Nine Days

by Paul Kendrick

  Stewart said, “I don’t know. I don’t know whether I can or not. I’ll try.” Vandiver was his friend, and he would do what the governor asked of him. Stewart told them he would head to Decatur and report back.

  Vandiver concluded, “Well, that’s all we can do. That’s the only thing we can do.”

  * * *

  A. D. King was up early that morning to drive to Decatur to see his brother. When he arrived, he was told that Dr. King was on his way to Reidsville. Furious, A.D. dialed Coretta at 8:30 a.m. to tell her that Martin had been taken away during the night. It was sickening; with Reidsville well over two hundred miles away, how would she be able to go see him? She was both deathly afraid for his safety and worried about how he would withstand the emotional toll of the months ahead.

  Coretta was supposed to be a pillar of support for her husband, but who was there to support her? When she called Daddy King with the news, she struggled to contain her emotions. Coretta said, “Dad, what’s going to happen to him down there?”

  His reaction upset her even more. Daddy King knew Reidsville was home to sadistic guards and—perhaps worse—the state’s most menacing, unstable prisoners. It was hard to say which of the two would prove more dangerous to his son.

  When King junior was in Montgomery, Daddy King had received calls from well-connected men he trusted who warned him that his son’s life was at risk. With his son now at Reidsville, Daddy King ascertained from his contacts that certain authorities wished to stage a fight between his son and a convict that would result in King’s death. Regret would be expressed afterward; hands would appear clean enough that no one could be held responsible; it would be just one of those unfortunate things that happened all the time in prisons across the South. Little over a decade before, eight Black men on an Anguilla, Georgia, prison work gang were shot and killed after dubious claims that they had made a run to escape.

  By sheer coincidence, a shocking series of articles had appeared that same week in the Atlanta papers, testifying to the perils King now faced. On the previous Friday morning, when King was still being held at the Fulton County Jail, there was a story in the Constitution about a predawn stabbing at Reidsville earlier in the month that left two prisoners dead and two others critically injured, perpetrated with weapons made on-site. This was exactly the kind of cover story Daddy King feared. Furthermore, three handwritten pleas for public attention had been smuggled out of Reidsville and reported in the Journal. The prisoners documented constant rapes, most often of young inmates by longtime prisoners; brutality from the guards, who goaded those on work details to fight until they could no longer stand and then encouraged the battles to continue once they returned to the prison for the night; beatings of prisoners in solitary confinement; and, on top of these abuses, a simple lack of adequate medical care. The pleas, which were signed, “Inmates of Georgia State Prison,” noted, “We are in prison for our crimes, that we know. But do we have to be beat, cussed at, starved of food and made to submit to sadistic … guards?”

  The Southern Regional Council would later write that Reidsville hired guards who it believed were hostile to Black prisoners. Worse, these guards allowed white prisoners to possess illegal weapons. Long-standing issues would eventually boil over in a 1976 riot, started by a white gang whose members attacked Black inmates with shanks, resulting in five deaths and forty-seven injuries. In subsequent court proceedings, a Georgia ACLU official stated, “The conditions at Reidsville, which concern overcrowding and the way inmates are treated, go back 40 years.”

  One hardly had to be a well-known agitator to receive such treatment. James Baldwin wrote, “It was on the outskirts of Atlanta that I first felt how the Southern landscape … seems designed for violence, seems, almost, to demand it. What passions cannot be unleashed on a dark road in a Southern night!”

  * * *

  Hollowell phoned the DeKalb County authorities at 8:00 a.m., asking for the sheriff so that he could explain that he had a writ of habeas corpus. He thought that King should get bail for this misdemeanor and said that he wanted to “get King out this morning.”

  There was a pause, and then the man on the phone replied, “Well, he ain’t here.”

  “What do you mean, ‘he ain’t here’?”

  “Well, they took him away this morning sometime.” The man was clear: “Martin Luther King is no longer here in DeKalb County.” Hollowell, knowing what this could mean, pressed him until he was told that King had been taken to Reidsville: “That’s where he is and you can’t get him.”

  Hollowell, however, was able to get Reidsville’s warden, Balkcom, on the phone to reassure himself that King was still alive. He told the DeKalb County officials how difficult this made his job as an attorney, transferring a client across the state without informing him. On camera later, he said that King was transferred with “astonishing swiftness and unnecessary swiftness.”

  One of Hollowell’s former clients, Nathaniel Johnson, was convicted of raping a white woman and put to death in Reidsville despite Johnson’s maintaining that it was a consensual affair. After he was sent to death row at Reidsville, Hollowell and Vernon Jordan struggled to save him. They were standing in the office of Governor Vandiver’s counsel to plead for a delay when they learned that Reidsville had already sent Johnson to the electric chair. Their helplessness as a client was being killed was what Reidsville meant to them.

  When Hollowell learned of King’s transfer, he dispatched Jordan to begin researching new angles for the defense. Jordan tore into the task. King was in solitary now. Who knew how long they had?

  * * *

  Word of King’s predicament spread with amazing speed. Telegrams poured in to Mayor Hartsfield’s office from people in nearly every state, including one from Eleanor Roosevelt asking Hartsfield to correct the injustice Georgia was inflicting on King. Most of the messages coming from out of state were critical of King’s sentence, while a good amount of mail from white Georgians seemed all for it. Hartsfield complained to reporters, “They all think this thing happened in Atlanta.” There was nothing he could think of to do but to call national news outlets and declare, “We wish the world to know that the City of Atlanta had no part in the trial and sentencing of Dr. Martin Luther King for a minor traffic offense.” He wanted it made clear that “the responsibility for this belongs to DeKalb County and the State of Georgia.”

  Organizations from all over the nation quickly weighed in. The chairman of the Jewish Labor Committee, Jacob Siegel, proclaimed, “Khrushchev told the U.N.… that America was a land of discrimination and bigotry. The arrest and imprisonment of Dr. King will be played up in the Soviet and stooge press in order to buttress Khrushchev’s contentions.” The Congress of Racial Equality appealed to President Eisenhower and Attorney General William Rogers for help, asking, “Does this not constitute a violation of the civil rights laws of the United States?”

  But in Georgia, the reaction was mixed, at best. The governor’s office seemed pleased with the sentence for King, with Vandiver’s executive secretary saying, “I think the maximum sentence for Martin Luther King might do him good, might make a law-abiding citizen out of him and teach him to respect the law of Georgia.” The Constitution suggested leniency toward King was the wisest course. It urged the state to pardon him, which of course Vandiver was not likely to do. The paper asserted that applying the strictest possible legal interpretation was not worth “the wreckage of this community’s reputation for racial restraint and forbearance.” It advised Georgia against “placing [King] in the martyr’s pillory.”

  In the midst of the growing unrest, Wyatt Tee Walker sent Nigeria’s government a cablegram regretting that King could no longer attend the swearing-in ceremony for the newly independent government’s officials “because he is presently serving a four-months prison sentence due to his leadership role in the freedom struggle in America.”

  * * *

  Wofford’s morning at home began with another alarmed call from Coretta, and
the news she relayed of her husband’s late-night transfer shocked him. He was pleased, however, that she had correctly guessed he was behind Chester Bowles’s call to her the night before. Coretta said it was good to hear from Bowles, who had offered hope for her husband. Wofford was puzzled that she did not mention having talked with Adlai Stevenson, and when he later called Bowles, he said, “I tried my best to get Adlai to talk to her, but Adlai said he had never been introduced to her, and so it wouldn’t be proper.” To Wofford, this sort of aloofness explained why Stevenson had lost two presidential elections.

  Wofford immediately called his friend in Atlanta Morris Abram. Unexpectedly calm, Abram told him that King would likely be safer in the state system than in DeKalb County. Furthermore, the lawyer thought well of the superintendent there, and getting King out of Mitchell’s clutches was no bad thing. Over the decades, the wide gap in perceptions of Reidsville between whites like Abram and those closest to the King family came to be a puzzle. King’s staff was convinced that their leader was in danger, and Daddy King made no secret, then or decades later when writing his autobiography, that Reidsville was a death trap for Black men.

  Wofford was still distressed, wishing Kennedy had spoken with Coretta the night before. He realized that the CRS might have a momentary advantage, a small window of access to the candidate. After being constantly blocked by Kennedy’s inner circle, Wofford remembered that this very morning Sargent Shriver was near Kennedy in Chicago. Perhaps he could reach him to make good use of this moment.

  When they finally connected by phone around 9:00 a.m., Wofford was thrilled to hear Shriver’s voice from Chicago. Wofford spit out, “Sarge, I have been thinking about the situation involving Martin Luther King Jr., who is in jail in Georgia. I think it would be a marvelous idea if we could get the candidate to call Mrs. King and express his sympathy. He doesn’t have to do anything more than that; he doesn’t have to make any kind of political commitment.”

  Wofford conceded, “Look, nobody wants to hear from the Civil Rights Section right now.” Believing Shriver would support them, Wofford dared to repeat the phrase that Louis Martin had responded to so well the previous night: “The trouble with your beautiful, passionate Kennedys is that they never show their passion. They don’t understand symbolic action. Last night, Louis and I suddenly knew what Kennedy should do, but we couldn’t get through to him and you weren’t home, so Chester Bowles did it.” Wofford suggested, “If Jack would just call Mrs. King down in Atlanta, and tell her he’s very sorry about what has befallen her husband, that gesture will be incredibly important to Negro voters.” He then added, “All he’s got to do is say he’s thinking about her and he hopes everything will be all right. All he’s got to do is show a little heart. He can even say he doesn’t have all the facts in the case.”

  Shriver answered, “It’s not too late. Jack doesn’t leave O’Hare for another forty minutes, I’m going to get to him. Give me her number, and get me out of jail if I’m arrested for speeding.”

  Wofford started to give him Hartsfield’s and Abram’s numbers, thinking he would want to clear it with them first and get more background, but his boss was ready to—as people who worked with him said—“Shriverize.” “Shriverize” was a verb, meaning to go big, bold, and fast. He cut Wofford off. “No, no. Where is she? Give me her number.”

  Wofford was surprised that Shriver was not going to at least run the plan by Bobby. Their crazy idea might happen after all. All he could do now was wait and watch the clock. If the speeding Shriver did not make it to the airport before Kennedy got on that plane, chances were it would never happen.

  * * *

  With the election two weeks away, Shriver was spending the night once more in his apartment overlooking Chicago’s Lincoln Park and Lake Shore Drive. The Kennedy campaign needed Illinois for its Electoral College math. Shriver might have been running for governor there if he were not such a dutiful son-in-law and employee. Joe Kennedy had made clear that he needed Shriver’s help in order to see his son elected president. Shriver would have never lived in Chicago if not for the ambassador, either.

  Like his brother-in-law, Shriver had demonstrated his bravery in the South Pacific during World War II. During the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942, Lieutenant Shriver commanded his ship’s starboard guns through a hellish night of relentless Japanese shelling, slipping on the blood of friends and praying that he would live to see a new day. His ship survived the night and so did Shriver, though he took shrapnel to the shoulder, for which he earned a Purple Heart. Having found a new sense of purpose in a life that had been spared, Shriver tried journalism in New York City, but when he met Eunice Kennedy at a party, his life took a new direction. It would be another five years before he would finally marry her, but even before that her father took him under his capacious wings. Joe Kennedy saw ability in Shriver and, despite his lack of business experience, offered him a job. He was to turn around an investment Kennedy had just made, the gargantuan Merchandise Mart building on the Chicago River. Shriver not only succeeded in filling the building’s showrooms and offices with businesses, but one morning at Mass, Eunice said to him, “Sargent Shriver, I think I’d like to marry you.”

  Grounded in his Catholic faith, with a fire for social justice, he became civically involved, both with the Catholic Interracial Council and then by heading the Chicago School Board. At a Catholic conference, he told attendees that even if they succeeded in ending legal discrimination, they must also “treat the disease of racism itself.” Shriver pressed the church to speak out against discrimination, helped create scholarships for Black students to attend Catholic schools, and introduced King before a speech in Chicago. The great irony of Shriver’s effectiveness was that both Jack and Bobby had misgivings about their brother-in-law because of his liberal idealism, calling him “the house Communist” and joking about his earnest Boy Scout manner. In a family of Catholics, he seemed to be the only one to rival their mother, Rose, in religious devotion, and that was not a compliment. Shriver was, however, more than a meek choirboy; he was tough and determined and demanded much of all who worked for him. He was from a Maryland Catholic family that had fought on both sides of the Civil War generations before the Kennedys began their climb, and he maintained a sure sense of himself. He was, his friends and admirers believed, nothing less than a secular priest in politics, and that would define both his successes and his failures in public life.

  The bond between Wofford and Shriver was forged when Wofford was delivering a speech in Chicago a year before the start of the campaign. A man Wofford did not recognize, but who he would soon learn was Shriver, rose and asked, “You said you’re supporting Gandhi’s strategy in applying it to the civil rights movement. What would be your advice for the school system of Chicago that has a terrible problem of discrimination and race?” Shriver came up afterward and gave him his card, saying, “I don’t think you gave me an adequate answer for what Gandhi could do.”

  Wofford confessed, “No, I didn’t.” Shriver asked him to write him with a response. Back at Notre Dame, Wofford—who was unaware of Shriver’s ties to the Kennedys—still had not done so when a week later a letter and then a call came from the intrepid Chicagoan saying, “I’m coming up for the football game, could you and your wife come?” The two spent the whole game talking about addressing racial inequalities in Chicago’s schools, and Wofford was impressed by Shriver’s thoughtfulness. Their plans to work together on segregation in Chicago, however, were soon put on hold—along with everything else in Shriver’s life—when his father-in-law commanded him to go work for Jack. When Bobby Kennedy directed Wofford to begin working with Shriver, the campaign manager was unaware that Wofford not only knew Shriver but was more impressed by him than by anyone else in the Kennedy family.

  Now, racing toward O’Hare, Shriver made his way through rush-hour traffic with good luck playing a part. On Mannheim and Higgins Roads, minutes from the airport, he saw the bright orange letters of the O’Hare Inn si
gn. The recently opened air-conditioned hotel, with TVs and ice machines, was the embodiment of jet-age luxury, with pools and a par-three golf course spread over the grounds of the long, two-story hotel.

  Since the beginning of October, when Kennedy’s staff had last fine-tuned the campaign schedule, the candidate had rarely had more than four hours of sleep a night, committed as he was to the marathon. Each day seemed numbingly, relentlessly, just like all the others: a hurried solo breakfast of eggs, toast, and coffee; then rushed conversation with the campaign staff crowding into an anonymous hotel room while Kennedy shaved and personally packed his bag; then a public breakfast with local officials, donors, and businesspeople, followed by a sprint to the local airport to Kennedy’s real home, the Caroline.

  Then, by bus or motorcade, the staff managed somehow to escort Kennedy to up to nine events a day, testing the candidate’s endurance and his voice. By Election Day, Kennedy’s advance team had planned and executed rallies in 237 cities, compared with Nixon’s total of 168. To preserve Kennedy’s voice, his staff learned early to write and receive handwritten notes during hops on his noisy plane, especially because rallies were being scheduled until one in the morning. Occasionally, Kennedy could relax for an hour in another nondescript motel room, take off his back brace, and sink into a scalding bath with a sigh of relief, the only indication his staff ever had of his chronic pain. Oftentimes, if he ate lunch at all, he consumed a chicken sandwich with two glasses of milk at the head of the plane. For a man who didn’t much like being touched, he learned to endure hours of handshakes, until, on a stop in Pennsylvania coal country, his calloused hands began to bleed, but he was back at it the next day.