King in the Wilderness (2018) - full transcript

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Martin Luther King, Jr.,
was assassinated in Memphis

on Thursday, April 4, 1968

Fifty years later his friends sat down
to recall the last years of his life

ATLANTA, GEORGIA

I came over in the morning
to pick Martin up

to drive him to the airport
to go to Memphis.

The children saw him going
to the airport all the time.

But this day, the boys blocked the door
and said "Daddy, don't leave."

And he said,
"Oh I'll be right back.

I'm just going down to Memphis!
I'll be back."

Then they ran ahead of him
and blocked the stairs,



and said,
"Daddy, don't leave us."

And he said,
"Listen, I'm coming right back.

I'm gonna go down there for a march.
You know I explained why I'm going.

These people have been
mistreated in Memphis

and I'm going to do something about it.
That's my work and you know that."

They ran over to my car, and then they
jumped on the hood of the car,

pleading
again through the window,

"Daddy, please don't go. Daddy, please
don't leave us. Daddy, please!"

Such pleading.

We backed out of the driveway
and got on the way.

And he said, "What in the world
happened to these kids?

They must be trying to tell me
that they're missing me more.

And when I come back, I've gotta change
my habits. I can't go through this."

I watched the transformation
take place



from the man that I met
in the first instance

to the man he became in the end.

With all of his experience,

he really was not quite ready for the
human heart to reveal as much villainy.

What he saw
was more hate than he saw resolve.

We were trying to redeem
the soul of America

from the triple evils of racism,
war, and poverty,

and Martin had become
far more exposed to enemies

by taking on both
civil rights and the war issue.

I couldn't imagine the pressure
that was on him nobody could.

None of us could imagine that.
It was just too overwhelming.

The most difficult time of his life was
the 18 months before his assassination.

Very difficult time.

The Moses of nineteen hundred
and sixty-eight, Martin Luther King.

He was disappointed,

and he wondered whether or not
he could do any more than he'd done.

It had bothered him deeply that
the nation had turned against him

and I always tell people
he died of a broken heart.

I think he worried about dying
before he had accomplished enough.

It's as though he knew that
he was not going to be here

for the rest of the struggle.

We've got some difficult days ahead.

The movement ceased to be political
for him it was spiritual.

But it really doesn't matter
with me now.

He said, 'We have wondered in
the wilderness of separate but equal,

and we're about to move into the
promised land of creative integration,

and I don't know
whether I'll get there,

but my people
will get to the promised land.

Mine eyes have seen the glory
of the coming of the Lord!'

I'm 86, and you know, there's an
African proverb that says,

"If the surviving lions
don't tell their stories,

the hunters will get all the credit."

I tell the story of Martin Luther King
as I knew it.

I lived it.

I value all of what they gave me now
that I can remember.

I'm not just telling stories.
I'm not making a speech.

I'm telling you what happened.

KING IN THE WILDERNESS

Speed. Civil Rights, King,
Vanocur, roll 20, sound 36.

Dr. King, this church
is as good a place as any

to go back over your commitment
to the Civil Rights Movement.

When you went to Montgomery, Alabama
and started the Bus Boycotts there,

what was the philosophy of the Civil
Rights movement as you saw it then,

more than ten years ago?

I would say, then, the philosophy was
that we must go all out

to use legal and nonviolent methods
to gain full citizenship rights

for the negro people of our country.
And that particular struggle centered

on breaking down all
of the barriers of legal segregation.

That period was a great period of hope
for me, and I'm sure for many others.

Many of the negroes who had lost hope

saw a solid decade of progress
in the South.

And I think we are in a new era,
a new phase of the struggle,

where we have moved from
a struggle for decency,

which characterized our struggle
for 10 or 12 years,

to a struggle for genuine equality,

because there are three evils
in our nation;

it's not only racism, but economic
exploitation of poverty would be one,

and then militarism.

And I think, in a sense,
and in a very real sense,

these three are tied
inextricably together,

and we aren't gonna get rid of one
without getting rid of the other.

When you stood
in that August day in 1963

on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial,

and you said, "I had a dream,"

did that dream envision a war in Asia,
and in the ghettos of the North?

No, I didn't envision that then. In
1963, to be in the March on Washington,

it meant a great deal; it was a high
moment, a great watershed moment.

But I must confess that that
dream that I had that day

has in many points
turned into a nightmare.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
AUGUST 11, 1965

We were all caught off guard
when we saw the rebellions begin.

They started in Harlem
and then Philadelphia in 1964,

and then Watts in 1965,
which was the most massive.

Martin called me
early in the morning saying that,

"There's a riot in Watts.
We've gotta go to Los Angeles."

Thank you very much my dear friends
of Los Angeles

and the Watts area of this city.

Now I live approximately 2,500
miles from here.

I'm not free there and our brothers
and sisters are not free there,

and you are not free in California
and in the North.

I've said all over America, and I come
out to Watts to tell ya today,

no matter what color you are,
you are somebody!

And all over
the United States of America,

the negro must join hands
and we must work.

Dr. King once said that,

"The riot became the language
of the unheard."

You all know my philosophy; you all know
that I believe firmly in nonviolence.

Or maybe some of you
don't quite agree with this.

Nonviolent is more than a tactic.
It is one of those immutable principles

that you cannot deviate from

if you're going to be able
to redeem the soul of America.

The issues in Watts,
and in the North,

were far more complex
than black and white,

as they had been in the South.

He was dealing with racism,

but he was dealing with racism
that was complicated by unemployment

and unprepared migrants moving
from the South to the North.

And I realized we were
in a different movement.

What we saw it as...

a lot of people who were suffering
from the same kind of poverty,

the same kind of absence
of employment opportunities,

and police brutality
were in the urban areas,

and they responded with whatever
weapons they could find.

The president during the riots
was just depressed.

About a week before,

Johnson had signed
the Voting Rights Act tells me,

"this is the most important
piece of legislation I'll pass.

Even more important
than the '64 Civil Rights Act."

He's virtually carried out
of the room on shoulders,

and then,
we start the massive rioting in Watts.

So he tells me, "Call Dr. King."

- Hello?
- Yes, Dr. King.

Yes, we're expecting
a difficult situation here.

How do you see it?

I'll tell ya, Mr. President, I have met
with people in the Watts area.

I'm fearful that if something isn't done

to give a new sense of hope
to the people in that area,

that a full-scale race war
can develop here.

I've spent the biggest part of my life
for the last four years

on civil rights bills,
but all of it comes to naught

if you have a situation like war in
the world or a situation in Los Angeles.

Yes.

All of this was happening

about the same time that the war
in Vietnam heated up,

and the President was
in the midst of a very heavy burden

both with the war and domestically.

I want peace as much as you do,
and more so,

'cause I'm the fellow that had to wake
up with morning with 50 Marines killed.

But these folks,
they all got the impression, too,

that you're against me in Vietnam.

And I have said this, Mr. President.
I am concerned about peace.

Dr. King made the decision in '65
that he had to be against the war.

NEW YORK CITY
SEPTEMBER 10, 1965

We went to meet with Ambassador
Goldberg at the United Nations.

And Goldberg pretty
much agreed with us

that the war in Vietnam
was not in anybody's interest.

But the press said
that he had no business

having an opinion about foreign affairs.
He was a civil rights leader, see.

And it hurt him.

He said to me, "Vivian, you don't think
I know what I'm talking about do you?"

But he knew how he felt about the war.

Also, I think Martin knew that he had to
be a part of the North sooner or later.

One must understand

that the civil rights legislation that
we have had over the last few years,

even the voting bill rights bill
which came the other day

didn't do too much to improve the lot

of the thousands and millions of negroes
in teeming ghettoes of the north.

I opposed SCLC moving North

because we weren't finished
in the South.

We needed to continue
political education.

And we needed to work
on building an economic base.

Martin could sit there for an hour,
listen to us argue about,

"no let's go here. Let's go there.
Let's teach this, let's... whatever."

But he would teach
a lot by asking questions.

Then a sudden quiet
would come over the room

because he wanted to make people
think about what they wanted.

Martin could be very quiet and
have all the power in the room.

Martin had decided
that we had to prove

that nonviolence
was relevant in the North.

That we had to find a way
to get into these northern cities

before the riots occurred.
And so, we went North, to Chicago.

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
JANUARY, 1966

I do not know that everything
that Martin said or did

he was quite prepared for.

He had felt that in many ways,

dealing with the South
was a more predictable outcome,

because in the North,
the racial hypocrisy was very subverted.

It gave the appearance of being
not like the South;

the South was the center of all evil,

and that the North
was a place of the higher experience.

And Dr. King said,
"No, that's not the case."

We moved into an apartment
on 16th and Hamlin.

It was a walk-up apartment,
with no lights, no heat,

and it took quite an adjustment.
I never got scared in the South.

SELMA, ALABAMA
MARCH 7, 1965

I knew the dangers, and I was prepared
to get killed in the South,

but I wasn't ready to, you know,
to have a junkie stick a knife in me

in the middle of the night,
coming into that apartment

for maybe fifteen or twenty dollars
that I had in my pocket.

That first night was a very cold night,

and I got really worried that there
weren't gonna be enough blankets,

so we went and got the blankets,

and went over to see Dr. King
in his apartment.

And, as we were sitting there,

the doorbell rang,
and there was a young man there.

The first thing he said
when he came in the door was,

"Are you really Martin Luther King?"

They had a very lovely conversation

with Dr. King really saying,
"We want you to join the movement."

Pretty soon later,
there was another knock on the door,

and there was like a whole train
of them going down the stairs.

And those young men came back
a number of times to see Dr. King.

People in the community

they would just hang around waiting
for him to come downstairs,

so they could see him.

But he would invite them in,
sit down and talk to people.

They didn't think he was
the kind of person he could talk to

and it made them feel, well honestly,
that they were worthwhile as well.

Martin understood
that if you ran with folk,

you could organize folk.

Remember, we've spent all of our lives
being hated in one form or the other.

But when we see somebody who really
cares for people, people period,

that person is worth knowing.

The first week we moved in,

temperature dropped to about
sixteen degrees below zero.

And people came to us
to complain that they had no heat.

And, to find babies wrapped
in newspaper,

we had to start fire the furnaces.

So we got all the money we could

and we got enough coal
and to get all of the furnaces to work.

We called the movement in Chicago
the movement to end slums.

And it plunged us into several issues.
One was the area of poor housing.

The other was the area of quality
education, and also unemployment.

I feel like we know more
about our problem than Dr. King

because we live here.

What would you suggest that he do,
Reverend Mitchell?

I would suggest when it comes
down to our city,

he should get the hell out of here.

So first we ran into
stiff black resistance.

We had never met that in Montgomery
or Birmingham or Selma before,

that was different.

A lot of the ministers
were part of the patronage system.

Mayor Daley's patronage system
was one where people's jobs

were handed out based on the number
of votes that they could produce.

They called it
the Daley Machine.

Martin had anxiety,
because, as he put it,

"We don't want to flunk.
We don't want to fail in our projects."

We met regularly with Mayor Daley,
and we disagreed,

because we were challenging
the way Chicago was structured.

I think we're beginning to crystalize
some of the problems

and understand what we might do
to begin to make some changes.

Does it mean demonstrations, too,
possibly?

Yes, it would mean demonstrations,

but I think just when
it would mean demonstrations,

we wouldn't be able to say.

At the same time, we were still
being pulled back to the South,

and James Meredith decided
to have a march in Mississippi.

MISSISSIPPI
JUNE 6, 1966

When James Meredith,

a negro who desegregated
the University of Mississippi,

started the march only three friends
walked with him.

The surest way to power
is through the vote.

And it is for this reason
that I have decided

to use all of my spare time trying to
encourage negroes to register and vote,

and that is the purpose
of this march today.

Mississippi wanted black folk to leave.

They didn't want them
to be there to vote.

They were trying to starve them out.

They were pushing people off the land
and wanted them to go North.

And the violence continued.

James Meredith's march
was a march against fear.

We had seen people
in Mississippi getting killed

for trying to register to vote because
they didn't want them to have power.

So he was trying to empower
African Americans

to not be fearful of all the threats.

"If I can walk through Mississippi
without harm," Meredith told reporters,

"Other negroes
will see that they can too."

At that time, me and Stokely Carmichael
were officers of SNCC,

the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee.

And someone came along and told us
that James Meredith had been shot.

I'm hit in the leg, and in the head.
Ain't nobody gonna get me in a car.

Here it comes right now Jimmy.

The Meredith March wasn't
on anybody's agenda.

He didn't consult with anybody.

But with the shooting of Meredith,

Dr. King and civil rights leaders
rallied around that.

This march that we are continuing,
started by James Meredith,

I am convinced
will have as great an impact,

or probably a greater impact than
the march from Selma to Montgomery.

If a man can be shot on the highways
in Mississippi peacefully walking,

that march needs to be big.

Thank you very much, gentlemen.

Martin felt we could not ignore
what was happening in Mississippi.

So, we had to divide
what we were doing in Chicago,

and so we had a Mississippi March
and a Chicago Movement.

- Nigger go home!
- Where's Meredith?

From the moment that the civil rights
leaders rushed in

to continue James Meredith's march,

there has been a struggle to see whose
philosophy would guide the steps.

The philosophical struggle deepened

as the march
column moved deeper into Mississippi.

The voice of Stokely Carmichael,

young leader of the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee,

spoke louder and louder.

At Greenwood, he sounded
the marches new rallying call.

It's time we stand up
and take over.

- We want Black Power.
- Black Power!

In SNCC, we saw
a changing movement tactically.

Our focus was on empowering
communities.

We don't have to be ashamed of it.

Not only politically, but in
terms of culture and identity.

What do you want?
That's what we gonna get.

What they were basically saying

is that black people
needed to appreciate black,

and it wasn't a color,
it was a culture.

Now, when I was growing up,

to call a person of color black
was considered derogatory.

Those were fighting words.

But, there was a term that was used as
well during that period: "white power."

Stokely Carmichael gets control
of the SNCC,

and he purges the organization
of all white people.

He said, "You go back and work
in your community.

We want to have total control.
It rippled throughout the movement.

I will never forget Dr. King's face
when Black Power first began to emerge.

He looked like the most stricken man.

We must never forget that there are
some white people in the United States

just as determined to see us free
as we are to be free ourselves.

We were taught that there were
good people and bad people

and we never viewed this
as black against white.

We're taught that racism was a sickness
and you don't get mad with sick people.

They just don't know any better.

They'd been taught
that they are better than you.

What do you mean when you shout
"Black Power" to these people?

I mean that they are oppressed
because they are black,

and their rallying cry
must be "Black Power"

so that they can use that to ensure
justice for themselves...

Martin was very uncomfortable,
but he knows that he has to be there

to support the courage
of Stokely Carmichael

without supporting the message,
or the form of the message.

Dr. King was not opposed to power,
but to elevate so- called Black Power

over white power would break that
which he was seeking to build

the coalition among
white and black people.

I feel that while believing firmly
that power is necessary,

that it would be difficult for me
to use the phrase "Black Power"

because of the connotative meaning
that it has for many people,

and the feeling that this
may represent our desire to rise

from a position of disadvantage
to one of advantage,

thereby subverting justice.

Some of the people on the march

were intimidated
by the whole effort of Black Power.

They must ask themselves
why they are afraid of the word "black"

and why they are afraid
of the phrase "black power."

As long as we were talking about
non-violence and all that kind of thing,

everybody felt comfortable.

Do you think they're really afraid
of it or just feel not a good...

Anytime when we talk about
black people having power

the assumption is that black people want
to be violent against white people.

Mr. Carmichael, are you as committed to
the nonviolent approach as Dr. King is?

- No, I'm not.
- Why aren't you?

I just don't see it as a way of life.
I never have.

I grew up in the slums of New York

and I learned there that the only way
that one survived was to use his fists.

When Stokely
became chairman of SNCC,

he had a different approach.

For me, it's always been a tactic
and never a way of life.

He believed in self-defense.

Could you comment on that Dr. King?

The negro has an opportunity

to inject morality
in the veins of our civilization

and for this reason I will continue
to preach non-violence,

I will to continue to...

Martin was an amazingly tolerant,

understanding father-figure
for all of us.

He understood Stokely's frustrations,
and he never took it personally.

I think Dr. King never forgot
that we were all on the same side.

He didn't have any enemies.

What I remember was the listening,
the patience.

He was always there to say,

"I don't go there, but I want to really
understand why you go there."

But that was the first real breach
in the nonviolence commitment

that many of us had grown to accept.

I'm sick and tired of violence. I'm
tired of shooting, I'm tired of hate,

I'm tired of selfishness,
I'm tired of evil!

I'm not gonna use violence
no matter who says it.

I had not, before meeting Dr. King,

ever taken the option
of violence off the table.

We are a minority
living in the belly of the beast.

When Dr. King stepped in,
he methodically would look at violence

and challenge those who would seek
the gun as the solution,

because morally, you cannot defeat
the enemy by becoming the enemy.

But Stokely really believed
that in the long run,

the gun was
gonna have to be the answer.

We begged the president,
we begged the federal government,

that's all we've been doing...

I accused Stokely of being
just an angry, frustrated young man.

It's time we stand up and take over.

Every courthouse in Mississippi oughta
be burned down tomorrow

to get rid of the...

Anger eats away at your own soul,
and it hurts you.

Everybody has a right to be angry.
Everybody has a right to be frustrated.

But, if you give in to your anger and
your frustrations, you're gonna lose.

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
JULY 10, 1966

This day,
we must commit ourselves

to make any sacrifice necessary
to change Chicago, this day.

That summer of '66 did feel like
a very turbulent time.

We must avoid the error of building
a distrust for a white people.

There was some question about whether
it was appropriate for white people

to stay working with the movement.

And I remember
one of my black friends saying to me,

"We need to know
we can do this ourselves."

And in the middle of all that,
was the rising of the Vietnam War.

Many of the staff who were
very strongly opposed to the war

were trying to get
Dr. King to speak out against it.

Martin was now being pulled back in
to the war issue by the student left

and so you had almost three things
coming together in Chicago,

pulling the same leadership
in different directions.

This day,
we must decide that our votes

will determine who will be
the Mayor of Chicago next year.

Mayor Daley was very upset
about what was going on here

and he was in touch
with Lyndon Johnson and said,

"Get this Martin Luther King
off my back."

- How are you, my friend?
- Good. How are you, Mr. President?

What shape have you got King in?
Is he about ready to get out?

Well, I don't think so.

I think we've gone a long way
with the Good Doctor, Mr. President.

He's not your friend,
he's against you on Vietnam.

He's a goddamn faker.

Do you think that you got things
in pretty good shape in Chicago?

Well, as good as they can be...

The area that the movement insisted
on getting into was open housing.

What is the make-up
of the community here,

what would be the reaction of the
community to a Negro family moving in?

I don't think they'd like it.
They're very clannish in a way.

Chicago is probably the most
segregated city I know.

It's not only segregated black and
white, but the Irish, the Italians,

the Polish, the Jewish community.

Almost everybody lives
in its own enclave in Chicago.

And so we started marching
into those ethnic neighborhoods,

and we were challenging Chicago
simply by marching.

I've moved out of a neighborhood
that was colored.

Everybody that lives with
a colored has to move.

Why?

Because you're not safe walkin'
the streets at night.

You cannot leave the house.

Negroes have a right to move in
under the constitution.

The only thing is,
what kind of a negro?

Our marches were
to the real estate offices,

because the real estate agents
controlled the movement of people.

They're the ones who were managing
this discrimination.

Every time Negroes went in,
the real estate agents said,

"I'm sorry,
we don't have anything listed."

And then we sent some of our fine
white staff members in

to those same real estate offices and
the minute the white persons got in

they open up the book,

"Oh yes, well we have several things.
Now what exactly do you want?"

Something is gonna happen as a result
of this, and I'm not losing faith.

I still have faith in the future.

Communist!

Move it back!

I remember marching through Gage
Park,

and the difference in the South...

you had maybe
a couple hundred, at most,

of the riff raff of the Klan.

But, in Chicago it was ten thousand.
I mean everybody came out.

- Get out of here!
- I live in here!

Get out of here!

I live here! Those fucking
niggers don't live here!

I remember coming on those marches,
prepared for anything.

Dr. King, did you get hit?

I said, "Did you know that I've been hit
so many times, I'm immune to it."

But it was well beyond
what we anticipated.

The superintendent of police of Chicago
said that your civil rights tactics

have aroused hatred among Chicago
white residents

and are hampering
the negroes' progress.

There is no doubt about the fact that
there are many latent hostilities

existing within certain
white groups in the North.

And these latent hostilities
have come out in the open

and I don't think you can blame
the civil rights movement for that.

Certainly no one would blame a physician

for using his instruments
and his know-how

to reveal to a patient
that he has cancer.

Now we have only revealed in Chicago

that there is a blatant social
hate-filled cancer.

And what we're trying
to get rid of is hate.

Nonviolence had the power to pull
the worst fever out of them

and show our moral strength.
They had the stick, we had the bible.

I remember this one young lady came up
to Dr. King just spitting in his face,

calling him all kinds of names.

And he said, "You know, you're
much too beautiful to be so mean."

Why don't you go home
and act like adult people?

And, when we came back through there,
she came out of the crowd again

and went up to him and said,

"I'm sorry, I never
should have been so rude."

The nonviolent approach is radical.

Radical enough to believe that under
the worst conditions, there's hope.

It's radical enough to believe

that people who display some of the most
insensitive kind of attitudes

can be changed.

Its ultimate goal is to win
your opponents over.

So, you had to psychologically
disarm them.

You confront your opponent, and you
look at your opponent in the eyes

so that they will not see you
as a target, but as a human being.

So, you are forcing
your humanity on them.

Mayor Daley was very distressed
and he really wanted it to end.

So, one of the religious groups in
Chicago decided to call a meeting

to try to come to some agreement
that would stop the marches.

Through the democratic process of
discussion around the conference table,

an agreement has been reached
unanimously,

and I think all of Chicago will be
indebted to them. Thank you very much.

Would you hold it one second please.
Just hold your questions.

Dr. King.

One of the most significant programs
ever conceived

to make open housing a reality
in a metropolitan area

was agreed upon here today
at the table of reconciliation.

Therefore, the Chicago Freedom
Movement hereby agrees

to halt neighborhood marches
and demonstrations in Chicago

on the issue of open housing,

so long as these pledged programs
are being carried out.

Dr. King, you say you're satisfied,
but are you?

You don't sound too happy about
what's happened in there. Are you?

I don't know what you mean.
What do you mean?

You don't seem like
you really are happy.

I'm a very honest man,

and I wouldn't say on this paper
something that I don't believe.

I think that this
is a very significant step forward.

I'm not happy about the total problem

that we face
in the United States of America.

I always have to look at the ultimate,
and in terms of the ultimate,

we are still a long, long way
from our goals.

The staff was really disappointed.
We did not get a definitive statement

from them that discrimination
in housing will end in Chicago.

But one of the things
that Andrew Young said was:

"Sometimes you only win half a loaf

and then you have to keep
pushing for the rest of it."

The extent that there were
successes that came later,

Dr. King didn't get to see that.

Up to the moment of his death,

I think that Dr. King referred
to the experiences in Chicago

more regularly
than any other experience.

I think Chicago
was a huge awakening for him.

He saw that the movement now

was reflective more of the truth
of what America was about

than just what
we'd experienced in the south.

And Martin said to me, "Clarence, I've
seen some hate filled eyes and mouths

in Mississippi and Alabama."

He said,
"But the hate I saw in Illinois

was equal or greater than any
of the hate I've seen in Mississippi."

He was really shaken.

When we left Chicago, I remember
his battles with conscience.

He was very depressed that he hadn't
been more forceful in his non-violence.

I will continue to work against violence
and riots with all my might

that it is just as important to work
passionately and unrelentingly

to get rid of the conditions
that bring violence into being.

Do I sense that it is your feeling
that the Civil Rights Movement,

as a movement,
has entered sort of a different stage...

I said "Wait a minute, you're doing
better than anybody else is doing,

there's no reason
for you to feel guilty."

But he always felt
he was not doing enough.

It was easier
to integrate public facilities;

it was easier to gain the right to vote

because it didn't cost
the nation anything.

And the fact is that we are dealing
with issues now

that will call for something
of a restructuring

of the architecture of American society.
It's gonna cost the nation something.

As much as he did, he always blamed
himself for not doing enough.

He was a kind of workaholic
where he was never content.

He was driven by a kind of a need
for perfection.

And he was always feeling
that he wasn't doing his best.

I think because of his feeling

that somehow he wasn't good enough
to be the leader.

Those were periods when he was really
just physically exhausted.

Dr. King came to New York
with great regularity,

and whenever he was here on quiet time,
he often stayed at our home.

And we also made sure that his space

was filled with the things
that brought him pleasure,

including his favorite drink,
Bristol Cream Sherry.

I think one of the things that attracted
him to my environment

was that here I was
a very prominent black American.

And my wife then was a young woman
named Julie Robinson

who was white
and she and I were married

and brought children into the world

and at no point was her presence
in my life ever obscured.

And Dr. King watched the environment
around me accept that

and treated us
with a lot of kindness and respect.

In Martin's earlier life,
in his youth as a student,

his first real love was a white woman.

He adored this young lady
and was deeply pained

when the wrath of Daddy King and
everybody else came down on him

when he suggested that he wantrd
a relationship with this young lady.

It betrayed everything that
Daddy King had in mind for his son.

It's rare, Doctor, that we get a
chance to see you in New York.

You've discovered it's a fun city?

I haven't quite discovered
that side of New York.

Being a Baptist clergyman,
they keep me involved in other areas.

Your home is actually in Atlanta?
Atlanta, Georgia.

Do you have a church
at this time in Atlanta?

Yes, I am the co-pastor of the
Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta,

and my father is Pastor. So, we are
working together there as a team.

Both you and your father?

- That's right...
- Is there any seniority?

He makes it clear,

sometimes consciously
and sometimes unconsciously,

that he is the pastor
and I'm the co-pastor.

Jesus was the leader in the way.

For he said, "I am the way,
the truth, and the light."

Now that gets all of it...

When I met Daddy King in Atlanta,

I understood
the real meaning of patriarch.

He was a huge force in the community
as a black minister.

Glory God.

Very imposing.

Something wrong with your head.

And when you met him you understood
that you were dealing with the power.

What was also fascinating for me

was the subservience that Martin
reflected when talking with his father.

Not just parental,

but as someone whose view of where
we should be going as a people

held great substance for Martin.

Martin really understood his father,

but he understood also the difference
between he and his father.

So in a sense we look into a future

shrouded with impenetrable
uncertainties.

There was a great difference between
he and his father's preaching.

Martin made his points
at a different level

and in a different way
than most other preachers did.

And the reason for that was is because
he had this unusual education.

Dr. King finished high school at 15.
He finished Morehouse at 19.

He finished seminary at 22,
his PHD at 26.

He knew that strong minds
break strong chains.

I think his faith in the teachings
that he had studied,

his constant references to Thoreau
and I never knew of these guys,

never heard of these people,
until Martin came in one day

and in the midst of some
rather casual moment,

he would evoke what Nietzsche
said, and what Thoreau...

and I'm sitting there saying,
"Well who's Nietzsche?"

Daddy King used to say,
"Just get in there and talk the gospel,

stop all with this college stuff

and all these highfalutin people
you keep evoking.

People don't know who they are.
He said, "Yes they do."

You could wake Martin up from a nap
and he could do a sermon.

I remember saying to him,

"You are due at the church
in twenty minutes."

I mean like his mother.

And when he got to the church,

you would think
he'd been studying all night.

He was a natural preacher.

Everybody loved Martin
as soon as they heard him.

There was a desire for people to be
a part of an educated ministry.

The only thing that we had
was Christianity.

The only thing that white America
allowed us to have was our churches.

Martin's moments
when the curtain was drawn,

and he was not on public display,

was a man who revealed
his deepest concerns

about his right to do
what he was doing.

The fact that he was touched by that
calling in history, disturbed him

because he didn't quite understand it.

He referred everything to divine
intervention, to divine power.

It's what God
has called on me to do.

And in the depth of that belief,
that religious commitment,

those voices that he heard
really existed for him.

Daddy King, I don't think,
was fully approving

of where the movement was going.
He saw nothing but chaos.

Those fucking niggers
don't live here.

He saw nothing but rage,
he saw these young, young people.

We're gonna pitch the tents!

With the birth of SNCC,

and the kinds of passion that poured
forth from these young people.

Come on, everybody follow me.

Many of whom were not
much younger than his son.

And the fact that his son
was at the spearhead of it,

was even more threatening for him.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA

Dr. King asked me and Stokely to
come over and have dinner at his house,

and that he just wanted to talk.
And so, we went over to his house.

He wanted to understand
where Black Power came from.

He wanted to know
everything we were thinking,

where we were going with it.

The discussion
was about three hours long.

And then what we wanted to know was,
as a moral icon of the movement,

when was he going to make a statement
against the war in Vietnam.

The leaders of the peace movement
were reaching out the Dr. King

and wanted him to get more actively
and publicly involved,

but I resisted

because my initial reaction is I felt
that they were trying appropriate

the legitimacy they didn't have.

LBJ, how many kids
did you killed today?

Politically,
we had to be very cautious

about whether or not we wanted
to publically criticize

what could be described as having been
the greatest president for civil rights

since Abraham Lincoln.

This is after the Civil Rights Act
of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965,

and here we're going to publically
excoriate and criticize

the man without who's leadership
none of this would have been possible.

The anti-war movement
was a new constituency for us.

There was a spiritual connectivity
that we were comfortable with,

and we understood their positions.

They wanted to emulate our tactics.

But, there were radical elements of
violence and anti-American discussion,

and we didn't want him taking
his moral position

into an extreme left environment

with kids who were kind of
anti-American, who were communists,

who were burning American flags.
And we could not control that.

Johnson was worried,

because communists
were on the other side on the war,

and over the years the FBI
was constantly investigating King

and citing one or two of his associates
who they said were communists.

He was afraid that the FBI
would leak it,

that Hoover would really get
King branded as a communist,

and it would build up
an enormous backlash.

For a long period of time,

every conversation
was wire tapped secretly by the FBI.

And the contents of the conversations,
written down, transcribed verbatim,

and put in files marked "Top Secret".

And a top agent at the FBI said

that Martin Luther King Jr.
is the most dangerous

and most powerful Negro in America.

In 1964,
they were bugging Dr. King

and they also picked up
his sexual activity.

Hoover would send these memos out.
The memos would be about King's life.

I mean, they were obviously designed
to destroy this guy.

I think J. Edgar Hoover hated,
despised Dr. King.

Hoover just was one of these people
with an immense amount of power

who abused that power.
He used information improperly.

He was singularly arrogant
about his position.

And underlying it had this feeling
of superiority to people of color.

And I said,

"they should take that son-of-a-bitch's
name off the building,"

because he was the antithesis
of what you wanted in a democracy.

You know, during those days,

we assume that we all were being
wiretapped or spied on.

But I think the people who
made the recordings were really sick.

Everything the FBI was doing
to hurt us

made us question whether this country
was so sick that it couldn't be saved.

We were never running a program
of personal piety.

We were running a program of social
and political and economic justice,

and it's while we are yet sinners
that Christ died for us.

And it's one of the things that makes it
possible for us to understand

the difficulties and weaknesses
in other people

is that we're aware of them
in ourselves.

I think it's very important
for us to see

that you can go on doing the good works
and have slipped and fallen,

or gotten drunk or womanized.

But since we have no idea
how his struggle felt,

we don't have any room to criticize it.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a human
being, and he was imperfect.

He was conflicted by traveling so much,
and may not have felt

that he was being the best father
or husband that he could be,

but his love for his family
was unchallengeable.

When I met Martin, I had, unfortunately,
a stereotype impression of a minister.

Piety is good but I think there's a kind
of a false piety which I don't like.

And he was a, just a human being,

a very, very warm, and very
down to earth, and just different.

Coretta believed in his cause so much

that she was willing to pay the price,

and she tried hard to have him spend as
much time with the children as he could

cause he wasn't home that much.

You pass your plate this way...

When he was home, she insisted
that he have dinner with the children.

Daddy, you not talking.

I'm too hungry, Marty. I'm so hungry,
I'm busy with this dinner.

I guess this is one of the most
frustrating aspects of my life.

The great demands that come

as a result of my involvement
in the struggle for justice and peace.

It's just impossible to carry out

the responsibilities of a father
and husband

when you have these kinds of demands,

but fortunately I have
a most understanding wife.

Now, alright.
This leads me to ask you,

did you educate Mrs. King
to become equal to you

in terms of sharing this burden

or did you research her
before your marriage

to see that she had the potential
for this, or...

I wish I could say,
and satisfy my masculine ego,

that I led her down this path,

but I must say we went down together
because she was as actively involved

and concerned when
we met as she is now.

Mrs. King are you taking part
in this demonstration

as an individual or as a wife?

I'm taking part as an individual
and a wife. I'm both.

Martin Luther King wrestled
with coming out publically

taking a stand
against the war in Vietnam.

But, Mrs. King was involved
in the anti-war movement long before,

so she had a lot of influence on Martin
Luther King coming to that conclusion.

I come to express my own personal
witness for the cause of peace.

In the civil rights struggle if we win
all of the rights and privileges

that we are fighting for and have no
world in which to exercise these,

then there is really no need
for our efforts.

I decided that I would leave it
to my wife to take the stands

and make the meetings
on the peace issue,

but I came to the conclusion that
I could no longer be a silent onlooker,

but that in some real way, I had to be
an involved and concerned participant.

Andy Young had called me.

I was the Executive Director of a group
that wanted to stop the war

and engage the religious community
to help do that.

So, Andy proposed that Dr. King
give a speech in New York

and Dr. King decided to make
a full-blown statement.

So, I said, well,
what about Riverside Church?

Because I think place
makes a big difference.

When he came to the Vietnamese
speech he struggled with it.

And, I remember very much because
he wrote a big part of it in our home.

I have on my wall in the hallway,

a copy of his writings
and the notes that he made.

He had a habit of using a yellow pad,
constantly making notes,

and he'd crumble up these things
at the end of an evening

and toss it away and I just do a swan
dive right into the garbage pail

and retrieve those papers

'cause he always left some really
profound sentence or something

that I thought was worth retrieving
and saving.

Dr. King knew where his heart was,

but he also knew the criticism
and the splits that would happen

the moment he said anything against
the war in Vietnam,

and, of course, he did.

The night of April 4th 1967,

I believe that Martin Luther King Jr.
delivered

probably one of the most powerful
speeches I ever heard him deliver.

Ladies and gentlemen.

He said, in effect, that he was not
going to butcher his conscience.

I knew that I could never again
raise my voice

against the violence
of the oppressed in the ghettos

without having first spoken clearly

to the greatest purveyor of violence
in the world today

my own government.

He said as a nation, we talk about
nonviolence here in America,

and then we engage
in violence abroad.

He said in effect that the bombs
that we're dropping in Vietnam,

they would be shattered over America.

Dr. King was worried that the
government had gotten us into war

where we didn't need to be,
and we were hurting ourselves.

The returning veterans, the inflation,
the unemployment:

the consequences of the war.

He literally poured out his heart,
the depth and essence of his soul.

I've heard many sermons,
I was at the March on Washington,

but I think the speech
at Riverside Church was his best.

If America's soul
becomes totally poisoned,

part of the autopsy
must read "Vietnam."

When the speech ended, the place
exploded and I knew it was electric.

I knew he had hit it out of the park.
But, the next morning he was blasted

in virtually every editorial column
in America.

Some of us didn't want him to be
that hard in the speech, but he said,

"I'm trapped by my own,
you know, beliefs,"

and I think that that was one of
the things that J. Edgar Hoover used

to try to turn the government
completely against him.

Dr. King took on our government
in a war time.

He was taking on angry people
and misguided people in a war time.

Commie! Commie Jew!

Stick with civil rights!
Leave the war to the generals!

Go back to Hanoi!

He said, "Many of my friends
are turning on me:

many of my Morehouse friends,
my classmates.

Preachers have said
I can't come in their pulpits

'cause we shouldn't be engaged
in the war."

He said, "You expect your enemies
to disagree with you.

What I didn't understand is
how our friends would leave me."

They stopped giving,
they stopped calling,

they stopped caring,
and he was devastated.

Change is painful. The loneliness
and what it must have felt like

when he was so abandoned by so many
and told to stay in your place.

He really felt betrayed.
And he said over and over,

"They don't know me."

They applauded me
and I told Negros to be nonviolent.

These same people
are damning me when I say,

"You ought to be nonviolent toward
little brown children in Vietnam."

The way all of America turned on him
when he stepped into the Vietnam drama

was perhaps the single most
challenging moment for Martin.

Martin went through very difficult,
emotional times in 1967.

He had a doctor in New York,
and I remember sitting with Dr. Logan,

and he generally felt that the state of
Martin's emotional health was such that

that he maybe should seek

some kind of third-party independent
psychiatric counselling.

I looked at Dr. Logan, and I said,
"That's not gonna happen."

I was very blunt, and I said,

"If not within 24 hours,
within 24 days,

the FBI would find out,

and everything that Martin King said
to that psychiatrist

would be immediately in FBI files.
Can't take that chance."

SUMMER 1967

This year, major Negro riots
have broken out in Detroit and Newark,

and about eighty cities
and towns all over the country.

Already it's become the worst crisis
in the country since the Civil War.

The despair is deep,

the bitterness is wide
in the ghettos of our nation.

And I will continue to raise my voice
with all of my might against riots

because I know that black rioting
can mean black suicide.

Don't point that gun at me!

Wait a minute,
don't point that gun at me!

What must be said it that
our nation's summers of riots

are caused by our nation's
winters of delay.

Pillage, looting, murder, and arson
have nothing to do with civil rights.

We will not tolerate lawlessness.

You gon' sit in front of your television
set and listen to LBJ tell you that,

"Violence never accomplishes anything,
my fellow Americans."

But the real problem with violence is
that we have never been violent.

We have been too nonviolent.
Too nonviolent.

I've decided to stick with love.

I'm not gonna give you a motto or preach
a philosophy, "Burn baby burn,"

I'm gonna say, "Build, baby, build,
organize baby organize!"

Martin Luther King
called me from Atlanta,

and he said to me very directly,

"I need you to come on down here now
because this may be my last campaign,

and we're going for broke.

The Southern Christian Leadership
Conference

will lead waves of the nation's poor
and disinherited

to Washington, D.C. next spring.

He said, "Let's go to Washington.
We're going to Washington,

if necessary, going to jail,
civil disobedience,

and convince this Congress to shift
from war in Vietnam to war on poverty."

It was Marian Edelman
who came to Martin

with the concept
of the Poor People's Campaign.

I got called to Washington
to testify about poverty

and what was happening in Mississippi.

This is an urgent situation, which must
be looked into and which must be met.

In the middle of it all, I asked them
to come and see for themselves.

And Bobby Kennedy
came with them.

There is a starvation and men
and women who can't find jobs.

There's a reflection on all of us,

the fact that you have young children in
the United States at the present time

with the wealthiest nation in the world
who are hungry,

and their parents are hungry.
It's completely unsatisfactory.

Robert Kennedy
went back to Washington,

and I told him I was going to stop
through Atlanta and see Martin

and he said, "Well tell him to bring
the poor to Washington."

I went down to Atlanta
and went to SCLC,

and he was depressed.
He was sitting in his office by himself.

And I told him
what Robert Kennedy said,

he ought to bring the poor
to Washington

and he lit up, he just lit up.

I think he was realizing
that he was running out of gas.

And the attacks
and the criticisms on him

were getting more and more vicious.

But he was really aware of the fact

that we had not hardly raised
the issue of poverty.

We have to do it
for our own sense of dignity,

our own self-respect,
our own determination.

But we can't do it if
we don't give our all to it.

Martin Luther King embraced the idea
of the Poor People's campaign,

and he wanted to move ahead with it.

But initially, he did not have
the support of his executive staff.

People felt already committed to what
they were working on at that time.

From our perspective as organizers...

He used to say that he was the pilot of
the plane, but we were the ground crew.

And that he ground crew of the plane
cannot leave the ground.

Given the realities of...

Martin Luther King
went on a fast to reunite people

and get them to think collectively
how they could participate.

As we go into these communities...

And, they finally thought coming aboard.

We must remember that we are
the custodians of a philosophy.

But he talked about his frustration.

His staff was all concerned.

They said, "you know,
we haven't seen him laugh in a longtime.

Now, I don't know whether we gon' win
or lose or draw

or what we gon' bring back tonight,
but I'm not gon' sit by and...

So, they called me, and told me, "think
of something to do to make him laugh."

This was January 15th, his birthday,
which ended up being his last birthday.

Now, some folks celebrate
Abraham Lincoln,

but we're gonna celebrate
Martin Luther King's day today.

Don't let him outta here!

We know that you,
you really don't need much,

but we thought of some things
you ought to have.

So, we searched around,
and knowing what's coming up for you,

we thought you'd be strung out
of shoe string,

so when you go to jail, here's some
shoestring potatoes we want you to...

Then, we know how fond you are
of our president, Lyndon Johnson,

and we know how you
supporting everything,

and I got this little cup for you, and I
want this back, because this is mine.

And it says, let me read it, it says,

"We are cooperating
with Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty.

Drop coins and bills in the cup."

And this is a special gift from me,
a real one.

I don't think anyone possessed
the capacity for humor,

both in receiving it and responding
joyously, as Dr. King.

Much of the time I was the victim.

If he felt somebody was sensitive,
he wouldn't pick on 'em,

but he would take
something that somebody else said or did

and blame it on me.

He had a good way of imitating people.
He would imitate Andy, or he would say,

"Now, Andy,
if you do something foolish

and you go out there
and get assassinated," he said,

"I promise, I'm gonna preach
the best funeral for you."

And then he would start preaching
your funeral.

He would do a very sadistic caricature
of all of your faults and foibles,

and things that you would never want
said about you in public.

And he'd weave it into a sermon,

and quite often he'd have a similar
demon from the bible

who had the same problems.

And, by the time he got through,

he had everybody laughing
at what was a life and death situation.

Mostly his life.

That was the way
of externalizing the fact

that he had somehow talk
about the elephant in the room

that we all had to live with.

Martin joked about it

because there wasn't
any other way to be.

Dr. King,
do you fear for your life?

Not really. I face the fact that
something can happen to my life.

Ultimately, it isn't so important
how long you live;

the important thing
is how well you live.

Dr. King's expression of his anxiety

about this whole world in which he found
himself, was not unfounded.

His fears were very real because
the conditions were very real.

And what is it that America
has failed to hear?

I had noticed that he had a tick.
He had occasion to get caught.

It has failed to hear
that the plight of the negro poor

has worsened
over the past few years.

It wasn't consistent,

but it was apparent in enough situations
for us to know

that there was a
psychological problem there.

And then one day, that tick was
no longer evident. I said to him,

I said, "Now what happened to
the tick?" He said, "No, that's gone."

And I said,
"Well, how'd you get rid of it,"

and he said,
"I made my peace with death."

I know all of you are studying hard
and you're just doing fine in school

and I'm glad to see you.

- We are glad to see you!
- Thank you very much.

I think he always knew that each
and every thing he did

could be the last thing that he did.

And he used to say that if you're
really gonna be free

you have to overcome the love
of wealth and the fear of death.

- You all just took off from school?
- Yes.

He was prepared to die, but he was also
determined that his death

and his life would have meaning,

and I think that's what he was
wrestling with with Vietnam

and Chicago...

Tell Hosea and Ralph to rush off...

...and the Poor People's Campaign.

- Hello, give me some sugar.
- Where we stopping?

It seemed to me we can begin to build
up every Sunday a big march

to march around
the Capitol someplace.

Dr. King appointed me
as program administrator.

Grow and develop and by the time we
get to seventh march

it could really
be massive for those people...

And usually our campaign was related
to discrimination and racism,

so we were talking
about black people for the most part.

But, I said, "There are Chicanos who are
poor, you want them to be in..."

He said, "Yes, we want them
to be involved."

I said, "Okay," and so I said,
"What about the Native Americans?"

He said,
"Well yeah, Native Americans."

So, by this time he turned around
and looked up at me

'cause he'd anticipated
the next question.

I said, "Well, Dr. King,
what about the poor whites?"

And he said to me,
a little disgusted, he said,

"Are they poor?" I said, "Well, yes."
"Well we want them involved!"

We assemble here together today

with common problems
bringing together ethnic groups

that maybe have not been together
in this type of meeting in the past.

I know I haven't been
in a meeting like this

and it's been one of my dreams
that we would come together

and realize our common problems.

Black people, Mexican Americans,
American Indians, Puerto Ricans,

Appalachian Whites, all working together
to solve the problem of poverty.

That was a very big thing
that happened.

Of getting... finding common
ground among the poor.

That didn't make things easy,

but it was a big benchmark into the
next stage of the civil rights movement,

which had to do with economic rights.

Ultimately, we are concerned about
a guaranteed annual income,

and the other thing I think is very
necessary to say

is that everybody's
on welfare in this country.

When it's for white people and rich,
we call it subsidies.

Suburbia was built by federally
subsidized credits,

and the highways and expressways
that take people out there.

So, I think we've gotta see that
is when it comes to poor people,

we call it welfare,
handouts dolled,

but when it comes to rich people,
we call it subsidies.

And it's the same thing
it's all welfare.

We were in a staff meeting, and Martin
Luther King got this call from Memphis.

MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE

On February 12th,

1300 workers in the city's sanitation
department went on strike

and what began as a union matter
soon became a civil rights cause.

The sanitation workers were strikin'
because the wage was so low,

and they were concerned about safety,

so they were trying to get
some support and protection.

One of the most powerful things
that you see during that time

is all of the garbage workers had
these sandwich board signs

that said "I AM A MAN."

That was saying,
we want to be treated with dignity.

With the strike deadlocked, behind
the leadership of negro ministers,

the marches grew larger and
the ministers reveled in the new unity.

When Martin Luther King got the call,
he said he had to go.

He said, you guys stay and continue
working on the poor people's campaign.

We did not want him
to go to Memphis at all.

But he got up at six o'clock
in the morning,

and he said, "Imma catch the flight
to Memphis."

MARCH 28, 1968

Martin went to a march that we had
nothing to do with, no pre-planning,

and it got disrupted.

There were some young men outside
of the garbage workers

who took the wooden sticks that held
some of the I AM A MAN signs together

and used them to smash windows.

When the march degenerated into a riot,
abandoned by its leaders,

the police, with my full sanction,
took the necessary action

to protect the lives and property
of the citizens of Memphis.

We urge you to return to your homes
immediately for your own safety.

Why didn't you check out the situation
in Memphis with your staff

before you came here,

especially since it's in the midst
of a very touchy sanitation strike.

I would be honest enough to say

that I was completely caught
with a miscalculation.

What steps have you taken
to avert new violence in Memphis?

We're gonna take those steps,
and we're not gonna stop here.

We are gonna have in Memphis
a massive nonviolent demonstration,

and we're gonna do it
in the next few days.

And we are gonna take the steps that
we've taken in every other situation.

We are gonna take the steps
of uniting this community.

Nonviolence can be
as contagious as violence.

In between the first march
and our going back to Memphis,

Martin gave us a good cussin' out
about not being supportive of him.

And, it was the only time I saw him
angry at the whole staff.

He cussed us out, got up,
and walked out.

And we went behind him, trying to
reassure him, but he just went on off.

Dr. King said, "I feel so alone."
He was frustrated, he was full of pain.

And, I understand that pain now.

He said, "I've pondered...
maybe I should quit now.

Maybe I've done as much as I can do."

I thought it was wrong
to take on another movement

in the state we were in.

We were tired,
and we knew he was tired.

The thing I think he had dreamed
about from childhood

was to be able to pastor a church
like Riverside Church.

And, they actually offered him the job
as interim pastor.

All of us said,
"Look. You're entitled to a sabbatical.

You've been at this
for twelve years nonstop."

He wouldn't even consider it.

He used to say, "some of us
are not gonna live to be fifty,

so you better live good right now.

It was almost as though
he saw death as an escape,

and that he could not escape
the way we wanted him to escape.

Before Dr. King left to go to Memphis,

we all had dinner together
at their home.

His mother was there and we all had
a wonderful, wonderful afternoon.

Playin' the piano,
singin' church songs, tellin' jokes.

He said to me, "You know what, I bet
you don't really know that I can...

I'm a good singer. Did you know that?"

He said, "I'ma prove it to you.
So, give me a B flat."

I gave him a B flat
and he starts singin',

and, man, we got the rhythm
of a gospel song.

And, we just had such fun.

Now, I was to drive him the next morning
to the airport to go to Memphis.

His mother called me and said,

"I know you're takin' ML to the airport
tomorrow. While you have his ear,

will you tell him I wish we could have
more family moments like that.

Can you tell him to plan it in his
schedule sometime after he comes back.

MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE
APRIL 3, 1968

After the march broke out in violence,
we all went to Memphis, for two reasons:

to support the Sanitation Workers'
march, so it would be nonviolent,

but also to continue our discussion
of the Poor People's Campaign.

That night, there was a mass meeting
at Mason Temple Church,

and Martin Luther King was scheduled
to go and speak,

but it was pouring down raining.

Dr. King had sat in the room
most of the day.

He said, "I have a headache,
I don't feel like going,

but Jesse, will you go?"

So, we went over there
and we walked in the door,

church was about three-quarters full
and people cheering.

You could sense
they were expecting him.

Martin Luther King
is already in his pajamas in bed

and we were working on a
press statement for Washington D.C.

We went out the side of the church
and called him on the pay telephone

and said, "Martin, come just for a few
minutes. You don't have to stay long.

They're so ready for you."

I could only hear one side of the call,
but Martin Luther King said,

"Now, are you telling me that
you want me to get up out of my bed

and take off my pajamas
and get dressed

and come out
in the pouring down rain," okay,

"to speak at this meeting?"

So, obviously,
the answer on the other side said yes.

The Moses of 1968,
Martin Luther King.

Martin came to that church thinking
that he was just gonna make remarks

and not to give the major speech,

but he got up and he gave that speech

as though he knew
that the end was near.

And so, I'm happy tonight.
I'm not worried about anything!

I'm not fearing any man!

Mine eyes have seen the glory
of the coming of the Lord!

APRIL 4, 1968

The next morning,

we were workin' on the press statement
for the Poor People's Campaign.

Martin Luther King said to me,

"Now, Bernard, the next project
we're gonna work on

is to institutionalize
and internationalize nonviolence."

I was on the witness stand
most of that day.

We got permission to march and
I came back to the Lorraine Motel.

He was childish and giddy
and cussed me out,

you know, "Where you been?"
He threw a pillow at me.

I threw it back. But, everybody else
picked up pillows and they were...

It was like a bunch of ten-year olds.

And just about that time,
Billy Kyles knocked on the door

and said, "you all are my house by 6
o'clock. My wife's got dinner waitin'."

And so, he jumped up and went
upstairs to put on a shirt and tie.

I was coming across the courtyard,
and from the balcony, Dr. King said,

"Jesse, you don't even have on a tie!"

So, I said, "Dr. King, a prerequisite
for eating is an appetite."

He said, "You crazy."
We laughed.

He was just extremely relaxed
and comfortable and playful.

It was the happiest I had seen him
in a long time.

We'd been laughing and playing,
and POW.

And he raised up,
bullet hit him right here.

It severed his tie.

I got up and went running toward him,
but he was nonresponsive.

So, I got up
and went and called Mrs. King.

It was a long ten steps to take
from where he was to that phone.

I said, "Mrs. King,"

I said, "Dr. King been shot,
I think he's been shot in the shoulder,

but I think you should come."

I really couldn't say what I saw.
It was like too much to say.

Like I just couldn't say that.
I couldn't say that.

What Dr. Martin Luther King called
his beautiful dream,

expressed so dramatically during
the 1963 March on Washington,

was shattered tonight in Memphis
Tennessee by an assassin's bullet.

In Memphis and in New York,
in Boston, Raleigh, North Carolina,

there are reports of looting
and other angry reactions

to the killing of Dr. King.

It was awful.

My first thought was to go out

and tell children not to loot
and not to riot and ruin their lives.

And this little boy about 12,
looked me straight in the eye and said,

"Lady what future, I ain't got no
future, I ain't got nothing to lose."

I was in Sarasota, Florida,
with my parents,

and we see this happening
on the television,

and the first thing
out of my mother's mouth was,

"He deserved it.
He was a rabble-rouser."

When white America
killed Dr. King last night,

she opened the eyes for every black man
in this country.

He was the one man in our race

who was trying to teach our people
to have love, compassion,

and mercy for what
white people had done.

When white America killed Dr. King
last night, she declared war on us.

A day after the death
of Dr. Martin Luther King,

there is a countrywide reaction.

Turmoil in at least a dozen
more cities today:

Washington, Chicago,
Detroit, Boston, New York.

These are just a few of the cities

in which the negro
anguish over Dr. King's murder,

presumably by a white man,
expressed itself in violent destruction.

The assassination and its aftermath

temporarily pushed aside
the President's plans

to pursue his new Vietnam peace effort,

as he put in a busy day
at the White House.

I think of all the ups and downs,
and all the turmoil,

and the tragedies that occurred
in those years,

I never saw Johnson sadder,

about an event than he was
at the assassination of King.

And he said to me, "Give me a draft
letter to the Speaker.

You know, we're gonna get one thing out
of this awful event.

We're gonna get our Fair Housing bill."

As part of the national day of mourning
tomorrow,

hundreds of communities
across the nation

have planned memorial services and
peaceful marches in tribute to Dr. King.

It is, in this way, despite the ugly
rioting and looting in many cities,

that thousands of Americans have
planned to express their grief

quietly, and with dignity.

Nowhere was this more evident
than in Atlanta, Georgia.

Before the funeral, Dr. King's body
was to lie in state at Spelman College.

A security officer at Spelman
called Mrs. King and said,

"There must be thousands here.
What must we do?"

Then I said, "Mrs. King, the public
will wait, you need to see him first."

So, we dashed over to the campus.

I didn't see the body 'til
I got up close. I nearly died.

He looked awful.

He had a big blob of clay on his face.

Mrs. King was standing
there in such pain.

The embalmer loudly said,

"His jaw was blown off!
This is the best I can do."

And, oh, she nearly fainted.

So I took out some loose powder,

and I dabbed a little on his face,
toning it down,

and Coretta smiled.
It was working.

And, she said,
"open the door and let 'em in."

Martin Luther King chose the best person
possible as a wife,

and her stamina gave the country
and the world relief,

because everybody were just crashing
over this man's untimely death.

A man who lived for and died for
goodness now ends up like this.

I would have preferred to be alone
at this time with my children.

We were always willing to share
Martin Luther King with the world

because he was a symbol
of the finest man is capable of being.

Yet to us he was a father
and a husband.

I am surprised and pleased
at the success of his teaching,

for our children say calmly,
"Daddy is not dead.

He may be physically dead,
but his spirit will never die."

Through their tears,
Mama King said to me,

"I want you to know

that when the tension of the moment
tapers a little bit,

I can tell you fully
how much I appreciate what you did."

And I said, "What did I do?"

She said, "Well, you told Martin
what I said,

that I wanted him to spend more time
with me." She said, "He called me."

And she thinks that she was
one of the last persons he talked to,

and she said, "I know I'm gonna feel
good about that one of these days."

I got a call that Mrs. Kennedy
would like very much

to pay her respects to Mrs. King.

It was the date of the funeral,

and Mrs. Kennedy walks over
to Mrs. King.

The now two widows embrace

and they hold one another.

I was on my way to the funeral,
and I had to pass the office,

and the office door was open,
our SCLC office,

and people were
bringing things outta there.

We gather here this morning

in one of the darkest hours
for Martin Luther King,

sent forth as a Moses in the wilderness
of this sick nation of ours.

I went across the street over there,
and sure enough,

it was a test of our nonviolence.

These people were
taking things off the wall,

and off the desk, and everything else.
And I had to calm them down,

'cause they were frantic,
and they were wailing,

and moanin' and groanin'.

So, they were not like thieves,

they were people who had felt they
had lost Martin Luther King,

and they were just trying to find
something they could hold on to

that Martin Luther King,
perhaps, had touched.

But I missed the funeral. I got there
in time to see Robert Kennedy

and some others come out of the church,

but the wagon had, okay, gone off.

There has been
a lot of historical tragedies

that give us time to reflect
on much that has been lost to us

and the cruelty of the issues of race.

None more profoundly robbed me

of an important part
of what I thought my life would be

than when Martin was murdered.

His death was not just
a great loss historically,

but in a deep personal sense,
I lost a friend.

The cemetery is too small
for his spirit.

The grave is too narrow for his soul.

We commend his legacy
of courage and love to ourselves,

our children,
and our children's children.

We commend his life to the universe.

My first reaction
was to be mad with him.

You got us in all this hell, now you're
going to heaven and leaving us in hell.

Why don't you take us with you?

But I was panicked to know
how we followed.

We were not able
to stay together without him,

and the movement began to fragment.

What has happened in the past
has been our lives.

As older people, we've gone through
those different periods,

and we have suffered, and we have also
made some progress.

But this is what our lives were about.

The question is the next generation,

cause it's not what you've gained,
it's what you can maintain.

Martin Luther King went to the
blackboard and taught us nonviolence,

but nonviolence is not confined
to any historical period.

He speaks to this generation clearly, as
if he's in yesterday's morning paper.

His strategies, his philosophy,
his worldview remain real today.

He wanted a future world
that was changed

because of our nonviolent struggles.

He wanted his life to be remembered
by making the nation realize

that nonviolence is what
we must in the end have.

I think people discovered only
after his death

that he was more radical
than they actually knew.

I don't think he wanted us to take
anything other than all that we deserve,

and that's what radicalism
in the best sense is about.

Using the power that you have to help
transform the society for the better.

With Martin Luther King,
we have the holiday,

and we talk about how wonderful he was,
but we really should develop his work.

It's our responsibility,
everybody's responsibility.

There are 300 million of us and social
change is the jab of each of us.

When you see something
that is not right, not fair,

not just, you have a moral obligation
and a mandate to do something,

to say something,
to speak up, to speak out.

He is issuing as much of a call to us
today as he was calling to us in 1968,

and I hope we will hear that call and
finish the next face of his movement.

He talked about the importance
of keep going forward.

He said, "If you can't fly, you drive.
If you can't drive, you run.

If you can't run, you walk.

If you can't walk, you crawl
but keep moving forward."

From 1956 until April 4th, 1968

Martin Luther King Jr.
may have done more

to achieve political,
social, economic justice

than any other person
in the journey of American history.

The problems we have that Martin
lived for are still with us,

and the complexity
of good and evil in this world

is gonna always be with us.

I don't know that anybody struggled
with it any more or did any better

that Martin King in my lifetime.

He always said,
we've come a long, long way,

but we still got a long way to go.

And somewhere,
wherever Martin is,

he's struggling beyond this place
in time and space.

Well, I never like to discuss
Martin Luther King's influence.

I'm just trying to do a job and I think
it's a job that has to be done,

and I'm not trying to do it merely
for myself, or merely for my children,

or merely for the negro,
but for America,

because I think it's true
that if this problem isn't solved,

the soul of our nation will be lost.

And the only way to redeem
the soul of America

is to remove or to eradicate
racism in all of its dimensions.

The End