As a devoted student of theology, Doc is versed in the seminal texts of Christianity. Among those is The Confessions of Saint Augustine, the radically introspective fourth century autobiography that glorifies God even as it questions God’s unknowable ways:
“Man is one of your creatures, Lord, and his instinct is to praise you. He bears about him the mark of death, the sign of his own sin, to remind him that you thwart the proud. But still, since he is a part of your creation, he wishes to praise you. The thought of you stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because you have made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you.”
Then: “My soul is like a house, small for you to enter, but I pray you to enlarge it. It is in ruins, I ask you to remake it.”
Augustine says that the human heart is restless until it reposes in God.
Doc’s friends note that he is more restless than ever. Haunted by thoughts of ruination—the destruction of his own life, the destruction of his plans to help the poor—he reacts by moving at an even more frantic pace.
In Atlanta, he attends a summit meeting of seventy-eight “nonblack” minority leaders, including representatives from various Native American tribes, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Appalachian whites. Like every other conference in the past year, it proves contentious and inconclusive. Embittered criticism from Doc’s own SCLC staff remains unrelenting.
“Now he’s taking our money and giving it to the Indians,” says Hosea Williams.
From there, Doc rushes to catch a flight to Detroit, where that night he will deliver a major address in the wealthy suburb of Grosse Pointe before the town’s Human Relations Council and a largely white audience. Nearly three thousand people eagerly await Doc’s arrival. Also waiting is an angry throng of screaming protestors with signs that say “Traitor!” and “Commie!” On the final leg of the car trip from downtown Detroit to Grosse Pointe, the chief of police, concerned about a rash of ominous threats, bodily protects Doc by actually sitting on his lap.
The minute Doc arrives, the jeering picks up. Despite the presence of a riot squad, security guards are unable to keep the dissidents from entering the hall, where they get even louder, heckling Doc throughout his address. Rather than speak over them, Doc pauses and politely allows them to voice their views before returning to his remarks. Getting through his text is a struggle.
“I’ve been in the struggle a long time now,” Doc tells the audience, “and I’ve conditioned myself to some things that are much more painful than discourteous people not allowing you to speak, so if they feel that they can discourage me, they’ll be up here all night.”
At one point he invites a particularly boisterous heckler, who has accused Doc of treason, to the stage. The man is a navy veteran who says, “I fought for freedom, not for communism… and I didn’t fight to be sold down the drain.”
Doc listens courteously. His measured response is simple: “We love our boys who are fighting there and we just want them to come back home.”
For now, this heckler is stilled. But the others are not. The nasty insults keep coming.
In spite of the continual interruptions, Doc articulates his argument for his Poor People’s Campaign—in his view, the only way to avert riots this coming summer—before addressing his tormentors head-on:
“In the midst of the hollering and in the midst of the discourtesy tonight, we see that, however much we dislike it, the destinies of white and black America are tied together.… We must all learn to live together as brothers in this country or we’re all going to perish together as fools.… Every white person is a little bit Negro and every Negro is a little bit white. Our language, our music, our material prosperity, and even our food are an amalgam of black and white. So there can be no separate black path to power and fulfillment that does not intersect white routes. And there can be no separate white path to power and fulfillment short of social disaster without recognizing the necessity of sharing that power with black aspirations for freedom and human dignity. We do need each other: The black man needs the white man to save him from his fear and the white man needs the black man to free him from his guilt.”
Raising his voice above the intransigent hecklers, Doc invokes the movement’s signature song:
“We shall overcome because Thomas Carlyle is right. ‘No lie can live forever.’ We shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right. ‘Truth crushed to earth will rise again.’ We shall overcome because James Russell Lowell is right. ‘Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne. Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown standeth God in the shadows, keeping watch above his own’.… We shall overcome because the Bible is right. ‘You shall reap what you sow.’ ”
The speech concluded, Doc is relieved to have outlasted the dissidents. In the aftermath of so much ugly contention, he says at a press conference that he has never before faced an indoor audience this hostile.
Only later does he learn that Rosa Parks, now employed by Michigan congressman John Conyers, was in the audience that night too.
Doc would have loved to have greeted his old friend and fellow soldier—to reminisce about those times, an eon ago, when they met back in Montgomery. So much has changed. So much has not changed. So many victories celebrated. So many defeats suffered. So many obstacles still in place. So much still to be done.
Doc’s next stop is California. Another long flight over the Rockies into Los Angeles, and then he will be driven down to Anaheim to speak at the Disneyland Hotel, only to return the next day to preach a sermon in South Central Los Angeles.
Before he arrives at the “happiest place on earth,” he receives advance notice that Bobby Kennedy will be announcing his candidacy for president and opposing Eugene McCarthy as they both seek to stop LBJ’s renomination at the Democratic convention in Chicago, five months from now, in August.
Knowing that Doc will never support Johnson, Kennedy’s people request that he withhold any endorsement of McCarthy and, short of declaring for Bobby, at least remain neutral. Doc agrees. For the moment, he’s encouraged by the fact that the powerful Kennedys are prepared to take on a president whose war policies he so deeply abhors.
Discouragement, though, permeates the tone of his remarks in Anaheim.
“A riot is the language of the unheard,” he says. “What is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that promises of freedom and democracy have not been met. It has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”
While in Los Angeles, Doc has dinner with former Dodger pitcher Don Newcombe, one of the first Negroes—after Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella—to integrate the big leagues in the late forties.
Newcombe is alarmed that Doc looks so haggard. His voice is strained and his eyes are filled with fatigue.
“You need some rest, Doc,” says Newk.
Doc explains that his schedule won’t allow it. “My brothers and sisters need me,” he tells the pitcher before adding, “Don, you’ll never know how easy you and Jackie and Campy made it for me to do my job by what you did on the baseball field.”
The comment startles Newk.
“Doc,” he says, “you’re the one who got beat by billy clubs and bitten by dogs and thrown in jail. And you say we made your job easier—I don’t get it.”
“You were there first,” says Doc. “I just followed.”
An overflowing crowd follows Doc’s every word.
It’s Sunday morning and he’s preaching at L.A.’s Holman United Methodist Church, declaring, “It is midnight in race relations in our country.… Clouds of despair are floating in so many of our mental skies.”
As in virtually all Doc’s sermons, the emotional movement is from darkness to light; he works to turn the corner from despair to hope. Yet negotiating that turn is increasingly difficult. To realize that turn on this Sunday morning, he contrasts hope with desire.
“Hope is not desire.… You may desire money, but you hope for peace. You may desire sex, but you hope for freedom. You may desire beautiful clothes, but you hope for the ringing of justice. You see, desire has an ‘I’ quality, but hope has a ‘we’ quality.… I’ve seen people who have lost hope. They wander through life, but somehow they never live life.… They merely exist.… I have seen hate, and all the time I see it, I say to myself, ‘Hate is too great a burden to bear.’ I don’t want to be like that.… It is only through love that we keep hope alive.… Hope is based on faith that life has ultimate meaning.”
Doc has preached himself into a state of hope. For now the dark clouds have passed and he can look forward to flying to Atlanta. But then comes the call.
Memphis is calling.
Reverend James Lawson is on the line again. Lawson is a man whose integrity Doc cannot doubt. Lawson’s argument carries mighty moral weight. Lawson is telling Doc that the strike in Memphis is a strike at the very heart of all that is wrong with America. The strike is now in its fifth full week. The strike has pitted the haves against the have-nots. The strike has expanded: a boycott of downtown stores has driven down retail sales 35 percent. But the strike needs further backing. Memphis is a microcosm of the great sociopolitical maladies plaguing the country. Memphis merits attention. Memphis merits support. Memphis is the nexus. Memphis requires, deserves, even demands the presence of Martin Luther King Jr.
Doc wants to fly back to Atlanta.
Wants to get back to Coretta and the kids.
Wants to resolve the bickering within SCLC.
Wants to pour all his energy into his Poor People’s Campaign.
But how can he ignore Reverend Lawson’s pleas?
How can he ignore Memphis’s urgent call?
He wants to go home, he wants to stay on schedule, but how can he avoid Memphis when Memphis stays locked in his mind?
Memphis won’t leave him alone.
Yes, he tells Lawson. He’ll come to Memphis.
He’ll be there tomorrow.