Nine Days

by Paul Kendrick

  * * *

  The picture of Lonnie King’s arrest alongside Martin Luther King had made national news, but now that he was out of jail, Lonnie headed back to his night-shift job at the U.S. Post Office. He worried about his friend M.L.’s predicament, particularly because he had no idea what he could do to help him now, but worrying didn’t feed his family.

  As Lonnie walked downstairs for a snack during his first shift back, a question occurred to him: After all he had been through in these last few days, how could he abide by Atlanta’s tradition of segregated break rooms? He resolved to himself, “Let me be consistent. If I’m gonna challenge segregation outside, I should not be afraid to challenge it inside, where I work.” So instead of going left, Lonnie turned right, into the room where white employees ate. The look of shock on white workers’ faces as he sat down with his food was almost worth what was about to hit him. Rumors flew through the mail room: “Lonnie King pulled a sit-in downstairs.” When he was about to do it again the next night, one of his Black friends said, “Well, I don’t want you to get killed by yourself; I’m going with you,” and then a third colleague joined them, too.

  Within two weeks, Lonnie received notice that he might be fired for having been absent without permission, though he figured it was really a result of his break-room sit-ins. He appealed and kept the job.

  * * *

  Now that Wofford was back in the CRS office after the weekend, Louis Martin helped him start looking at the near disaster differently. What if, instead of initiating damage control measures, they proceeded under the assumption that they should actually be pressing their advantage? Side by side, they started testing ideas and the bounds of what they could do to champion Kennedy’s intervention for King as opposed to Nixon’s doing nothing.

  A release they drafted, written in Martin’s style, quoted Frank Reeves as saying, “Congratulations are pouring in to Senator John F. Kennedy for his efforts on behalf of Dr. Martin Luther King and the sit-in demonstrators in Atlanta.” They noted that Kennedy’s inquiry into King’s jailing (though it was no such thing) was “in marked contrast to the silence of Vice President Nixon … The Republicans talk a lot but when it comes to any positive steps to assist anyone they alwasy [sic] miss the bus.” The draft, however, was never released.

  The stakes were getting exponentially higher with each passing day. Martin and Wofford would have to figure out a way to be bolder.

  * * *

  The DeKalb County solicitor Jack Smith was asked if Rich’s decision to drop all charges against King would affect his suspended sentence, and he answered, “It doesn’t matter if they drop the charges or not.” Judge Mitchell scheduled King’s hearing for the next day, Tuesday, at 11:00 a.m., and ordered that King be transferred to the DeKalb County Jail.

  DAY 7: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25

  On Tuesday morning, King was allowed to shave and don his solemn dark suit and green tie for the court hearing. Though he was obviously not a flight risk, he was placed in handcuffs. Two fedora-clad officers in suits—a younger man smoking a cigarette, an older guard chewing a cigar—led him past waiting photographers. Reverend Otis Moss was told King was in handcuffs for his own protection, to which Moss could only wonder, “Protect him from what and whom?” That day, there would be no big-city niceties for the activist.

  Images of King as a “criminal” would run in newspapers around the country, even on the front page of The New York Times. Seeing her husband emerge, his facial expression far away and absent, Coretta wrote that the DeKalb County sheriff “walked arrogantly out with his prisoner.”

  Coretta, Daddy King, A.D., Martin’s sister, Christine, and Christine’s husband, Isaac Farris, got in their car to follow behind King and his captors, driving out to the hearing in Decatur. Coretta had a sense of foreboding about this place she called “a well-known stronghold of the Klan.” Passing roadside gas stations, they neared the courthouse in Decatur, which looked like a small town compared with their city. A Confederate statue stood in the middle of the town square. Few Black people lived in Decatur, and Black Atlantans did not travel through DeKalb if they could help it.

  Students had wanted to protest outside the courtroom, but Wyatt Tee Walker counseled them against it; it would be far too risky in this unfamiliar area where the KKK had held a demonstration just weeks before. Still, a stream of familiar faces emerged from the line of cars, and the Kings realized with relief that Martin would not be alone in Judge Mitchell’s courtroom. They saw Dr. Mays and other Black leaders, including the elderly John Wesley Dobbs.

  The Kings squeezed into the courtroom, overflowing with 250 people. About a third of those present were Black, and they sat on the left side. Individuals of both races stood toward the back, abuzz, shoving to get a view. Even the lanky form of Roy Wilkins of the NAACP could be seen slipping in ten minutes before the session began; he had hopped a plane from New York early that morning.

  When Dr. King was brought down the hallway, now uncuffed, flashbulbs popped all around him. Fellow Baptist ministers and staffers filled several rows, and a group of supportive white seminary students prayed together as he entered. King sat at the end of the defendant’s table beside Hollowell and his team. Next to Hollowell was his firm’s second lawyer, Horace Ward, a Morehouse man. After several years attempting to be the first African American to enter the University of Georgia Law School, Ward finally went ahead and earned a law degree at Northwestern University before choosing to come back to Atlanta to take on discrimination in Georgia.

  Judge Oscar Mitchell emerged from his quarters, taking his perch center stage, surveying the crowd, looking down at King and Hollowell. He settled in and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the Court will expect no demonstrations. There will be no picture taking in the courtroom.” Hollowell’s young clerk, Vernon Jordan, sensed that Mitchell was relishing the attention. King’s future was in his hands. The national limelight had unexpectedly shifted from Atlanta to his courtroom, and he was going to savor it.

  Mitchell was from nearby Panthersville in DeKalb County, where he lived on land his family won by lottery following the forced removal of members of the Creek and Cherokee tribes in the 1820s. In his late forties, Mitchell was a broad man, with saggy cheeks, small eyes, tight lips that smiled without warmth, and large ears. From the bench, his good-ol’-boy mannerisms belied his need to tightly control his cases and his wily political sense. He maintained a brisk pace in his courtroom so he could retreat to ride his tractor on his farm. Morris Abram described Mitchell as “a shrewd, bitter-end segregationist who would relish holding a tether around the neck of the nation’s foremost practitioner of civil disobedience.”

  Mitchell asked Solicitor Jack Smith, a thirty-six-year-old native of Decatur, if he was ready to proceed. As a World War II pilot, Smith had flown bombing missions over Berlin unaware that his future wife, who would immigrate to Georgia after the war, was living below his sights in the German capital. The balding lawyer with close-set eyes and a slightly receding chin rose to reply, “The State is ready.”

  Hollowell jumped in: “May it please the Court, we are ready for the defendant, and we would like to offer a motion to dismiss the Show Cause petition.” He asserted that because King’s suspended sentence of twelve months in a work camp was twice as long as the state statute allowed, the entire exercise today should be dismissed. Thus, “inasmuch as said sentence is a nullity, there could not be any violation thereof.” Hollowell proceeded to his second basis for releasing King: documentation from Chief Herbert Jenkins showed that there were no charges pending against King in Fulton County. Thanks to Hartsfield and Abram’s late Saturday night visit, it was true that there were now no charges in existence; Rich had grudgingly dropped them.

  Prosecutor Smith objected, saying just because there was no longer a current charge did not mean King had not broken the law last week when he was arrested.

  Hollowell argued Mitchell would be well within his powers now to dismiss. But the cat never gives up the
mouse until having played with it. Judge Mitchell said of the documents attesting to the lack of charges against King, “I will admit them for what they are worth.” Hollowell did not expect these defense probes to succeed, but they allowed him to gauge the judge and his receptiveness to different lines of reasoning. Everyone was just warming up.

  With his imposing posture, Hollowell drew the eyes of the courtroom to him. He had an elegant, trim mustache, a slight widow’s peak, deeply lined cheeks, and a baritone voice; Andrew Young compared him to a Shakespearean actor in lawyerly guise. Whereas Thurgood Marshall had a talent for earthy folksiness that served to forge a connection with a jury, Hollowell gave you no choice but to accept his impressiveness. This was no mere posturing; when a judge asked a clerk to find something in a document, Hollowell would call out exactly what page it could be found on from memory.

  Smith rebutted the motion to dismiss by saying the judge’s sentencing mistake had been meaningless. Reduce the sentence to the six-month maximum if you must, but King had still violated his probation. Smith cited a Georgia law that stated, “There does not have to be an accusation pending.” Judge Mitchell was not about to assent to Hollowell’s request for King to walk out of his courtroom. He announced, “Gentlemen, I will reserve my ruling on the motion to dismiss at the present time. And we will proceed with the hearing.”

  Bennett Tuck, the general superintendent of Rich’s, was called to the witness stand, where he testified about King’s participation in the sit-in on October 19. Smith guided Tuck through King’s arrival at the Magnolia Room, how Tuck had informed him of the basement facilities for Black people and that what they were doing was unlawful. Hollowell took up his cross-examination, asking if there were other people that afternoon eating lunch. “Did you ask them to leave?” Tuck, of course, had not. So Hollowell asked about King and the students: “Were they clean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were they properly dressed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were they respectful in their manner at all times?”

  “Yes.”

  Smith jumped in: “Your Honor, I am going to object to whether or not they were clean dressed or respectful. That is not the point. The point here is whether they refused to leave the premises when asked to do so.”

  Hollowell said, “I submit to Your Honor here again, this is a matter that incorporates all the aspects in dealing with any conversation or any action which took place between this gentleman and defendant.”

  Mitchell said, “All right. Go ahead.”

  “And they were clean and courteous, Mr. Tuck? Did they indicate that they wanted to do anything other than eat?”

  “No.”

  “This was an establishment which caters to persons wanting to eat, is that not true?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Was there any disorderliness about Mr. King or anyone who may have happened to be with him?”

  “No.”

  Hollowell asked if the female student standing next to King had been of the same race. Tuck said yes. Hollowell went on, “Then it is your testimony that there was no one asked to leave other than those of the same ethnic extraction.”

  Smith said, “I am going to object to any ethnic extraction in this case.”

  Judge Mitchell said, “I will sustain.”

  Hollowell disagreed, turning to the judge and saying, “I think it would be proper to indicate why he asked those persons to leave, since it appears from his own testimony that their actions, dress, demeanor was consistent with that of the other persons who were eating.” Along with the necessary technical arguments, Hollowell was putting segregation on trial. Mitchell might not have been interested in this line of argument, but Hollowell would not let the proceeding end without stating the fundamental issue at hand.

  Judge Mitchell interrupted: “In my construction of the statute, it does not have to show any reason why you ask someone to leave the premises. It just provides that if you ask them to leave and they refused, then at that time the law is violated irrespective of the law, race or religion.”

  Hollowell conceded the statute could be read this way, but he had the right to ask Tuck if race was the reason Tuck said they could not eat at the Magnolia Room. The judge sustained Smith’s objection, and the department store manager was dismissed. Next up was Captain R. E. Little, who relayed the circumstances of the arrest. In his cross-examination, Hollowell asked, “There was no loud talking?”

  “No.”

  “No boisterousness?”

  “No.”

  “They were dressed in an exemplary fashion?”

  “Yes.”

  “No fisticuffs?”

  “No.”

  “When you told them to leave because they were breaking the law, this was your interpretation of what the law was? This is what you thought to be the law?”

  “At any time we make an arrest, we book the cases on our interpretation of what the law is. The Court decides after we take them into Court.”

  Cecil Semple, the vice president of operations at Rich’s, was called to the stand next. After a similar exchange, Hollowell asked him “whether or not there have been any accusations filed by your store pertaining to this defendant.” Quickly butting in, Solicitor Smith insisted that he would object to any questions about previous accusations. Mitchell quickly sustained that, prompting Hollowell to complain, “Without counsel having opportunity to give his argument on it, sir?” It was like playing chess against two opponents simultaneously.

  Smith now entered into evidence King’s guilty plea from September. Hollowell had no objection, but renewed the motion to dismiss because the statute, “though constitutional on its face, is unconstitutional in the application, in that it is an abridgement of the rights and privileges of this defendant.” Hollowell added that the department store had violated King’s First Amendment rights to freedom of assembly and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

  All this fell on deaf ears, which Hollowell likely knew it would, but he thought it must be said anyhow. Hollowell asserted in his almost Elizabethan tone, “This defendant was in a place where he had a right to be; this is a public place. This is a privately owned store, yes. But this is a store that has to be licensed by the State, the City. They are representatives of the public … And it was very evident that only persons of his extraction were those who were being denied the utilization of this particular facility.” Hollowell offered to submit cases to substantiate his assertion that “there is no basis for … any arrest in this particular situation.”

  “You want me to rule on that point, now?” Mitchell did not want to have a constitutional law debate over segregation.

  Hollowell said, “I would like for Your Honor to rule on the renewed motion, which is a motion to dismiss.”

  Smith attempted now to steer things away from these larger questions back to motor vehicle codes. Judge Mitchell liked that, saying, “I am concerned with the one dealing with the driver’s license.” Hollowell swerved back to motor vehicle rules, saying how King’s suspended sentence exceeded the limits of the statute. Judge Mitchell told Hollowell, “I am overruling your motion as made. But I am inclined to agree with counsel that six months is a limitation upon this offense.” This was a small victory—Mitchell conceding that he could not sentence King to a year. Yet six months was still in play, time enough in a dangerous state prison.

  Hollowell rose and said, “The defense calls defendant Martin Luther King.” King went forward, was sworn in, and stoically sat facing the crowded courtroom. The minister’s shield of dignity sometimes seemed impenetrable, but close allies and friends knew the vulnerability, the self-doubt, and, at other times, the humor were there. You could see it in his soft eyes; however majestic his voice might be, however large he would appear to grow in the pulpit (rising to the balls of his feet from his five feet seven inches), however extraordinary his words, this wounded sensitivity was there.

  Regarding the May arrest,
Hollowell asked King, “Did you have any license at all?”

  “Yes sir, I did, I had Alabama.”

  Smith objected that this was about an already decided case, and Mitchell sustained. Hollowell asked, “At the time that you paid the twenty five dollar fine, did you know that a plea of guilty had been entered?”

  “No.” Seated in the crowded courtroom was the elderly lawyer who had represented King a month earlier in front of this judge. Charles Clayton told the press the day before this hearing that he did not know how King missed what went on during the proceeding the previous month, with both of them standing at the bench looking up at Judge Mitchell. In defending himself for not having better informed his client, Clayton maintained King was right next to him in September as Judge Mitchell announced the probated sentence.

  Smith objected again, saying, “The record speaks for itself.”

  Hollowell replied it would be incumbent on the court to ascertain whether King had understood the extent of the sentence. Judge Mitchell was not pleased to hear one lawyer seeming to question the veracity of King’s first counsel, much less his own word, and said so. Hollowell clarified, “We are merely attempting to show what his knowledge was relative to the situation, so Your Honor can be apprised to at least his mental satisfaction.”

  “All right. I will let you get into that.”

  “Dr. King, did you know that a plea of guilty had been entered as such?”

  “No sir, I did not know that.” Sensing Hollowell gaining traction, Smith objected that whether or not a defendant understood he had pleaded guilty should have no bearing on if he went out and violated the law again.

  Now the judge turned himself into a witness of sorts by saying, “I might state that when the plea of guilty was entered, Dr. King and his counsel stood right there and he signed the plea, and when he signed the plea, I told his counsel again I would do exactly as I told him I would do—let him pay the twenty five dollar fine on one count and give him twelve months probated sentence. I asked his counsel in the presence of Rev. King, ‘Have you explained to your client concerning this sentence?’ Rev. was standing there—”