by Steve Berry
If I had sneezed I wouldn’t have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill.
If I had sneezed I wouldn’t have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had.
If I had sneezed I wouldn’t have been down in Selma, Alabama, to see the great movement there.
If I had sneezed I wouldn’t have been here in Memphis to see a community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering.
I’m so happy that I didn’t sneeze.
I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane there were six of us. The pilot said over the public address system, “We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong on the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we’ve had the plane protected and guarded all night.”
And then I got into Memphis.
Some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead.
But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.
And I don’t mind.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life.
Longevity has its place.
But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain.
And I’ve looked over.
I’ve seen the promised land.
I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.
And so I’m happy tonight.
I’m not worried about anything.
I’m not fearing any man.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
I’d heard that speech several times. But only bits and pieces. Highlights. Never this much at one sitting. But reading it now, knowing what I knew about what happened the day after, I was moved in a powerful way. I had to admit, given the context as described by Foster, King’s words sounded like those of a man who knew he was about to die. Not in a decade. Or a few years. Or even in a week.
Now.
“He spoke of mortality that night,” Foster said. “His own, but only he and I knew the true immediacy. It was an amazing speech. His voice rose and fell in calculated waves, controlling the audience’s emotions like a drum major would with a band. Not a note in front of him. Every word conceived as he spoke. There was lots of applause and verbal affirmations. I felt like I was at church on Sunday. When he uttered those last words, Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, he turned from the podium and nearly collapsed into Abernathy’s arms. He seemed totally spent. As if he’d completed all he wanted to do.”
My mind stood still, blank and bare, but I wanted to know, “Why didn’t you just tell Coleen all of this?”
His face collapsed onto itself, retreating behind folds of slackened flesh as the guilt, grief, and regret again took hold. “I couldn’t.”
“I don’t see why not.”
He reached for the switch on the reel-to-reel recorder.
“Listen.”
King: It’s going to be okay, Ben. Really, it is.
Foster: I will have to live with this for the rest of my life. It’s not right of you to ask this of me.
King: I agree. I have no right. But you’re all I have. You’re my friend, Ben. My dear friend. We both know that my fate has been sealed for a long time. We all knew that one day some damn fool would kill me. Thankfully, that didn’t happen back when we had so much to accomplish.
Foster: We still have things to accomplish.
King: They’ll be done, just not with me alive. I was once the voice of the Negro in this country. That is not the case anymore. Other voices have risen louder. Ones that, sadly, shout destruction and violence. We have to silence them. As Gandhi said, There are many causes I would die for. There is not a single cause I would kill for. We have to make sure our folks don’t forget that.
Foster: Yet you ask me to kill you.
King: Yes, I do. And I apologize for that. But if a man hasn’t found something he’s willing to die for, he isn’t fit to live. My cause. My race. They are both worth dying for. I’m ready to be at peace, Ben. Something else Gandhi said has stuck in my mind of late. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. I’m ready to win.
Foster: You have.
King: Not entirely.
[PAUSE]
Foster: Do you ever want the world to know what you did?
King: I’ve thought on that. So let me say this to those listening to this recording. If physical death is the price a man must pay to free his children and his white brethren from a permanent death of spirit, then nothing can be more redemptive. But that can only succeed if we take the high road. Leave the low road to others. If we stay the course that has already been set, I firmly believe we will see the promised land. Here’s my answer to your question. Wait fifty years before ever saying a word about any of this. If you survive to that day, make the decision then. My dream is that in fifty years the Negro will be in the promised land. If you come to join me with God before fifty years have passed, then only you and I will ever know what we’ve done. Take the secret to your grave. In this, Ben, I will trust you and you alone.
Foster switched off the machine. “I’ve respected his wish. It’s what he died for, so I could not violate that trust. I knew my life, from that day on, would come with conditions. Prudence being one of those. I’ve kept silent, and that silence included my wife and Coleen. A little over thirty years have now passed on the fifty, and I’m still breathing.”
The implications of what I was hearing weighed heavy. But I needed to know more. “Where did King get the idea to use the FBI to make it happen?”
“That was the ironic part. Hoover himself provided the spark. That note he sent to King’s house back in ’65, which suggested suicide.”
I recalled the wording.
King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation.
“Martin eventually came to believe Hoover was right. Death was the only route that would work, but not for the reasons Hoover wanted. That note, though, did convince Martin that Hoover wanted him dead. It’s what got him thinking in such a dark direction. Starting in late summer of ’67, he had me drop hints and suggestions to Jansen. Test the waters, lead them our way. Finally, as you heard on the cassette, I came right out and proposed it to them. They could have said no. Rejected the whole idea. But they didn’t. No one was more shocked by that than me. I was so hoping they would not go down that road.”
I saw the stress of the past few days etched into his face.
“Martin and I talked many times about mortality,” Foster said. “He meant what he said in Memphis the night before he died. There was something to be said for longevity. He would have preferred to live a long life. But he was smart enough to know when to quit, and persuasive enough to convince me that his way was the right way. So I did what he asked of me.”
“He just walked out on the balcony at the Lorraine Motel and stood there to be shot?”
“That’s exactly what he did. I was below in the parking lot with the others. When he came out to the railing, I said a prayer. He’d been specifically told not to be out in the open like that. But Martin did what Martin wanted to do, so no one questioned him. The mood that evening was light. Everyone felt good. We’d won in court. The second public march was going to happen. Things were working out. We were all headed to dinner at a local preacher’s house. Only I knew Martin would not be coming
with us. Two hours earlier, Jansen had told me it was definitely going to happen.”
Foster’s gaze went distant.
“That rooming house, where Ray found his perch, offered the perfect angle to the balcony at the Lorraine. The bathroom had a straight line of sight, so Ray positioned himself there, standing in a tub, the rifle out the window. One shell loaded. That’s all. Just one. The man had confidence.”
Or was just an idiot.
Hard to know for sure.
“Martin was leaning over the railing when the bullet struck, his back toward Ray, proving what he’d said the night before at the Masonic Temple. A man can’t ride your back unless it is bent. Those words flashed through my brain the instant I heard the shot. I also recall him smiling. Just as he turned to go back into his room for a coat. He died with a smile on his face.”
Foster pointed at the recorder.
“There’s a little more on the tape.”
And he switched the machine back on.
King: I entered this fight when I was twenty-six, and destroying Jim Crow has been a hard battle. I’ve known since the first day that my life of nonviolence would end violently. Everyone thinks about dying.
Foster: You more than others.
King: I agree. I’ve often spoke of it. Probably too much. But they killed Kennedy. They killed Malcolm X. They killed Medgar Evers. They’ve killed little black children and white reformists. I think about Selma and Jimmie Lee Jackson all the time.
Foster: I do too.
King: I want to say this to the people listening to this tape. In 1965 we went to Selma to march for voting rights. Jimmie Lee Jackson was twenty-six years old. A farm laborer and church deacon. He marched with us that day to the Perry County Courthouse when the state troopers attacked with clubs. Jimmie saw his mother and grandfather being assaulted and rushed to help them. An Alabama state trooper shot him in the stomach, then they dragged him away so he could be arrested for assault and battery. It took hours before he made it to the hospital. He lingered in terrible pain for nine days before dying. Nine days after that we marched from Selma to Montgomery. Thousands of people came, outraged at the clubs, whips, chains, tear gas, and bullets they’d seen on television being used against defenseless marchers. One of those marching there that day, a white minister and father of four, James Reeb, was beaten to death by an angry mob of whites. A few days later a forty-year-old white mother named Viola Liuzzo was shot dead by several Klansmen. So many have died for this cause. People forget that this movement is stained with blood. I don’t want them to forget. Not now. Not ever. How many times have we seen men with rifles, perched in trees, as we marched, just waiting for a chance to take a shot at us? How many bomb threats have there been? Immortality is not gained by how much money you make during your life, or how many houses you own, or how popular you may be. It’s gained by service to the poor and lost, the heartbroken and despairing, the hungry and naked. Jimmie Lee Jackson, James Reeb, and Viola Liuzzo knew that. They gave their lives. What they lacked was notoriety. I have that. So my life will now be offered so that none of them will ever be forgotten.
[PAUSE]
Foster: What do you want us to say at the funeral?
King: I want it short with only a brief eulogy. I don’t want any mentions of my Nobel Prize or any of the other awards I’ve been given. Just have them say that I served and loved others. That I tried to be right on the war. I tried to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the imprisoned. The more hate my enemies spat, the harder I pushed myself. The more they tried to stop me, the harder I worked. End it with I tried, with all my might, to love and serve humanity.
Foster switched off the machine for the last time.
He and I both were visibly wrestling with emotion.
“In the last year of his life Martin experienced a difficult erosion of faith. That halo of abundant confidence, which early success generates in the young and rash, had disappeared. He was approaching forty years old and viewed life with a frantic urgency. I heard Coretta talking to Ralph Abernathy, about a month before Memphis. Even she noticed a change, she said it was like fate was closing in on him.”
Hard to hide much from your wife.
Which I should know.
“He told me that people tended to memorialize the dead, and he was right. His death gave an extra meaning to all the others who’d died before him for the cause. None of them were ever forgotten.”
What I should do next was no longer clear. I’d come here intending to tell him that everything would have to be revealed. Coleen was gone. No reason existed to keep this secret, except perhaps to keep Foster from jail. But with this new revelation everything had changed. This wasn’t a murder. It had been an elaborate suicide, staged to look like a murder.
“King seemed to have thought it all through,” I said.
“That was his gift. He had a vision. He’d been the producer, director, and costar in many civil rights performances. Marches, demonstrations, rallies, freedom rides, protests, sit-ins, speeches, eulogies. He organized them with expert precision. Nothing happened by chance. His last production, his greatest production, was his own death.”
Foster reached beneath his jacket and brought out a .38 revolver, which he laid on the table.
I pointed at the weapon. “Is that for you or me?”
“Maybe me. I don’t know yet.”
He hadn’t asked me any of the details about what occurred with Jansen, Oliver, and Valdez. I doubted he knew much of what had happened with me and Coleen until we made it to St. Augustine and she surrendered herself.
“Coleen willingly went with Valdez to protect you,” I said. “She wanted you to be safe. Now you plan to shoot yourself?”
He shrugged. “I’m tired of living with other people’s deaths on my conscience. I’m tired of staying silent. I’m just plain tired all the way around.”
No question. This guy had turned the practice of playing both sides against the middle into an art form. And I suddenly realized that the roles had reversed. I was him, to him being King. One would die, the other would keep the secret.
Or would I?
He rewound the tape until one spool was empty, then removed the reel.
“Take this.”
He handed the tape over to me.
“You have everything else, you’ll need this, too. It’s your decision on what to do. I pass the duty on to you. Now get out of here, Lieutenant, and let me die in peace.”
PRESENT DAY
EPILOGUE
I stand inside the King family home and stare across the dim hallway at Benjamin Foster. I’ve finished talking about what happened eighteen years ago. I point to the gun at his waist. “Why didn’t you pull the trigger back then?”
“Why haven’t you told the world what you knew?”
“When I didn’t hear about your death, I drove back to Orlando. I was told you resigned as pastor and left town. Where did you go?”
“California, Arizona, Mexico. You haven’t answered me. Why didn’t you tell?”
“I decided to honor King’s wish and keep silent, until fifty years had passed.”
Foster motions to the side table. “I see the cassette and the tape reels. What’s on the flash drive?”
“The photos from Valdez’s files started to turn. Photography in the ’60s wasn’t what it is today. Before they completely disappeared, I transferred everything to digital. They’re on that flash drive.”
“It’s not the same.”
I shrug. “It’s all we’ve got. The originals faded away.”
“Like my life. I still miss Coleen every day.”
I, too, often think of her and Nate. Both died for the cause. Two more casualties in a social revolution that started in April 1865 and continues to this day.
“I eventually came back home to Florida,” Foster says. “My church was quite understanding. They hired me back. I’ve stayed with them ever since.”
“My life also changed. When you vanishe
d, Stephanie Nelle wanted me to find you. But I told her to let it go. I convinced her that the files were probably back in Cuba and you couldn’t add a thing. I don’t know if she really believed me, but she let it go.”
He says nothing.
The King house remains cemetery-quiet, the night outside equally tranquil. Tomorrow, the entire Martin Luther King Jr. Center will be alive with activity. Former presidents Barack Obama and Danny Daniels are coming to speak from the pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. Many visitors are expected at the epicenter of King’s memory. But now, in the wee hours of the morning, it is just me and Foster.
“Stephanie came to see me again about a month after I moved her off your trail,” I say. “All hell broke loose inside the FBI thanks to Oliver and Jansen’s antics. They cleaned house there and in the Justice Department. No more Hoover cronies anywhere. Finally, the stain was removed. They then started a new unit within Justice to deal with sensitive problems like that. It eventually became much more, expanding its reach around the world. I was its first recruit. The Magellan Billet.”
“I learned about that from a friend in government. That’s how I found you in Copenhagen.”
“If you hadn’t, I would have found you. Today is an important day.”
I glance at my watch.
12:30 A.M.
April 4 has begun.
“Martin promoted hope and curiosity,” Foster says. “History has proven that his memory is secure. So many people grieved when he died. His death became their death.”
“You were right with what you told Jansen. There were riots coast to coast.”
“For a time it seemed Martin’s death was the death of hope, progress, and justice. But as he told me would happen, we moved past that. We settled back down and resumed the fight, leaving the streets and entering politics. Black mayors were elected in New Jersey and Indiana. Andy Young became the first black man from Georgia, since Reconstruction, to serve in Congress. Many more election victories followed. Eventually, a black man became president. Martin would have loved all that.”