Pillar of Fire (143 page)

*On the Nobel trip, King called for the removal of foreign troops from the Congo and for the imposition of international economic sanctions on South Africa. The South African government, meanwhile, was resisting the introduction of television for fear that Western programming would undermine apartheid society.

*“Malcolm Favors a Mau Mau in U.S.,” headlined the
Times
, which observed that he had reportedly “renounced black racism and had embraced the brotherhood of man, but his words yesterday bristled with militancy.” News coverage readily embraced Malcolm's sensational—yet traditional—assumption that brotherhood and militancy are at odds.

*Atlanta had recently canceled its annual goodwill dinner for Georgia legislators because Mayor Ivan Allen could not prevail upon the Commerce Club, which he served as president, to relax its segregation rules for the first Negro state senator.

*Sister of Professor William Dinkins, the church malfeasance expert during the pulpit wars of Rev. L. L. Anderson at Selma's Tabernacle Baptist Church.

*“Segregation was not an issue, because everybody was a segregationist,” Smitherman recalled. “…I tried to make a deal with” black leaders to pave their streets if they would oppose King's campaign. “…We did what we thought was a good job trying to defuse it and keep him out of here.”

*The new Minority Leader, Gerald Ford, survived his first legislative test after defeating incumbent Charles Halleck in the Republican caucus.

*The litigation method was failing, Doar advised the Justice Department from Selma, although it had been “tried harder here than anywhere else in the South.”

†Andrew Young remembered hearing King tease Abernathy about his consuming desire to give the really big speech—saying Abernathy needed first to become president of something, then suggesting he form the National Association for the Advancement of Eating Chicken. King led guffawing preachers as they “cracked on Ralph” with ridiculous ideas for his organization.

*“We are faced here with a seriously deteriorating situation characterized by political turmoil, irresponsibility, and division…. We are likely soon to face…installation of a hostile government which will ask us to leave…. There is a comparatively short time fuse…we are presently on a losing track….”

*
Cooper v. Pate
would result in a mixed decision. Cooper won the right to attend Muslim services and receive some religious mail. Illinois won the right to keep him segregated from non-Muslim prisoners.

*Unknown to King and his managers, the new in-house accountant they relied upon to contest this audit was an FBI informant, James Harrison. Bureau officials, needing to preserve their only live source planted inside SCLC, overlooked his minor embezzlement of SCLC funds, and Harrison, as revealed by historian David Garrow, would remain until 1971 a paid informant of modest use to the FBI.

*A
Washington Post
essay that week featured youth charges that King “tries to solve racial problems in a ‘hit-and-run' fashion…too often settles for tokenism…goes to jail but doesn't stay very long…is too inflexible….”

*“We are on the brink of a decision,” declared editors of the
Selma Times-Journal
, “as important a decision as ever faced the citizens of this or any city.”

*Before his death decades later, while still insisting that Malcolm deserved punishment for defying Elijah Muhammad, Captain Joseph conceded that Malcolm had nothing to do with setting the fire. “I
know
he didn't,” Joseph declared. “I'll say that much.”

*FBI headquarters was preparing for distribution among intelligence agencies the next day a jaundiced interpretation of recent wiretaps: “The naked boldness of King's egotism is vividly reflected in his pronouncements about the movement needing a leader (obviously King himself).” Director Hoover wrote on the report, “Also to Watson,” meaning that a copy should go to the new White House security aide, Marvin Watson.

*In an influential essay that recognized him as an original thinker of the age, journalist I. F. Stone passed along as revelation that Malcolm had been “shocked when former secretaries of Elijah Muhammad filed paternity suits against the prophet.”

*After criminal appeals, those convicted had entered nine different California prisons on March 8, 1965, the day after Selma's “Bloody Sunday” march. Judge David Coleman suspended all jail time on William X Rogers, who remained in a wheelchair, and on Monroe X Jones for his “recent behavior and attitude.” Jones, who shot Officer Tomlinson during the incident, had left the Muslims.

*Thirteen state election laws of 1966 would carve the Delta's Second Congressional District into three majority white districts, submerge the looming black vote in redrawn local boundaries, and substitute strategically placed “at large” races for district school boards and county representatives.