Nine Days

by Paul Kendrick

  Hollowell interjected, “We are not trying to show that was not said, Your Honor. We are not in any way seeking to impeach—”

  “I want it clear in the record. Because I am stating that now in the presence of his counsel. If he wants to deny that, he is standing here now before the Court. He—I might like to inquire of him now standing in his place as an attorney if that is not what happened.”

  Though seated far back in the crowded courtroom, King’s former attorney, hearing this question from the bench, shouted out (although he had not been sworn in, or even seated with the defense), “That did happen.”

  Hearing Clayton, Mitchell asked, “You are stating that in your place as an attorney at bar?”

  The elder lawyer assented. Hollowell backtracked. “Dr. King, do you have any recollection of having heard anything about the probation?”

  Still calm, the minister denied any recollection of that aspect of his suspended sentence. Hollowell asked King what exactly he had heard that day, and King told Judge Mitchell that he remembered him saying the tag charge was dismissed and he would just have to pay a small fine concerning the license. Hollowell said, “I will ask you whether or not you at any time have ever talked with the Probation Officer of this Court?”

  “No sir.”

  Standing crowd members were moving closer to the proceedings, leaning into the escalating intrigue over what exactly had happened in King’s earlier hearing. The sheriff halted things in order to move eager listeners back, with Mitchell saying they were pushing the counsel too close to the bench.

  When he was given the go-ahead to continue, Hollowell asked if King had ever been directed to the probation officer’s office. King replied, “I don’t recall being directed to his office.”

  “Has the Probation Officer ever contacted you in any way whatsoever?”

  “No sir, I have not been contacted by a Probation Officer.” His defense lawyer asked King one more time to emphasize this key point. King answered, “Yes sir, that’s correct. I am not saying it was not said. I only said I didn’t hear it, and never knew until three days ago, or whenever they served me at the Fulton County Jail.” As King stepped down, Hollowell pressed his momentary advantage by questioning the DeKalb County probation officer, Ernest Johnson, who testified that he indeed had never spoken with King.

  Smith cross-examined him, asking how many staff members Johnson had—the answer was one person—and how many cases he handled. “I imagine around 2,000.” Smith asked if it was customary to talk to everyone on probation, and Johnson replied that there were hundreds of cases placed on probation never referred to him.

  Hollowell had kept Mitchell’s exposure to King to a minimum, because all he had to do was prevent the judge from doing something verging on the outrageous. Perhaps this judge could be persuaded to simply be rational, to let King go home after five days already spent in jail. Hollowell also had a secret weapon: a slate of character witnesses, including four of the five Atlanta University Center college presidents, all of whom admired King and saw him as an exemplar of Black Atlanta—especially Dr. Mays of Morehouse, who had remained extremely close with King since he graduated.

  Hollowell then presented John Wesley Dobbs, for decades the most renowned Black leader in Atlanta and a prominent Republican, a man who had known King since he was born. Dobbs had listened to one of King’s first sermons. The elder gentleman summed up the young minister as a good man—profoundly “idealistic.” F. M. Martin of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company (among the most successful Black businesses in America) said King’s reputation was “one of the best I know of anywhere in the country.” The defense then rested, only renewing the motion to dismiss “on the grounds that there has been insufficient evidence to establish any conduct on the part of this defendant which would justify this Court in revoking any sentence which has been previously imposed.”

  Jack Smith rose to make his closing statement by saying, “I’m going to indulge in a few moments of plain talk, your honor. This defendant pleaded guilty to violating the law on May 4. On October 19, he violated the law again. He has not said he is sorry he violated the law. He has stated the law is not what he thinks it ought to be.” Mocking the character witnesses Hollowell had produced, Smith said, “If a kissing bandit kisses the ladies and robs the men in a group, he is guilty of robbery all the same.”

  They had come to a close. All eyes were on Judge Mitchell. He paused and then sternly signaled where he was going: “We expect no demonstrations.” He paused again. “However, it is the judgment of this Court that four months of the defendant’s probated sentence is revoked.”

  The judge’s pronouncement and its convoluted phrasing took a moment to sink in. Then, seeing the evident distress of King’s lawyers, it dawned on the crowded courtroom that the minister had just been ordered to a labor camp for four months.

  Gasps of dismay filled the room. King’s friends knew this outrageous pronouncement could prove lethal, as similar sentences had for Black men for generations throughout the South, from Mississippi’s infamous Parchman Farm to Louisiana’s Angola. Despite anguished exclamations around him, King sat composed as he absorbed the brutal sentence. He thought Hollowell had argued the case brilliantly and that the outcome was just another example of the persecution he faced.

  Hollowell shouted an interjection: “Prior to the time the Court was adjourned, I would like to ask the Court whether or not the Court will set a bond in connection with this matter.”

  “It is the opinion of the Court that the defendant is not entitled to bond on revocation of a probated sentence.”

  Hollowell pressed, “I submit Your Honor, wondering if that judgment might not be reserved until such time as Your Honor has considered the matter of the Bill of Exceptions.”

  “I will be glad to hear you on that Bill of Exceptions. You and the Solicitor get together. Court is now adjourned.”

  King’s sister, Christine, started sobbing. Watching her, Coretta was overwhelmed. For the first time since the Montgomery bus boycott had begun, she could not publicly hold back her tears. The sentence meant her husband would not be with her as she gave birth to their third child. Watching her crumple, Daddy King glared, shocked by her response. He snapped at her to stop this; people could see them, which only made her cry more.

  In the chaos of the moment, the president of the Atlanta NAACP, the Reverend Samuel W. Williams (who was also a classical philosophy professor at Morehouse), was so upset that he stepped forward to object, ignoring the deputy sheriff’s warnings to step back. They wrestled him into custody and placed him under arrest. King himself was taken away in custody to a jail cell upstairs, past more blinding photo flashes in the hallway. Daddy King managed to get Mitchell’s attention as he called out, “Judge, you’re killing me because you’re killing my son.” Mitchell shuffled away, looking unsettled, as Daddy King continued, “But you’ve got to go to church on Sunday and see your God.”

  Daddy King avoided arrest and, with Coretta, was permitted a short visit with King in the cell above the courtroom. Coretta was still trying to stifle her tears. Her husband, like his father, seemed unnerved by her weeping. King said, “Corrie, dear, you have to be strong. I’ve never seen you like this before. You have to be strong for me.”

  Coretta later wrote, “Martin had been weakened by his days in jail, and was greatly depressed by this unexpected shock.” He was looking to her for strength, but she, too, was “totally unprepared.”

  Daddy King said in turn, “You don’t see me crying; I am ready to fight. When you see Daddy crying, Coretta, then you can start crying. I’m not taking this lying down.” All of Daddy King’s fears were proving well-founded, but seeing his resolve, Coretta was able to collect herself.

  King looked at the two of them, saying softly, “I think we must prepare ourselves for the fact that I am going to have to serve this time.”

  Coretta answered, “Yes, I think we must prepare ourselves for that.”

  He asked h
er to see if she could get him writing materials, in addition to some books, newspapers, and magazines, as well as a little money. Wyatt Tee Walker spoke to him briefly as well, and King told him, “As bad as this may seem for me, this is all a part of the redemptive process by which the soul of America will be redeemed. I hold no bitterness toward anyone.” Walker relayed this sentiment to the press.

  After the hearing, Roy Wilkins tried to see King but was not allowed near the holding cell. Having said he was from New York, he immediately thought to himself, “I made a boo-boo there.” Wilkins had George Orwell’s 1984 to give to King, thinking it appropriate to the situation King now found himself in. When reporters asked Wilkins what the NAACP would do to help King, he said they would provide moral, financial, and legal support (though he praised the counsel King already had in Hollowell). This was no small promise, given the sometimes heated rivalry he had with King. Wilkins felt the NAACP had been doing the work of racial justice for years and that the upstart SCLC was undermining his organization’s fundraising. Still, despite his concerns regarding the hazards of direct action in the streets, Wilkins showed up, and King never forgot the gesture. Wilkins called Judge Mitchell’s actions a shocking decision that would shake Black people, along with “a great many white people as well, who will not be able to understand how the lack of a driver’s license on the part of a man transferring from one state to another could be parlayed into this kind of sentence.” Wilkins admitted, “I don’t know that our people are not completely sold on the go to jail, stay in jail business,” but he added that the sit-ins showed how “you have 18 million people in this country who are through with discriminatory treatment.” Within an hour, Wilkins was leaving Decatur to get on a plane back to New York.

  The crowds quickly dispersed; Black Atlantans had little reason to linger in Decatur Square. Hollowell was already working on a comprehensive bill of exceptions for their appeal. Coretta understood that the judge had promised King would not be taken to Reidsville until that appeal had been heard. She tried to focus on getting her husband the things he requested, but she was soon thinking of someone who might be able to help get him out: their friend on the Kennedy campaign, Harris Wofford.

  * * *

  When word of the sentence made its way over the wires to the Justice Department in D.C., a meeting was called. Top Republican department officials gathered to debate what they could do for King; it was clear that this local judge was out of control in his sentencing. One idea was to go to the federal courts with their own writ of habeas corpus, to get King out of jail immediately. Someone else suggested a DOJ official be sent to appear before Judge Mitchell as a friend of the court, asking him to release King; maybe a little federal pressure would make the judge back down. But there were drawbacks to both options in an administration so loath to interfere in state affairs. Furthermore, they knew the president did not like entangling himself in racial issues, with his belief that moral progress would be more likely without government interference. Yet he had sent troops into Little Rock three years earlier, showing that his sense of justice could prod him into action.

  The idea that emerged was to have President Eisenhower make a brief statement before the cameras: their well-loved, moderate (and nearly out of office) leader calling on common sense to secure justice for King or, at a minimum, access to bail. The minutes of the meeting have been lost, but the participants tasked Deputy Attorney General Lawrence Walsh with drafting a statement.

  Walsh’s boss, Attorney General William Rogers, was on the campaign trail with Nixon in Ohio that day, so Walsh’s draft should have gotten to both men together. One telegram the Nixon campaign received that day came from Hartford’s NAACP, asking that Nixon “USE EVERY METHOD TO SEEK RELEASE OF REV KING.” Rogers would later say he supported getting a statement to the president for him to use. Nixon claimed he asked Rogers if this were not a situation in which King’s constitutional rights had been infringed, “thus paving the way for Federal action.”

  What Walsh came up with was a simple, almost heartfelt, statement that would likely have been effective in altering the course of the election: “It seems to me fundamentally unjust that a man who has peacefully attempted to establish his right to equal treatment, free from racial discrimination, should be imprisoned on an unrelated charge, in itself insignificant. Accordingly, I have asked the Attorney General to take proper steps to join with Dr. Martin Luther King in an appropriate application for his release.”

  Eisenhower never spoke these words. The date on the existing memo reads October 31, six days later, and four days after it would have even been relevant. When the memo was actually completed, and what happened in the interim, remain unknown. Perhaps the statement was never delivered by President Eisenhower because it never got past Nixon.

  * * *

  Whatever Wofford had done over the previous weekend—risky as it might have been for his own position on the campaign—it had not been enough. He and Louis Martin agreed that they needed to call their higher-ups once more. Despite firm admonitions from top staffers to drop the whole King matter, the two of them, backed by Shriver, argued that the Kennedy campaign needed to put out a strong statement on King’s behalf. The two men were savvy enough to understand that this segregationist judge would not be shamed into reason, but they wanted to start a drumbeat to free King.

  Martin had another worry—that Nixon would finally speak out on behalf of Dr. King. They couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t said anything yet, or at least quietly prodded the Department of Justice to issue some statement of protest. Attorney General William Rogers was supposed to be a decent man and Nixon’s close friend—what were their opponents waiting for?

  Georgia Democratic leaders had told Kennedy, predictably, that the state would be lost if his campaign made any statement even remotely resembling a rebuke of the Georgia judge. Wofford believed that the Georgia co-chair Griffin Bell, who privately acknowledged that King’s sentence was unreasonable, might be willing to produce a more moderate draft so they could release something. Even that hope was stymied when Wofford got the message from Kennedy that Vandiver had just told him, “Don’t issue it and I’ll get the son of a bitch out.” Vandiver later maintained that no such conversation happened at that point in the crisis.

  Kennedy reassured Wofford that King would get more effective help if they quietly worked behind the scenes with Georgia officials; no more controversial statements could appear in the media. With a touch of exasperation, Kennedy asked Wofford a simple question: Wasn’t getting King freed what he wanted? He added, “After all, we’re interested in getting him out, not in making publicity.” At this point, Kennedy might have been as interested in getting the chess piece off the board (or out of jail) as he was in getting Wofford off his back.

  Wofford could not argue with that, but after hanging up, he was left to think about how foolish it was to trust any southern Democrat with his friend’s life. Was Kennedy just placating him—or worse, deceiving him to get him to drop the issue? Maybe Kennedy would do nothing. The stalemate over issuing a statement was an unsettling reminder that the Massachusetts politician hardly shared the extent of Wofford’s sympathies.

  * * *

  On a hot August morning two months earlier, Wofford was standing on a Georgetown street corner hoping for a taxi when a red convertible swerved to a halt in front of him. It was JFK, the newly nominated candidate, calling out to him, “Jump in.”

  As they drove to the Capitol, Kennedy impatiently tapped the car window with his left hand, saying, “Now, in five minutes, tick off the ten things a President ought to do to clean up this goddamn civil rights mess.” Wofford told Kennedy that he could stop discrimination in federally assisted housing with “one stroke of a pen,” and then listed other opportunities for executive action that had been ignored in the Eisenhower years. Kennedy vowed he would enact his platform promises if he were elected, but there was no avoiding the blitheness of Kennedy’s five-minute request, which suggested t
hat to him civil rights was a problem that needed to be managed in order to win, not a moral undertaking requiring empathy with others’ suffering.

  Earlier in the year, Kennedy mused with Wofford that as a result of the discrimination his own Irish family had endured, he had developed an innate dislike of any sort of prejudice. He viewed racism as shameful, though he saw it more as illogical than as cause for outrage. Despite the Kennedys’ privileged childhood, the family could not help but be aware of poverty in the Depression. Yet understanding racism was, as Bobby said, “not a particular issue in our house.” Now, on the cusp of power, fear of speaking out on civil rights weighed heavier in the pragmatic candidate’s thinking than any urgency about advocating for those facing persecution.

  Still, that summertime car ride also demonstrated to Wofford that Kennedy, momentarily freed from his cautious advisers, might be persuaded to take real action.

  * * *

  On Tuesday afternoon, with word of King’s sentence just beginning to make its way over the wire, Wofford received a call at the CRS office. He recognized the voice of Coretta King, and although he did not know her well, he was still startled to hear her like this. She sounded panicked.

  “They are going to kill him, I know they are going to kill him,” Coretta cried, without introduction, in a breathless rush.

  Wofford tried to comfort her, to slow her down so he could catch up. She relayed a conversation she had just had with Harry Belafonte about the threat her husband was now facing. Belafonte later wrote that his opinion was, “Every hour that Martin spent on that chain gang, we knew his life was in danger. What was there to keep some white supremacist on the gang from killing him with a blow of his pickax? Not the police guards, that was for sure.”