage. I asked Ben to make contact with Jansen and maneuver himself into being recruited as a spy, too, using the fact that he was aware of the other three yet had not reported their identity to me. The continued flow of information from those other three served as proof of his good intentions. For several months Ben provided Agent Jansen with additional information about me and our activities, all of which I knew about. Is what I’ve said, so far, true and accurate?
Foster: Every word.
King: On my insistence, Ben began to steer conversations with Agent Jansen into a darker place. We all have our flaws. Ben is plagued with the sin of debt, so convincing Jansen of his need for money presented little problem. He also led Jansen to believe that he was disloyal to both me and the movement. That he had come to resent me. My lapses with women. My drinking. He considered me a hypocrite. Someone not worthy to be in a position of leadership among the Negro people. He also convinced Jansen that there were others who felt the same way. But he emphasized that there was no way I was going to walk away from the movement. Hoover’s slander and personal intimidations would never work. Even the disgusting tapes sent to my home, which my wife heard, and the note that implied suicide was my only honorable way out, would not work. If they wanted me gone, they would have to kill me. Is that a correct statement of what occurred?
Foster: It is, with one change. They were suspicious of my motives at first, wondering why I was doing what I did. But I steadily upped the price for my cooperation, which they paid. Eventually, they came to believe that I was genuine.
King: Because they wanted to believe. No, that’s’ incorrect. They had to believe. I do want to point out that every dollar paid to you by the FBI was used to pay your debts. I approved that action. At present, that totals a little over $22,000. Doing that was necessary in order to maintain the story we created. Ben’s carelessness with money, his gambling, are facts that existed before all of this started. It was easy for them to investigate and verify their truth.
[PAUSE]
King: Starting in October of last year and continuing to now, Ben has continued to plant the seed of violence in their minds. This was all done at my insistence. None of this was hard to accomplish. These men already hated deep in their hearts. Do I have a death wish? Not in the least. But I have come to realize that in order for this movement to spring forward, to shift to another phase, I must die. Christianity itself was founded on the death of our Lord Jesus. It took his sacrifice on the cross to spur his followers ahead. I do not mean, nor do I imply, that I am similar in any way to Jesus. Quite the contrary. I am a man filled with sin. But I am determined to win the war that I seem born to wage. I cannot, and will not, allow what I’ve worked so hard to achieve to be destroyed. It is clear that I cannot accomplish this mission in life. But in death it may be possible.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Foster switched the machine off.
I sat at the table in shock.
He seemed to sense my quandary.
“Martin wanted to die,” he said. “He set the whole thing up.”
If not for the tape I would have thought him insane. But King’s distinctive voice had made clear those intentions.
“At the time I had so many reservations. You heard me resisting. It was decades later, when FBI documents finally became public, that I realized Martin had been right. In early 1968 Hoover stepped up the surveillance of Martin and again began to fan white fears with smear campaigns. What he was doing became so obvious, the Washington Post ran a story exposing it. We now know that in January of ’68 Hoover asked for more wiretap authority. But the attorney general said no. So he created another of his slanderous dossiers on Martin to try to convince his superiors of the threat Martin supposedly posed. It spoke of more sexual misconduct and possible communist influences. He circulated that document to the attorney general, the State Department, the CIA, the president, even the military. He was told no again on more wiretaps. But he went ahead anyway. Martin was correct. Hoover was never going to stop.”
“But to kill him? For King to want to die? That’s extreme on both sides, wouldn’t you say?”
“It was a different time in so many ways. A white establishment truly existed then. Hoover existed. Blacks were just beginning to come out from under the clouds of segregation and discrimination. But only baby steps had been taken. Martin’s ability to mold public opinion had diminished. The FBI wanted, using Jansen’s words, to knock him off his pedestal. Before they could succeed, though, he found a way to get ahead of them. I know now that it was the correct path.”
I continued to stare at the reel-to-reel recorder and recalled what Valdez had said about meeting with Hoover. When the kill order had been issued.
Late January 1968.
Right in the correct time frame.
“There was something else that worked in our favor,” Foster said. “By March of ’68 public opinion on the Vietnam War had gone negative. A majority no longer supported the war. That’s when LBJ lost the New Hampshire primary to Eugene McCarthy and withdrew from the presidential race. Jansen was really concerned about that. He told me Martin’s opposition to the war might no longer be an obstacle. He might even be deemed prophetic. They were scared he could have a resurgence. Martin had me use that fear to move them forward with the assassination.”
“Which makes his death wish even more puzzling. He could have weathered the PR storm.”
“He’d fought the fight for a long time. He told me the fact that white people might decide that the war was bad for them would mean nothing for the oppression of the black and the poor. He might win on one front, but lose on the other. He believed his death would cut across all of that. And it did.”
I recalled what Foster had told Coleen.
I loved Ma
rtin Luther King Jr. like a father. I admired him more than any man I’d ever known. I still do to this day. I would have never betrayed him.
“You really didn’t betray him,” I said.
“I did exactly as he wanted.”
“Why did he choose you to do it?”
Foster stayed silent a moment.
Then he explained.
“It has to be you,” King said. “Andy, Jesse, Ralph have all been with me for so long. That fact alone would never allow them to be a part of this. They also each have their own agendas, their own paths to follow. They are good, determined men. The movement will need them in the future, and they’ll make a difference. But you, Ben. You are lost, and have been for a long time.”
“I can do great things, too.”
The indignation in his voice was hard to conceal.
“I agree, but there are many different ways in which to do great things. I don’t say this with any malice in my heart, nor with any ill intent. But you are not meant to be a leader of this movement. There are captains and there are lieutenants. You are the latter, so your fate will be different from the others’. You have a talent for people, a way of sensing what they think and telling them precisely what they want to hear. But, like me, you are flawed. You’re searching, Ben, looking for something in your life. Whether that will be in the pulpit of a church remains to be seen. Maybe this will help you find what it is you are searching for. You’ve done a good job keeping me pointed in the right direction. I’ve come to depend on your watchful eye. When I decided that it was time for me to meet God, you were the only one I would want to make that happen.”
“I wasn’t sure whether to be offended or honored,” Foster said. “He essentially called me a con man. But he was right. He knew me better than I knew myself. I could con the FBI because I’d spent my life conning others. I was good at it. Ralph, Andy, Jesse—none of them ever liked me. I was tolerated because Martin liked me. The day after the assassination Ralph told me that my services, as a traveling secretary, were no longer needed. He fired me.”
“None of them had any idea what really happened?”
He shook his head. “The old proverb is true. The buyer needs a hundred eyes, the seller but one. Thankfully, Jansen never looked close enough to realize he was being played. Martin used to say I was a little bit of a lion, but more a fox.”
I grinned.
“The FBI cut me loose after Martin died, too. They gave me the coin and told me to disappear. That’s when I decided to go back to preaching. By then I’d changed. I was a different person. Martin’s death made me someone else entirely. A new man, one I came to embrace and like.”
I needed more details so I decided to probe. “Why in Memphis?”
“Martin didn’t want it to happen in Atlanta. That would be too close to his family. He also wanted to die at a dramatic moment. His death had to mean something. Memphis seemed the perfect place. Tensions were high. The danger real. Looking back, it seems that fate was working with us the whole time. The night of April 3, before he went to sleep, he told me to set it up for the next day at 6:00 P.M. He said he would make sure he was out on the balcony at the Lorraine for several minutes. The perfect target. So I told Jansen where and when and to be ready if the opportunity presented itself. Of course, I knew that it would.”
I could only imagine the courage that had taken.
“There was a big rally scheduled for the night of the third at the Masonic Temple. The weather was bad. Rain, with a threat of tornadoes. Martin was battling a cold and was a little depressed, as you might imagine, so he opted not to go. Abernathy went instead to address the crowd, but they wanted Martin. They chanted for Martin. So Ralph called the Lorraine. Martin was already asleep. I answered the phone and, at Ralph’s insistence, went to wake him. He was really moved that so many people wanted him to be there, so he dressed and we both went over to the temple.”
I was amazed listening to history, seen through Foster’s eyes, ingrained in his memory.
“When we got there a huge thunderstorm erupted. Rain pounded the roof. Thunder clapped. It was almost biblical, like a sound effect from a movie. Martin took the pulpit and the place went dead silent. Keep in mind he hadn’t intended on coming, so he’d prepared no remarks. He spoke straight from the heart. It was nearly a year to the day since he’d denounced the war and started a public free fall. The last year of his life was about over. He already knew that a white man would gun him down at 6:00 P.M. the next day. Have you ever studied what he said that night? What they now call the Mountaintop Speech.”
I shook my head.
Foster stood from the table and left the room for a moment, returning with a book containing the published works of Martin Luther King Jr.
He opened to the right page and passed it to me.
I read.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Something is happening in Memphis.
Something is happening in our world.
And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, “Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?” Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, “If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy.”
Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around.
That’s a strange statement.
But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding.
Something is happening in our world.
The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today the cry is always the same. We want to be free. Now, I’m just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period to see what is unfolding.
And I’m happy that He’s allowed me to be in Memphis.
Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history?
It means that we’ve got to stay together. We’ve got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt he had a favorite formula for doing it.
What was that?
He kept the slaves fighting among themselves.
But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh’s court and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together that’s the beginning of getting out of slavery.
Let us maintain unity.
We’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We’ve got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. If it means leaving work, if it means leaving school, be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.
Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness.
Let us stand with a greater determination.
And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation.
And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you.
You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, “Are you Martin Luther King?” I was looking down writing and said, “Yes.” The next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital.
It was a dark Saturday afternoon.
And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. Once that’s punctured, you’re drowned i
n your own blood. That’s the end of you.
It came out in the New York Times the next morning that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. About four days later they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheelchair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in from all over the states and the world.
I had received one from the president and the vice president.
I’ve forgotten what those telegrams said.
I’d received a visit and a letter from the governor of New York, but I’ve forgotten what that letter said.
But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I’ll never forget it.
It said simply,
“Dear Dr. King, I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School. While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I’m a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”
And I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn’t sneeze.
Because if I had sneezed I wouldn’t have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in interstate travel.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent.