MacFormat 1996 July/macformat-039.iso/DATABASE/POWER/KING.TXT

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1.5
Lincoln freed the
slaves; Luther King
gave them their
self-respect. His
first victory was
in Montgomery,
Alabama, in 1957
when he took over the
leadership of a boycott
of segregated buses.
The campaign ended
segregation of buses
in practically every
city in the South. In
1960 he turned a
spontaneous sit-in at a lunch counter by black students into
a campaign across the South that won equal access to
libraries and parks as well as lunch counters. His
leadership of the 1961 "freedom rides" ended segregation
in inter-state travel. What set King apart was the ethic
which provided his energy: peaceful non-violence based
on Gandhi's philosophy, underpinned with Christian
ideals. He was able to dramatise these ideals with blazing
evangelical eloquence that aroused the devotion of liberal
whites as well as blacks. The climax of his activity was the
inter-racial march on Washington on August 28, 1963,
when 200,000 were thrilled by King's "I have a dream"
address. He gave the blacks of the South a moral
superiority over the  racists, and he shattered the doctrines
by which discrimination had been justified. But in the
North neither King's vigorous piety nor civil rights law
were enough of an answer to the festering discontent of the
urban slums. He was denounced as an Uncle Tom by
more militant blacks, but he never lost faith. He was spied
on by the FBI, which revealed his sexual indiscretions. He
had many premonitions of death, and was still preaching
non-violence when he was shot dead on a motel balcony in
Memphis , Tennessee, on April 4, 1968
@
2.2
President Kennedy announced here tonight that he had
ordered troops to the area of Birmingham, Alabama, scene
of race riots during the weekend.

He made the announcement after conferring with his
brother, Mr. Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General. The
President, reading a personal statement to reporters, also
said that he had directed troops of the Alabama National
Guard to stand by.

If troops move into Birmingham to restore order in the
desegregation dispute there it will be the third intervention
by federal soldiers in a racial issue since 1957.

SHORT-LIVED TRUCE

President Kennedy tonight also ordered back to
Birmingham Mr. Burke Marshall, assistant Attorney
General for civil rights, to consult with local citizens. Mr.
Marshall had helped to arrange a short-lived truce between
Birmingham negroes and white businessmen.

The Government, said the President, was ready to do
whatever must be done in the tense situation which has
developed in Birmingham.

"I am deeply concerned about the events which occurred in
Birmingham last night", he said. He referred to the
bombing of the home of the brother of the Rev. Martin
Luther King, the integration leader, and the bombing of a
motel there. These occurrences, he said, led to personal
injury, property damage, and reports of violence.

"This Government will do whatever must be done to
preserve order, to protect lives of its citizens, to uphold the
law of the land," he said.

CITIZENS' DISMAY

He said he was certain that the vast majority of citizens of
Birmingham, particularly those who laboured to achieve
last week's "peaceful, constructive" settlement, could feel
nothing but dismay at the new violence.

The Federal Government would not permit that settlement
to be sabotaged by a "few extremists on either side" who
thought they could defy the law and the rights of citizens
by rioting or violence.

"There must be no repetition of last night's incidents by
any group," he said.

SHOTS AT A CHURCH

As the President was speaking, news came of new
violence in Alabama. At Anniston, 60 miles east of
Birmingham, police reported that a Negro church and two
Negro homes were hit by rifle fire. No one was reported
hurt. Police said that a total of 26 shots were fired.

White House officials said troops were already on their
way to bases near Birmingham.
@
2.5
The largest Negro demonstration for freedom since the
abolition of slavery took place here peacefully today. More
than 200,000, according to police estimates, came in a vast
but orderly throng to the Lincoln Memorial to demand
freedom now.

Away from the Mail, Washington was a deserted city. The
whites stayed at home, offices were empty, bars closed,
and military policemen took over the downtown street
crossings. Outside, some thousands of troops in complete
battle order stood by.

They might as well have stayed in barracks. Although the
crowd was twice as large as was expected, and long after
the march got under way special buses and trains were still
arriving from every part of the country, there was a
complete absence of tension.

SOLEMN IMPRESSION

At times the demonstration sounded remarkably like an
inter-Church assembly, and there were probably more
priests and clergymen present than in Rome. The assembly
of rabbis could have shamed Tel Aviv and the Gandhi caps
of the volunteer marshals served only to remind those with
long memories how different this was from other
demonstrations. In the words of Mr. Roy Wilkins, of the
National Association for the Advancement of Coloured
People, it was a great day.

The demonstration got under way today with a middle-
class decorum ruffled only occasionally by religious
fervour and political activism. Neither the folk singers,
mostly white, nor the inevitable cranks dented in any way
the solemn impression made by tens of thousands of
decent Americans exercising their rights of assembly to
demand freedom for millions of their countrymen.

They had come a long way since the first freedom buses
were burnt by white mobs, since southern policemen had
turned dogs and fire hoses on them, since one of their
leaders was shot in the back.

The activists were there, youngsters in sweat shirts and
jeans, many only recently out of gaol, but the vast majority
were ordinary, conventionally dressed Americans whose
faces happened to be black.

FAMILY GROUPS

Their collective respectability was almost overpowering;
clergymen, dependable looking men in business suits,
motherly ladies in flowery hats, and youngsters dressed
for an Ivy League campus.

Handsome girls, well dressed and with a determined look,
old men in clean dungarees, trade unionists, youthful
seminarists, and family groups burdened with picnic
luncheons. "Never could there have been a more
unrevolutionary assembly; not since the days of the Good
Lord," one clergyman added when your Correspondent
searched for a comparison.

It was this respectability combined with quiet
determination that made the demonstration so impressive.
There were relatively few onlookers, at least in the early
hours, to witness it, but the television networks cleared
their programmes of much of the usual junk and soap
operas to carry the impression from coast to coast.

The Rev. Martin Luther King, said: "Five score years ago
the great American in whose shadow we stand today
signed the emancipation proclamation.... One hundred
years later the Negro is still crippled by the manacles of
segregation and the chains of discrimination. He still lives
in the corner of American society and finds himself an
exile in his own land. We come here today to dramatize
this shameful situation ... we have also come to this
hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of
now.

"Go back to Mississippi. Go back to Alabama. Go back to
Georgia, to Louisiana, and the northern slums. Go back
knowing that all this will end one day. We will hew hope
out of the mountain of despair. Let freedom ring."

The 200,000 seemed transported and as in hundreds of
Negro churches throughout the south they responded to
every period with "yes, oh Lord, let freedom ring". The
mass emotion was almost tangible and perhaps for some
whites insufferable, but the middle class discipline held
and after a final prayer the crowd melted away and the
leaders went to the White House to petition President
Kennedy as earlier they had petitioned congressional
leaders.
@
2.7
Dr. Martin Luther King, who is back in Alabama keeping
alive the flame of protest, today declared that segregation
was on its deathbed, and the only unanswered question
was how expensive Mr. George Wallace and others were
going to make the funeral. Mr. Wallace, the Governor of
Alabama, is now recognized in both camps as a force for
desegregation, his rigidity having brought down the
weight of federal and moral power upon his state and the
entire South.

Dr. King's language may not have been entirely accurate
when he said "Governor Wallace has presided over more
integration than any other Governor in the United States",
but the Alabama state senator who recently attacked Mr.
Wallace for assisting the integrationists would not disagree
with his meaning. It is also probably true, as Dr. King
said, that Mr. Wallace had contributed to Negro unity,
which has often been precarious but which survived the
Selma episode in good order and is now waiting for the
passage of the voting rights Bill.

On the other side of the coin, however, some unity has
also been achieved. The rival Ku-Klux-Klans, drawn
closer by President Johnson's enmity, appear to have
buried a good many of their differences and are at present
celebrating the release of Collie Leroy Wilkins, the Klan
member accused of murdering Mrs. Viola Liuzzo on the
Selma to Montgomery road in March.

The Governors of nine southern states, for example, have
banded together more completely than they have done for
some years in an attempt to resist new federal regulations
requiring swift desegregation of schools. Mr. Francis
Keppel, the Commissioner of Education, announced
recently that all schools receiving federal aid must begin
desegregation next autumn, most of them in four grades,
and must have completed the process in all grades by
1967.

The breeze of change is moving with a strength that
confirms Dr. King's conclusion and history is to be made
at the University of Alabama later this month. Miss Vivian
Malone, a Negro girl whose admittance was accomplished
in 1963 with battalions of federal soldiers, will become the
first Negro ever to graduate from the university at
Tuscaloosa. There are now nine more Negroes behind her.
@
3.2
Dr. Martin Luther King, the civil rights leader, was shot to
death in Memphis, Tennessee, last night. Two unidentified
men were arrested several blocks from where Dr. King
was shot, while standing on his hotel balcony.

Four thousand National Guard troops were ordered into
Memphis by the Governor after Dr. King's death. A
curfew was imposed on the city of 550,000 inhabitants,
about 40 per cent of them Negro.

Police reported that sporadic acts of violence broke out in
the Negro section of the town as news of the shooting
spread. The area around the hotel was ringed by police
armed with rifles and shotguns.

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Nobel peace prize civil
rights leader, was shot fatally here tonight while leaning
over a first-floor railing outside his hotel room. The 39-
year-old Negro leader's death was reported by Mr. Frank
Holloman, director of Memphis police and fire
departments, after he had been taken to St. Joseph's
hospital.

"I and all the citizens of Memphis", Mr. Holloman said,
"regret the murder of Dr. King and all resources at our and
the state's command will be used to apprehend the person
or persons responsible." Police broadcast an alarm for "a
young white male, well dressed" who was reported to
have been seen running, after the shooting.

Later they reported that two persons had been picked up
several blocks from the scene of the shooting.

HUGE WOUND

Dr. King had been bleeding profusely from what appeared
to be a huge wound in the right jaw or neck area as he lay
face up on the concrete walkway before he was taken away
in a fire department ambulance.

His eyes appeared first half-closed and then open but
staring. One of his closest aides, Mr. James Bevel, grief-
stricken, said after Dr. King was removed: "I think he's
gone."

Dr. King had come back to Memphis yesterday morning to
organize support once again for 1,300 dustmen who have
been on strike since the anniversary of Lincoln's birthday.
Just a week ago he led a march on behalf of the strikers
that ended in violence with a 16-year-old Negro killed, 62
persons injured and 200 arrested.

Police poured into the area around the Lorraine Motel in
Milberry Street where Dr. King was shot. They carried
shotguns and rifles and sealed off the block, refusing to
allow entry to newsmen and others.

'THAT'S MY MAN!'

Dr. King had been in his first-floor room - No. 306 -
throughout the day until just about 6 p.m. Then he
emerged, wearing a black suit and white shirt. He paused,
leaned over the green iron railings, and started chatting
with an associate, Mr. Jesse Jackson, who was standing
just below him.

Mr. Jackson introduced him to Mr. Ben Branch, a
musician who was to play at a rally Dr. King was to
address two hours later. As Mr. Jackson and Mr. Branch
spoke of Dr. King's last moments later, the aide asked Dr.
King: "Do you know Ben?"

"Yes, that's my man!" Dr. King glowed.

They said that Dr. King then asked if Branch would play a
spiritual, "Precious Lord, take my hand", at the night
meeting. "I really want you to play that tonight", Dr. King
said.

Mr. Branch said the shot came from "the hill on the other
side of the street". He added: "When I looked up, the
police and the sheriff's deputies were running all around.
The bullet exploded in his face." We didn't need to call the
police", Mr. Jackson declared. "They were here all over
the place."

A member of the King group, the Rev. Samuel Kyles, of
Memphis, said Dr. King "had stood there about three
minutes".

The Rev. Ralph W. Abernathy, perhaps Dr. King's closest
friend, was just about to come out of the room. A sudden
loud noise burst out. Dr. King toppled to the concrete
passageway floor and blood began gushing from a wound.
Someone rushed up with a towel to staunch the flow of
blood. A blanket was placed over him.

Mr. Abernathy hurried up with a second larger towel. And
then the aides waited, while police rushed up within
minutes and in what seemed to be a long 10 or 15 minutes
an ambulance finally arrived. "He had just bent over", Mr.
Jackson recalled later. "If he had been standing up, he
wouldn't have been hit in the face."

"When I turned around", Mr. Jackson went on, bitterly, "I
saw police coming from everywhere. They said, 'Where
did it come from', and I said, 'Behind you'. The police
were coming from where the shot came."

The Rev. Andrew Young, executive vice-president of the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, of which Dr.
King has been president, said the shot might have been
fired from a passing car,

"It sounded like a firecracker", Mr. Young said. "He
didn't say a word: he didn't move", Mr. Young mourned.
He said the shot had hit Dr. King in the neck and lower
right part of his face.

There were perhaps 15 persons in the hotel courtyard area
when Dr. King was shot, all believed to be Negroes and
associates of Dr. King.

THE MURDER SCENE

Past the courtyard is a small empty swimming pool. Then
comes Mulberry Street, a short block only three blocks
from Beale Street on the edge of downtown Memphis.
Across Mulberry Street is a six foot-high wall, topped by
bushes and grasses, and then perhaps 20 yards behind are
two-storey brick and frame houses. At Butler Street on the
corner is a newish-looking white brick fire station.

One report said that the shot came from the area of one of
the buildings across the street. This report was that a man
had run out of the building and leapt into a car, perhaps
dropping a weapon on the street. Later there was a report
that police had chased a late-model blue car through
Memphis and north to Millington, and that a civilian in a
car with a Citizen's Band radio had pursued the car and
opened fire on it.

Dr. King had been taken to the hospital's operating theatre
for an emergency operation, apparently still living when he
was brought in on a stretcher with a bloody towel over his
head.

Mr. Paul Hess, assistant administrator of St. Joseph's
Hospital, said afterwards: "At 7 p.m. (2 a.m. B.S.T.
Friday) Dr. Martin Luther King expired in the emergency
room as a result of a gunshot wound in the neck. Other
details will have to come from the coroner's office."

WIFE AT AIRPORT

Police said they found a rifle on the main street about one
block from the hotel.

Dr. King's wife, Coretta, mother of his two children, had
been in Atlanta. Mr. Ivan Allen, Mayor of Atlanta, drove
to the King home and took Mrs. King to the airport. She
was waiting for a flight to Memphis when she received the
word that her husband had died.

At the Federal Bureau of Investigation office here, Mr.
Robert Jensen, special agent in charge, said: "We have
entered the investigation at the specific request of the
Attorney-General. I am restricted to this statement at the
moment."
@
3.3
Ten years ago today a murderer stopped Martin Luther
King, but not his revolution. The old apartheid of the
south has largely been ended, and black people steadily
take a fuller part in the management, and enjoyment, of the
society they share.

"God knows, there is still a long road to tread", Mrs
Coretta Scott King said, reflecting on the decade since her
husband's death. "There are still big wrongs to right. But
it is important to draw strength from achievements. Martin
had his dream - and parts of it have come true sooner than
any of us dared hope."

After all, she said, it was not that long ago that black
people suffered the oppression and indignities of the
south's rigid and backward social system. Not only were
they at the bottom of the economic heap - they also
endured the constant hurts of segregation - the segregated
restaurants, drinking fountains and buses.

It was on one of these buses, in Montgomery, Alabama, in
December, 1955, that Martin Luther King's revolution first
smouldered. A black women refused to give up her seat to
a white passenger and was arrested. King, the new
minister of a local Baptist church, joined in organizing a
boycott of Montgomery's buses which lasted 11 months
until the supreme Court ruled that segregation on buses
was unconstitutional.

By this time Martin Luther King was a leader of his
people, setting a pattern of strong patient, non-violent
protest in the Ghandian fashion. With his electrifying
speeches he drew together the brave and the large number
of unsure, even frightened, people who were to challenge
a monstrous social and political system and overthrow it.

Martin Luther King was arrested and imprisoned many
times during the long civil rights campaign. In spite of the
brutalities that people suffered at the hands of the police,
and others, he never wavered from the non-violent
approach, warning in a letter from Birmingham jail that the
alternative would be a "frightening racial nightmare". Great
marches, prayer vigils and rallies - and King's oratory -
marked the steady erosion of segregation. King received
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, the year the civil rights Bill
was passed.

"Civil rights were one thing, but Martin always knew that
black people needed economic rights as well", Mrs King
said. "Our battle now is for jobs and we are working in
support of the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill that aims to bring
full employment."

The issue of economic rights drew Martin Luther King to
Memphis. He went to speak in support of a garbage
workers' strike. "When he was killed I determined to work
hard to carry on his ideas. I have been an activist all my
adult life", Mrs King said. One of her main interests is the
Martin Luther King Centre for Social Change, which is
being built around her husband's tomb in Atlanta. It will
be a study and research centre.

Her home in Atlanta is full of pictures, plaques and
awards, the reminders of two lives of service. "Life in the
south is much better now, for both blacks and whites.
Martin always said it would be a fine place to live when the
prejudice was gone.

"It was always the south that had a bad name for prejudice,
although events showed there was just as much in the
north. But racial tension has declined a lot throughout the
United States.

"When I look around I am amazed at some of the changes
in our society. There are black mayors, legislators,
policemen - black people in jobs they just could not get
into a few years ago, and those dreadful old racist
politicians - you don't hear them now. They've been
chased from the scene, or they've shut up. Even the
policemen have learned to be polite.

Mrs King's views are reflected throughout the south. In
Memphis, Walter Walker, a black college president, said:
"I think race relations are better in the south than in the
north. It is maybe because blacks and whites in the south
have greater experience of each other.

"Actually I cannot think of a single civil rights measure we
need now. I believe that in the end racism can work itself
out. But somehow we have to be firm in overcoming the
greatest difficulty facing black people today: their lack of
jobs. Unemployment among the young is huge and
dangerous. Only jobs, and the money and dignity that go
with them, will give blacks a truly equal place in society."