Pillar of Fire (83 page)

Not for the first time, the long-range racial determination of white voters was overlooked by the prevailing interpretations on a higher plane. It was inconceivable then, and later muted, that partisan realignment and commanding national leadership were being spawned in opposition to racial progress. (Reagan had opposed the 1964 civil rights law, and would oppose the Voting Rights Act of 1965). Contemporary analysts tried to bury the Goldwater option. Walter Lippmann called the Johnson victory “indisputable proof that the voters are in the center.” Eisenhower biographer Robert Donovan worried that Goldwater conservatives would make Republicans “a minority party indefinitely.” Two respected political scientists warned of outright extinction, predicting that persistent Goldwaterism would bring “an end to a competitive two-party system.” A slow incoming tide was mistaken for an ebbing ripple.

 

P
RESIDENT
J
OHNSON
welcomed the imminent reward of an 89th Congress in which the Democrats would control better than two thirds of each chamber: 68 of 100 in the Senate, 295 of 435 in the House. From his ranch through most of November, he orchestrated twenty-two brainstorming task forces on “problems likely to arise by the year 2000.” Bill Moyers informed selected officials that Johnson wanted to emphasize conservation, education, and cities—“straightening out urban problems.” On instructions to avoid civil rights and foreign policy, the meetings explored ideas to overhaul the mining laws, eliminate agricultural subsidies, require “an exhaust cleaning device” in cars, study the major causes of death, and establish labeling standards for consumer products. There were schemes for “regional smashing plants” to cut down on automobile junkyards, and for assorted tax credits to specified industries. “I kicked this one pretty good,” recorded one participant, noting general agreement that “water pollution will be a tough one.” The task forces concentrated in detail on two of Johnson's known ambitions: to establish federal aid to education and insured medical care for the elderly.

On the day after the election, King told the
New York Times
that with the campaign moratorium now expired, he intended to renew demonstrations “based around the right to vote” in Alabama or Mississippi, where, in spite of sacrifices through the movement years, only 21 percent and 6 percent of eligible Negroes were registered, respectively. A week later, at a planning retreat in Birmingham, Wyatt Walker's replacement, Randolph Blackwell, introduced an SCLC organization chart of thirty-four boxes arrayed from “Board of Directors” at the top down to “Citizenship School Teachers” at the bottom, connected by a maze of solid and dotted lines. King invited ideas to take the movement into “a new era” under general guidelines: “…never reach the point of building SCLC by tearing down another organization…remain nonviolent, Christian, accentuating the positive…. To redeem the soul of America, we must bear a cross in the South…[and] consider in these two days the staggering population shift [to] northern and western cities, Negroes are left there ill equipped…still hovering in slums….”

Responses ranged from logistical minutiae—that King aide Bernard Lee should “carry pocket tape recorder when traveling with the President”—and syrupy prescriptions for dialogue on “the ontological need of each person,” to Andrew Young's observation that, “We change history through finding the one thing that can capture the imagination of the world. History moves in leaps and bounds.”

In the tactical sessions, James Bevel pressed the advantage of an established plan with a dual purpose. For more than a year, since the bombing deaths at Sixteenth Street Baptist (just across Kelly Ingram Park from the current retreat), Bevel and his wife, Diane Nash, had developed their “nonviolent army” blueprint to secure the right to vote throughout Alabama. In his holdover role as chief integration officer, heading the box marked “Direct Action” on the SCLC organization chart, Bevel noted that white leaders at one of the “hard core” voting targets had defied the new civil rights law by outlawing integration checks and even mass meetings. Accordingly, Bevel proposed Selma as “an effective testing ground” for a mass movement building from civil rights to voting rights, and Amelia Boynton, who still kept the honor roll of voter applicants on the wall of her Selma office, seconded him with a personal appeal for help.

King also suffered a bombardment of proposals for the Nobel Prize ceremonies on December 10. His initial preference for a small accompanying delegation of six swelled to a planeload, mostly of prominent friends able and eager to pay their way to help greet the King of Norway. Advisers maneuvered behind King's name. Through contacts in England, Bayard Rustin sought an audience for King with British prime minister Harold Wilson on the London stopover, saying he preferred “it not appear as though this is King's idea,” and pushed to intercede with “certain elements” that reportedly were urging the Archbishop of Canterbury to shun King as a Baptist. With Harry Wachtel, Rustin conceived of a U.N. reception for King as a “real head of state deal,” seeking personal attendance by President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Johnson, and even Soviet chairman Leonid Brezhnev. (They decided King was too busy to meet with the President of Brazil.) Rustin drafted telegrams appointing himself to handle Nobel Prize details, and arranged for the pacifist leader A. J. Muste to send out a fund-raising appeal to cover Rustin's expenses abroad. On receiving this letter, Stanley Levison complained to Clarence Jones that Rustin was taking advantage of Muste as well as King. Still, Levison returned a small donation in order to dampen petty disputes among old friends, saying his reply to the appeal was sure to “loom large” in Rustin's subsequent judgments about “who befriended him and who is trying to cut him down.”

There was no such collegial understanding at FBI headquarters, where wiretaps funneled reports on the grandiose fits within King's inner circle. Eugene Patterson, the editor of the
Atlanta Constitution
, received a dose of its hostility when an agent appeared in his office to disclose that King was about to take a Caribbean vacation in the company of a mistress. The agent suggested that since the
Constitution
was portraying King in Nobel Prize coverage as a Christian leader, the paper owed its readers a photograph of the lovers on their departure from Miami. Patterson admitted to surprise as the agent, a man he knew from Lutheran church councils, offered to station
Constitution
photographers at the airport. In two days of aggressive lobbying, the agent pushed for a cooperative ambush on condition of absolute anonymity for the FBI—forbidding any mention of the Bureau, even the vaguest suggestions of verifying FBI information. Patterson rejected what he called “peephole journalism.”

King left his Birmingham meeting to preach twice on Sunday, November 15. “Evil,” he told his congregation at Ebenezer, “carries the seed of its own destruction.” He recalled watching the splendor of the British Empire give way to independent Ghana in 1957. He said that societies built on war were headed for doom, which was one of the reasons he “couldn't vote for Mr. Goldwater.” America's power and wealth “have made us an arrogant nation,” King warned—not just white people but now Negroes within reach of a share. “I'm disturbed about the Negro,” he said, adding that no worldly success could calm a troubled spirit. “When you know God, you can stand up amid tension and tribulation and yet smile in the process,” he said. “When you know God, you go on livin' anyhow. Nothin's gonna stop you, 'cause you know that God is watching in your heart.”

King flew that afternoon to New York's Abyssinian Baptist, where he pursued a competitive preachers' truce offstage. Adam Clayton Powell, having belittled the nonviolent movement as well as the civil rights bill, now tacitly acknowledged Nobel Prize stature, while King paid homage to Powell as a besieged titan. He mediated an arrangement for his former aide Wyatt Walker to fill the coveted Abyssinian pulpit during involuntary absences soon to begin for Powell, who was resolved to dodge New York arrest warrants and contempt citations building from the Esther James case. At King's request, Powell endorsed the big-church guest collection of $1,844.80 to SCLC before taking King along to his hideaway home on the Caribbean island of Bimini. By then, the Lutheran FBI agent in Atlanta had informed the
Constitution
that there would be no King girlfriend at the Miami airport after all, which more than ever perplexed Patterson about the Bureau's haphazard vendetta. Hidden intelligence sources, meanwhile, overheard King tell a friend on his way to Bimini that C. T. Vivian was already in Alabama scouting the political terrain. The Miami FBI office flashed a coded radio warning to headquarters that King had approved tiny Selma as the “site of renewed SCLC activity beginning about first of January.”

 

O
N THE FOLLOWING DAY
, Wednesday, November 18, Hoover gave a rare press briefing—his first in many years, the first ever with exclusively female reporters—to a maverick offshoot of the Women's National Press Club. Because women were barred (until 1971) from membership in the National Press Club, pioneers had formed the WNPC, and because most members of the Women's National Press Club specialized in traditional ladies' features on family or fashion, the Hoover interview fell to an informal club called the McLendon Press Group, founded by Texas reporter Sarah McLendon. Some members, including one soon to be fired for saying she expected no hard news, shied away from the anticipated spy lecture as so much “male shadowboxing,” but eighteen reporters filed into the imposing Director's office furnished with a new silver coffee urn and lamp fixtures in the shape of pistols.

Hoover talked nearly three times his allotted hour. When his monologue on FBI history slowed toward possible questions, he called for the FBI annual report and read excerpts with biting asides. Concerning the section on civil rights enforcement, he commented that the jury's acquittal in the Lemuel Penn case was “absolutely outrageous,” and sharply criticized the judge who had suspended sentences in the McComb bombings. He expressed frustration that “in spite of some remarkable success in civil rights cases, some detractors alleged the FBI has done nothing in this field.” Hoover indignantly recalled Martin Luther King's complaints about FBI performance in Albany, Georgia, during 1962, which the Director attributed to a misguided belief that FBI agents were native Southerners. “In view of King's attitude and his continued criticism of the FBI on this point,” said Hoover, “I consider King to be the most notorious liar in the country.”

Deke DeLoach, fearing a public relations disaster, passed Hoover several notes suggesting that the “liar” comment be placed off the record along with Hoover's assertions that King was “one of the lowest characters in the country” and “controlled” by Communist advisers, but Hoover rebuffed any notion of retraction. “The girls,” DeLoach would testify eleven years later, “could hardly wait to leave to get to the telephone.” No such story had been broken by female journalists alone, and more than a few male news staffs tried to mask their secondhand accounts of the women's interview behind an original emphasis. (“Hoover Assails Warren Findings,” announced the
New York Times
, and the
Washington Post
headlined his “Blast at Police Corruption.”) Nevertheless, the “notorious liar” charge exploded above such distractions.

Vacationing in Bimini with King, Andrew Young knew something big had struck when helicopters chartered by reporters began landing. In New York, the first radio bulletins about the “notorious liar” statement broke up a research committee meeting on plans for the Nobel Prize trip. Harry Wachtel drafted a caustic emergency reply for King: “…While I resent the personal attack on my integrity, I will not allow Mr. Hoover to blur the real issue….” FBI wiretaps intercepted Bayard Rustin's suggestion that Wachtel “drop the part about King being resentful, because King is not resentful,” along with their stern advice that King should say nothing before consulting them. On Bimini, however, the onslaught of reporters forced King to compose his own brief statement for a press conference at the Big Game Fisherman's Lodge:

In Washington, Acting Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach walked into Hoover's office. “I couldn't be more unhappy,” the Director declared before Katzenbach said a word. “Never should have done it. Never should have seen all those women reporters. DeLoach got me into it.” In a preemptive monologue, Hoover said he of course had to tell the truth about King once DeLoach trapped him into a foolish predicament. A despairing Katzenbach went directly to the White House, where the major civil rights leaders loudly complained about Hoover's intrusion into their much anticipated post-election meeting with President Johnson. Roy Wilkins, King's severest private critic among them, announced that Johnson listened without response as “we solidly backed Dr. King.”

From New York, before they decided that King's restraint had been wise after all, Wachtel and Rustin peppered SCLC contacts with messages that King's “nothing but sympathy” posture signaled dangerous weakness. On Thursday, King compromised with a telegram to Hoover that melded his own wounded tone—“What motivated such an irresponsible accusation is a mystery to me”—with his advisers' call for strong rebuttal. He had never ascribed shortcomings “merely to the presence of Southerners in the FBI,” King wired, but he had “sincerely questioned” the Bureau's effectiveness in racial investigations, “particularly where bombings and brutalities against Negroes are at issue.”