To the Mountaintop

Many quotations in Book One are cited to the author’s previous work, Daybreak of Freedom (University of North Carolina Press, 1997), a documentary history of the Montgomery bus boycott; see this volume for fuller text and documentation of sources.

Excerpts from King sermons and addresses sometimes contain italicized words in parentheses that express audience response. Dialogue was drawn from recollections by one or more participant, or an observer, in each conversation. Misspellings in quotations are not corrected.

Bible references are from the New King James version, which King generally used. King’s and others’ references to God or divinity using masculine nouns and pronouns have been preserved.

1. Quoted in Richard Willing, “Civil Rights’ Untold Story,” USA Today, 28 November 1995.

2. Quoted in “Civil Rights’ Untold Story.”

3. Ellen Levine, ed., Freedom’s Children (New York: Putnam, 1993), 20–22.

4. Quoted in Paul Hendrickson, “The Ladies Before Rosa,” Washington Post, 12 April 1998.

5. Ruth Hamilton testimony, quoted in Lamont H. Yeakey, “The Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott, 1955–56” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia Univ., 1979), 234–35.

6. Colvin’s accounts of her arrest, in Levine, Freedom’s Children, 23–25; Colvin testimony in Browder v. Gayle in Stewart Burns, Daybreak of Freedom (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1997), 74–76.

7. Claudette Colvin testimony, quoted in Yeakey, “The Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott,” 236.

8. Quoted in Yeakey, “The Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott,” 238–39.

9. Jo Ann Gibson Robinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, ed. David J. Garrow (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1987), 41.

10. Police Report on Arrest of Claudette Colvin, 2 March 1955, Police Dept., Montgomery, AL; Montgomery Advertiser, 19 March 1955; Alabama Tribune, 25 March 1955.

11. Robinson, Montgomery Bus Boycott, 42.

12. Montgomery Bus Boycott, 42.

13. Martin Luther King Jr., Stride Toward Freedom (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), 42.

14. J. Mills Thornton III, letter to author, 10 June 1998.

15. Quoted in Willing, “Civil Rights’ Untold Story.”

16. Quoted in Hendrickson, “The Ladies Before Rosa.”

17. Quoted in Stephen B. Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound (New York: New American Library/Mentor, 1982), 58.

18. Mary Louise Smith testimony, in Browder v. Gayle hearing, Montgomery, AL, 11 May 1956.

19. Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 131–32.

20. Daybreak of Freedom, 132.

21. King, Stride Toward Freedom, 135–36.

22. Stride Toward Freedom, 136.

23. Coretta Scott King, interview by author, Atlanta, 6 June 1994.

24. Quoted in King, Stride Toward Freedom, 136.

25. Quoted in Coretta Scott King, My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Penguin, 1969, 1993), 119.

26. This paragraph from Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 135 (“The Bombing Episode,” by Willie M. Lee, 31 January 1956).

27. Quoted in David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross (New York: Vintage, 1988), 60.

28. Montgomery Advertiser, 31 January 1956.

29. Quoted in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 135.

30. Coretta Scott King, My Life, 120.

32. King, Stride Toward Freedom, 138.

33. Coretta Scott King, interview by author.

34. Quoted in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 9.

35. Quoted in Daybreak of Freedom, 9.

36. Quoted in Douglas Brinkley, Rosa Parks (New York: Viking Penguin, 2000), 13, 6.

37. Little known by posterity, Montgomery blacks had organized a two-year boycott of public transport half a century before. In August 1900, four years after the Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision that sanctified racially segregated public conveyances, the city of Montgomery, like other southern cities at the time, enacted an ordinance requiring segregated seating on its electric trolleys. In response many of the city’s African-American ministers urged their congregations to walk instead of ride. The protest forced the streetcar firm to suspend segregation, though Jim Crow seating resumed after the boycott died down.

38. Mary Fair Burks, “Trailblazers: Women in the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” in Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941–1965, ed. Vicki L. Crawford et al. (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1990), 78.

39. Quoted in Lewis V. Baldwin and Aprille V. Woodson, Freedom Is Never Free: A Biographical Portrait of Edgar Daniel Nixon (Atlanta: United Parcel Service, 1992), 10.

40. Quoted in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 82.

41. Virginia Foster Durr, Outside the Magic Circle (New York: Simon & Schuster/Touchstone, 1987), 280.

42. Quoted in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 86.

43. Quoted in Howell Raines, My Soul Is Rested (New York: Penguin, 1983), 44.

44. Quoted in My Soul Is Rested, 45.

45. King, Stride Toward Freedom, 61.

46. Ps. 34, New King James Bible.

47. King, Stride Toward Freedom, 59–60.

48. Stride Toward Freedom, 59.

49. Clayborne Carson, Stewart Burns, and Susan Carson, eds., Birth of a New Age: December 1955–December 1956, vol. 3 of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1997), 73–74, 79. (Hereafter King Papers, vol. 3.)

50. King Papers, 74.

51. King, Stride Toward Freedom, 111, 112.

52. Virginia Durr to Clark Foreman, 7 December 1955, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 96.

53. Juliette Morgan to Montgomery Advertiser, 12 December 1955, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 101–3.

54. Quoted in King, Stride Toward Freedom, 77, 78; quoted in Raines, My Soul Is Rested, 61.

55. Montgomery Advertiser, 4, 13, 5 January 1956.

56. Carl T. Rowan, Breaking Barriers (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), 140.

57. Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 122.

58. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 55.

59. King, Stride Toward Freedom, 128–29.

60. Stride Toward Freedom, 131.

61. Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 125–27.

62. Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1963, 1981), 125.

63. Quoted in King, Stride Toward Freedom, 133.

64. Quoted in King, Strength to Love, 125–26; Clayborne Carson and Peter Holloran, eds., A Knock at Midnight (New York: Warner Books, 1998), 137.

65. Carson and Holloran, A Knock at Midnight, 161–62; King, Stride Toward Freedom, 134–35.

66. Isa. 11:1–2, 42:1–4; Matt. 3:16–17.

67. King Papers, 3:115–16.

68. Fred Gray, interview by David J. Garrow, Tuskegee, AL, 20 August 1985 (courtesy of Garrow).

69. Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 128–30.

70. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 62.

72. Montgomery Advertiser, 7, 8, 9 February 1956; Time, 20 February 1956; Tiya Miles, “Autherine Juanita Lucy Foster,” in Black Women in the United States, ed. Darlene Clark Hine (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1993), 446–49.

73. R. B. Edmonds, “Shiloh Baptist Church minutes,” 15 October 1848, quoted in Clayborne Carson, Ralph E. Luker, and Penny A. Russell, eds., Called to Serve: January 1929–June 1951, vol. 1 of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1992), 2. (Hereafter King Papers, vol. 1.)

74. G. S. Ellington, “A Short Sketch of the Life and Work of Rev. A. D. Williams, D.D.,” 16 March 1924, quoted in King Papers 1:4.

75. Michael and Alberta King’s son was first given the name Michael after his father, who then changed his name to Martin Luther King. His son followed suit. King Jr. formally changed his birth certificate to Martin Luther King Jr. on July 23, 1957.

76. Quoted in Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977), 36.

77. Quoted in James H. Cone, The Spirituals and the Blues: An Interpretation (New York: Seabury Press, 1972), 55.

78. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1903), 190–91.

79. Quoted in Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978), 260.

80. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1959), quoted in Levine, Black Culture, 31–32.

81. Gayraud S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black Radicalism (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1973), 19–20. A person must “in some prescribed way, enter into communion with it in order to receive its benefits and avoid its condemnation. The Supreme Being, departed ancestors, spirits resident in or associated with certain lakes, trees, and animals, and living human beings who possessed mysterious gifts of healing or of making mischief, were all united in one overarching, invisible world that has its own laws and conventions which sustain and order the visible world” (20).

82. “An Autobiography of Religious Development,” in King Papers 1:361, 363.

83. King Papers, 361.

84. Clayborne Carson, Ralph E. Luker, Penny A. Russell, and Peter Holloran, eds., Rediscovering Precious Values: July 1951–November 1955, vol. 2 of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1992), 495, 494. (Hereafter King Papers, vol. 2.)

85. Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 184–93.

86. Montgomery Advertiser, 11 February 1956.

87. Quoted in Virginia Foster Durr, Outside the Magic Circle (Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1985, 1990), 171–72.

88. Quoted in Durr, Outside the Magic Circle, 263–64.

89. Montgomery Advertiser, 11 February 1956.

90. Durrs to George Eddy, 21 February 1956, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 158.

91. Quoted in Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen (New York: Harper Collins, 1997), 171.

92. Rustin, “Montgomery Diary,” in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 164–65.

93. Quoted in David J. Garrow, ed., The Walking City (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 263.

94. Quoted in Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 177.

95. Quoted in Rustin, “Montgomery Diary,” in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 166.

96. Baltimore Afro-American, 11 February 1956.

97. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 64.

98. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 64.

99. Quoted in Montgomery Advertiser, 21 February 1956.

100. Quoted in Branch, Parting the Waters, 173.

101. King, Stride Toward Freedom, 143–44.

102. Stride Toward Freedom, 144.

103. Quoted in Rustin, “Montgomery Diary,” in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 165.

104. Rustin, “Montgomery Diary,” in Daybreak of Freedom, 165.

105. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 65.

106. Quoted in Branch, Parting the Waters, 177.

107. Quoted in King, Stride Toward Freedom, 145.

108. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 65.

109. Rustin, “Montgomery Diary,” in Daybreak of Freedom, 166.

111. Quoted in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 162–63, 166.

112. Quoted in Daybreak of Freedom, 163, 166.

113. Quoted in Anderson, Bayard Rustin, 187.

114. Quoted in Rustin, “Montgomery Diary,” in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 167.

115. Quoted in Anderson, Bayard Rustin, 189.

116. Quoted in Rustin, “Montgomery Diary,” in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 167.

117. Bayard Rustin, “Reminiscences of Bayard Rustin” (Oral History Research Office, Columbia Univ., 1988), 137–40.

118. Bayard Rustin, interview, 13 February 1970, Moorland-Spingarn Library, Howard Univ., Washington, DC.

119. King Papers, 3:125. King actually made the comment in this paragraph in an interview with Fisk University researcher Donald T. Ferron, Montgomery, 4 February 1956.

120. Quoted in Rustin, “Montgomery Diary,” in Daybreak of Freedom, 169.

121. Quoted in Raines, My Soul is Rested, 55.

122. Bayard Rustin, “Report on Montgomery, Alabama,” 21 March 1956, American Civil Liberties Union Archives, Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, hereafter referred to as ACLUA-NJP.

123. “Report on Mass Meeting,” in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 173–75.

124. Rustin, “Montgomery Diary,” in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 170.

125. Quoted in Anderson, Bayard Rustin, 190.

126. See Bayard Rustin to Martin Luther King Jr., 8 March 1956, King Papers, 3:164.

127. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 67.

128. Quoted in Anderson, Bayard Rustin, 122.

129. John M. Swomley Jr. to Glenn E. Smiley, 29 February 1956, Fellowship of Reconciliation Papers, Swarthmore Peace Collection, Swarthmore College, hereafter FORP-PSC-P, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 171–72.

130. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 69.

131. John M. Swomley Jr. to Wilson Riles, 21 February 1956, FORP-PSC-P, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 160.

132. Glenn Smiley, interview by author, Los Angeles, 14 June 1991; Glenn Smiley, interview by David J. Garrow, North Hollywood, CA, 6 April 1984 (courtesy of Garrow); Glenn Smiley, Nonviolence: The Gentle Persuader (Nyack, NY: Fellowship Publications, 1991), 5.

133. Smiley, interview by author.

134. Smiley, interview by author.

135. Smiley, interview by author.

136. Glenn Smiley to John M. Swomley Jr. and Alfred Hassler, 29 February 1956, FORP-PSC-P, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 22–23.

137. Glenn Smiley to Neil Salinger et al., 29 February 1956, FORP-PSC-P, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 163–64.

138. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 68.

139. Donald T. Ferron, “Report on MIA Mass Meeting, March 1,” in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 197.

140. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 70.

141. Glenn Smiley interview by author, Los Angeles, 14 June 1991, author’s archive.

142. King, Stride Toward Freedom, 85.

143. Martin Luther King Jr., interview by Glenn Smiley, Montgomery, 28 February 1956, FORP-PSC-P.

144. Lillian Smith to MLK, 10 March 1956, King Papers, Mugar Library, Boston University, hereafter MLKP-MBU: box 65.

145. Norman Thomas to Homer Jack, 12 March 1956, Norman Thomas Papers, New York Public Library, hereafter NTP-NN.

146. Homer Jack to Norman Thomas, 15 March 1956, NTP-NN.

147. Montgomery Advertiser, 7 March 1956.

148. Ella J. Baker to MLK, 24 February 1956, MLKP-MBU: box 14A.

149. State of Alabama v. M. L. King, Jr., 19 March 1956, Circuit Court, Montgomery County Records, Montgomery, hereafter CMCR-AMC.

150. State of Alabama v. M. L. King, Jr., 22 March 1956.

151. Gladys Moore testimony in State of Alabama v. King, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 70–72.

152. Henrietta Brinson testimony in State of Alabama v. King, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 68–70.

153. Martha K. Walker testimony in State of Alabama v. King, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 65–66.

154. Georgia Jordan testimony in State of Alabama v. King, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 62–64.

155. Anna Holden, “Report on MIA Mass Meeting, March 22,” in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 212–19; King Papers, 3:200–201.

156. Martin Buber, I and Thou (Edinburgh: Clark, 1937). Buber lived from 1878 to 1965.

157. “A Realistic Look at Race Relations,” 17 May 1956, in King Papers, 3:282–83; Martin Luther King Jr., “Our Struggle,” in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 244–45.

158. Rom. 12:2, in “Paul’s Letter to American Christians,” 4 November 1956, King Papers, 3:416.

159. Bernice Johnson Reagan, interview by Bill Moyers, We Shall Overcome, PBS video.

160. Martin Luther King Jr., “The Birth of a New Age,” 11 August 1956, in King Papers, 3:340.

161. “Tract for the Times,” Liberation, March 1956, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 237–42.

162. Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Day,” 14 May 1956, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 267.

163. Juanita Moore to MLK, 3 June 1956, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 260–61.

164. Quoted in Randall Kennedy, “Martin Luther King’s Constitution: A Legal History of the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” Yale Law Journal 98:6 (April 1989), 1046.

165. Transcript of Record and Proceedings, Browder v. Gayle, 11 May 1956, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 267–77.

166. Montgomery Advertiser, 9 December 1956. The editorial actually referred to the Supreme Court decision of 13 November upholding the June Browder ruling.

167. See J. Mills Thornton III, Dividing Lines (Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 2002), 84–88. While Thornton suggested in his thoroughly researched study that the boycott did not influence the Browder ruling, though setting the stage for it, he offered evidence and argument that might support a different view.

168. MLK to Joffre Stewart, 21 October 1956, in King Papers, 3:352.

169. Montgomery Advertiser, 5 May 1956, 12 June 1956.

170. Stride Toward Freedom, 154–57; “Reverend Fields’s Retraction,” 18 June 1956, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 276.

171. E. D. Nixon, interview by Steven M. Millner, in The Walking City, ed. David J. Garrow (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 496, 550.

172. “Reverend Fields’s Retraction,” from Daybreak of Freedom, 276.

173. Quoted in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 274–75.

174. Erna Dungee, interview by Steven M. Millner, in Garrow, The Walking City, 524–25.

175. King, Stride Toward Freedom, 157.

176. Martin Luther King Jr., “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence,” April 1960, in A Testament of Hope, ed. James M.Washington (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 39.

177. Martin Luther King Jr., “An Experiment in Love,” September 1958, in Washington, Testament of Hope, 20.

178. Martin Luther King Jr., “Walk for Freedom,” in Washington, Testament of Hope, 83.

179. “MIA Mass Meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church,” 5 December 1955, King Papers, 3:73.

181. Martin Luther King Jr., “Love, Law, and Civil Disobedience,” 16 November 1961, in Washington, Testament of Hope, 45.

182. Martin Luther King Jr., “We Are Still Walking,” Liberation, December 1956, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 323.

183. Martin Luther King Jr., “An Experiment in Love,” in Washington, Testament of Hope, 20.

184. J. Pius Barbour, National Baptist Voice, September 1956, quoted in King Papers, 3:28, 366.

185. C. W. Kelly to MLK, 8 September 1956, King Papers, 3:366. In a letter of 18 July Kelly lauded King’s work as a “missionary journey akin to Paul’s of old,” and stated that Paul “never did it more effectively” (quoted at 365).

186. Montgomery Advertiser, 26 August 1956.

187. Thornton, Dividing Lines, 91.

188. Minutes of MIA special committee, 25 September 1956, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 291.

189. Dialogue taken from report by Robert Cannon to Alfred Hassler and Glenn Smiley, 3 October 1956, FORP-PSC-P, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 292–94.

190. Thornton, Dividing Lines, 91–93.

191. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 80.

192. U.S. Reports (Supreme Court), 352 U.S. 903 (1956).

193. King, Stride Toward Freedom, 160.

194. John 3:2–7; MLK comments, 14 November 1956, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 301.

195. Martin Luther King Jr., “Address to MIA Mass Meeting at Holt Street Baptist Church,” 14 November 1956, in King Papers, 3:428–29, 433.

196. Montgomery Advertiser, 14 November 1956.

197. King, “We Are Still Walking,” in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 318.

198. Martin Luther King Jr., “Facing the Challenge of a New Age,” 3 December 1956, MLKP-MBU: box 10.

199. Quoted by Inez J. Baskin, Norfolk Journal and Guide, 15 December 1956.

200. “Montgomery Board of Commissioners Statement on Supreme Court Decision,” 17 December 1956, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 323–25.

201. King, Stride Toward Freedom, 171.

202. “Integrated Bus Suggestions,” MLKP-MBU: box 3, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 326–27.

203. Thornton, Dividing Lines, 93–94.

204. Eugene P. Walker, “A History of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, 1955–1965” (Ph.D. diss., Duke Univ., 1978), 31.

205. Joseph Lowery, interview with Aldon D. Morris, Atlanta, 21 September 1978, quoted in Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Free Press, 1984), 82.

206. Rustin to MLK, 23 December 1956, Bayard Rustin Papers, Library of Congress.

207. Moore wrote to King on Oct. 3: “A group of this nature would solidify our efforts and give a coherent philosophy behind what we are attempting to do. As you probably know there are not many Negroes or Whites who have a firm spiritual or intellectual grasp upon this whole idea of love and nonviolence. This power has been in the Negro Church for generations.

“I feel that we can not let this get cold on us for the work that you have done in Montgomery is but the starting of a work that needs to be done throughout the South. [To do this job that needs to be done] there must be direction that is systematic, consistent and above all coherent and Christ like.” Moore also wrote that “when a man is afraid to die for what he believes to be true his concept of what is ultimately real is shallow.” Douglas Moore to MLK, 3 October 1956, King Papers, 3:394–97.

208. Rustin, “Reminiscences,” 151.

209. Stanley Levison, interview, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard Univ., 9–10.

210. Bayard Rustin, “Working Paper #1,” in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 337.

211. “A Statement to the South and Nation,” 11 January 1957, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 345–46.

212. King, Stride Toward Freedom, 178; Montgomery Advertiser, 15, 16 January 1957.

213. Coretta Scott King told the author that she herself did not know about her husband’s kitchen experience until she read a manuscript draft of Stride Toward Freedom sometime in 1957 (Coretta Scott King, interview by author).

214. New York Times, 28 January 1957.

215. Thornton, Dividing Lines, 94–95.

216. Although King and his colleagues largely followed Rustin’s design for SCLC, Rustin did not want the group to be as dominated by preachers or so overtly Christian. He feared it would exclude Jews, Muslims, and nonreligious people. He tried to recruit southern black labor leaders, for example, drawing several to the founding meetings, but they never played a major role. The founders added “Christian” to the name for practical reasons: to distinguish it from the besieged NAACP and to provide cover against expected white supremacist attacks for leftist influence and “un-American” activities.

217. Quoted in Ted Poston, New York Post, 14 April 1957, in King Papers, 3:33.

1. Quoted in Ken Burns, The Civil War, PBS television documentary, episode 5 (Florentine Films, 1989).

2. Quoted in Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), 21.

3. This interpretation of the Gettysburg Address is indebted to Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg.

4. Quoted in Merrill D. Peterson, Lincoln in American Memory (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1994), 225.

5. Portable Walt Whitman (New York: Viking, 1945), 530.

6. Quoted in David S. Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America (New York: Knopf, 1995), 424.

7. Portable Walt Whitman, 287.

8. Quoted in Ronald C. White Jr., Lincoln’s Greatest Speech (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 182, 199.

9. Quoted in Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long (New York: Vintage, 1980), 172.

10. Martin Luther King Jr., interview, Playboy, January 1965, in Washington, Testament of Hope, 343.

11. Martin Luther King Jr., “The Negro and the Constitution,” May 1944, in King Papers, 1:109–11.

12. Police memo, 10 April 1963, mass meeting, quoted in Diane McWhorter, Carry Me Home (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), 341.

13. Quoted in New York Times, 12 April 1963.

14. Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait (New York: Harper & Row, 1963, 1964), 70, 71; Andrew Young, An Easy Burden (New York: Harper Collins, 1996), 214.

15. King, Why We Can’t Wait, 72.

16. Quoted in Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 730.

17. King, Why We Can’t Wait, 73.

18. Quoted in James Farmer, Lay Bare the Heart (New York: Arbor House, 1985), 207.

19. Eyes on the Prize, episode 4, “No Easy Walk (1962–66)” (Blackside, Inc., PBS Video, 1986).

20. Jet, 26 October 1961, 4; Martin Luther King Jr., “It’s a Difficult Thing to Teach a President,” Look, November 1964, 61; SCLC news release, 18 October 1961 (MLKP-MBU); quoted in Branch, Parting the Waters, 518.

21. Martin Luther King Jr., interview by Berl Bernhard, Atlanta, 9 March 1964, JFK Library, Boston, quoted in Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), 248.

22. Quoted in Farmer, Lay Bare the Heart, 205–6.

23. Robert Kennedy, In His Own Words (New York: Bantam, 1988), 89.

24. Quoted in Andrew M. Manis, A Fire You Can’t Put Out (Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1999), 332.

25. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 229; Young, An Easy Burden, 194.

26. Mary McKinney Edmonds, interview by author, Stanford University, 16 April 1993.

27. Time, 19 April 1963; Newsweek, 4 April 1963; Graham quoted in New York Times, 18 April 1963.

28. Birmingham Post Herald, 14 April 1963.

29. Martin Luther King Jr., “Paul’s Letter to American Christians,” Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, 4 November 1956, MLKP-MBU.

30. See Malinda Snow, “Martin Luther King’s ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ as Pauline Epistle,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 17 (1985): 318–34, in Martin Luther King, Jr.: Civil Rights Leader, Theologian, Orator, vol. 3, ed. David J. Garrow (Brooklyn: Carlson, 1989), 857–73.

31. Quotations from “Letter from Birmingham Jail” are from King, Why We Can’t Wait, 77 ff.

32. Lillian Smith, “The Right Way Is Not a Moderate Way,” 5 December 1956, in Burns, Daybreak of Freedom, 308–13.

33. Stewart Burns, “James Baldwin’s Rainbow Sign” (1963, typescript).

34. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (New York: Dial Press, 1963), 111, 119, 120.

35. King, Why We Can’t Wait, 74.

36. Quoted in Branch, Parting the Waters, 735.

37. Police report, 18 April 1963, on mass meeting of 12 April 1963, Connor Papers, Alabama Dept. of Archives and History, Montgomery, box 13; Birmingham Post Herald, 23 April 1963; quoted in Glenn T. Eskew, But for Birmingham (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1997), 242–43.

38. Quoted in Young, An Easy Burden, 221.

39. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 246.

40. Quoted in Joan Baez, And a Voice to Sing With (New York: Summit Books, 1987), 104.

41. Police memo, 5 May 1963, mass meeting, quoted in McWhorter, Carry Me Home, 386.

42. Quoted in McWhorter, Carry Me Home, 387.

43. Carry Me Home, 154.

44. Dave Dellinger, “The Negroes of Birmingham,” Liberation, summer 1963, 19.

45. King, Playboy interview, in Washington, Testament of Hope, 347.

46. Quoted in Eskew, But for Birmingham, 266.

47. Raines, My Soul Is Rested, 157–60; Henry Hampton, Steve Fayer, and Sarah Flynn, eds., Voices of Freedom (New York: Bantam, 1990), 136; quoted in McWhorter, Carry Me Home, 414–15; Manis, A Fire You Can’t Put Out, 381–83; Eskew, But for Birmingham, 287–88; Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 256–57.

48. Young, An Easy Burden, 247.

49. Eyes on the Prize, episode 4, “No Easy Walk.”

50. King, Voices of Freedom, 130.

51. Quoted in Eskew, But for Birmingham, 222.

52. Robert Kennedy, In His Own Words (New York: Bantam, 1988), 223–26; quoted in Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Robert Kennedy and His Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), 331–35; Arthur Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 962–63.

53. Quoted in Branch, Pillar of Fire, 92.

54. White House meeting, 20 May 1963, audiotape 88.4, Kennedy Library, quoted in Branch, Pillar of Fire, 88–89.

55. John F. Kennedy, 11 June 1963, Public Papers (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1962–64), 3:468–71.

56. Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 506.

57. We Shall Overcome!, authorized audio recording of the March on Washington (Council for United Civil Rights Leadership, 1963); Washington, Testament of Hope, 217–20.

58. Quoted in Clayborne Carson, In Struggle (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1981), 94.

59. Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi (New York: Dell, 1968), 307.

60. Quoted in McWhorter, Carry Me Home, 510.

61. Quoted in Carry Me Home, 525.

62. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 292.

63. Washington, Testament of Hope, 221–22.

64. Martin Luther King Jr., address to SCLC, 27 September 1963, quoted in Branch, Pillar of Fire, 145.

65. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1979), 3.

66. “The wisdom tradition of black North American folk culture dissents from the predominant Western form of disjunctive thinking—that conventional ‘either/or’ in which rationalism insists on unambiguous, univocal meanings for things. Instead this tradition prefers the conjunctive ‘both/and’ of archaic and oral cultures, in which ambiguity and multivocity are taken for granted (even promoted). . . . In conventional dialectical approaches (for example, Hegel’s), ‘opposites are conceptualized as coexistent, but only antagonistically.’ Rather than the thesis-antithesis disjunction of such formulations, conjunctive approaches are able to affirm both elements in a dyad. This dual affirmation of opposites is the crucial aspect of wisdom traditions that feature conjunctive forms of cognition.” Theophus H. Smith, Conjuring Culture (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1994), 143.

67. Ken Burns, The Civil War, PBS television documentary, 1989, episode 9, “1865.”

68. Bayard Rustin, Strategies for Freedom (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1976), 49.

69. Strategies for Freedom, 49–50.

70. Whitney M. Young Jr., To Be Equal (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), 27–28.

71. New York Times, 1 July 1963; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 21 September 1963.

72. Quoted in Branch, Pillar of Fire, 248.

73. David J. Garrow, “The FBI and Martin Luther King,” Atlantic Monthly, July/ August 2002, 80–88.

74. Quoted in Branch, Pillar of Fire, 27.

75. King, interview by Bernhard, quoted in Branch, Pillar of Fire, 248.

76. Coretta Scott King, My Life, 227.

77. Quoted in James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 184.

78. Quoted in Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America, 158–59, 182–83.

79. “A Declaration of Independence,” 12 March 1964, in Malcolm X Speaks (New York: Grove Press, 1965), 18–22.

80. “The Ballot or the Bullet,” 3 April 1964, in Malcolm X Speaks, 34–35.

81. “The Ballot or the Bullet,” 58–60; Malcolm X Collection, Schomburg Center, New York Public Library, quoted in New York Times, 8 January 2003.

82. Kenneth Clark and Jeannette Hopkins, A Relevant War Against Poverty (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1970), 248–49.

83. Marshall Frady, Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Viking Penguin, 2002), 136.

84. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 330.

85. Quoted in Frady, Martin Luther King, Jr., 138.

86. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 331.

87. Quoted in Frady, Martin Luther King, Jr., 138–39

88. New York Times, 26 June 1964.

89. Frady, Martin Luther King, Jr., 138. This description of the June 25 battle is indebted to Frady’s eyewitness account.

90. Martin Luther King, Jr., 142.

91. Martin Luther King, Jr., 142.

92. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 337.

93. C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1974), 186.

94. CORE Legal Dept., “The 1964 Civil Rights Act—A Hard Look” (CORE pamphlet, 1964).

95. Malcolm X, “Prospects for Freedom in 1965,” in Malcolm X Speaks (New York: Grove Press, 1966), 151.

96. Ella Baker, interview by Clayborne Carson, New York, 5 May 1972, unpublished transcript.

97. Ella Baker, “Developing Community Leadership,” in Black Women in White America, ed. Gerda Lerner (New York: Pantheon, 1972), 352.

98. Matt. 16; quoted in Charles Marsh, God’s Long Summer (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1997), 10–11; Fannie Lou Hamer, To Praise Our Bridges (Jackson, MS: Kipco, 1967), 12.

99. Raines, My Soul Is Rested, 249.

100. My Soul Is Rested, 250; Hamer, To Praise Our Bridges, 12, 13; quoted in Howard Zinn, SNCC: The New Abolitionists (Boston: Beacon Press, 1965), 94.

101. Quoted in Raines, My Soul Is Rested, 240.

102. Quoted in Sally Belfrage, Freedom Summer (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1966), 65.

103. Quoted in Freedom Summer, 186.

104. Freedom Summer, 209–10.

105. Quoted in Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 198.

106. “Life of Fannie Lou Hamer,” Pacifica radio program, 1983 (Pacifica Radio Archive, Los Angeles).

107. Quoted in Branch, Pillar of Fire, 470.

108. Quoted in Chana Kai Lee, For Freedom’s Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1999), 89.

109. Michael R. Beschloss, ed., Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes, 1963–1964 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 526, 528–29, 531–32

110. Quoted in Kay Mills, This Little Light of Mine (New York: Penguin/Plume, 1994), 125.

111. Quoted in New York Times, 13 December 2002.

112. Quoted in Branch, Pillar of Fire, 469.

113. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 347.

114. Quoted in James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries (Washington, D.C.: Open Hand, 1985), 392.

115. Quoted in Branch, Pillar of Fire, 471, 473.

116. Quoted in Marsh, God’s Long Summer, 31, 33, 45.

117. Farmer, Lay Bare the Heart, 215–19, 298–99.

118. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 343.

119. Quoted in Garrow, ibid., 343.

120. King, “President’s Annual Report,” quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 353.

121. Coretta Scott King, My Life, 1–4.

122. My Life, 1–4.

123. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 355.

124. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 363.

125. Quoted in Branch, Pillar of Fire, 533.

126. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 366.

127. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 368.

128. Quoted in Charles E. Fager, Selma, 1965 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), 9–10.

129. Quoted in Branch, Pillar of Fire, 528.

130. Quoted in Fager, Selma, 1965, 44–45.

131. Quoted in Branch, Pillar of Fire, 566.

132. Quoted in Fager, Selma, 1965, 52.

133. Quoted in Charles Fager, In These Times, 9 February 1983.

134. Quoted in Branch, Pillar of Fire, 578.

135. Quoted in Fager, Selma, 1965, 57; Branch, Pillar of Fire, 579.

136. Coretta Scott King, My Life, 256.

137. Numbers 13–14; Arnold Sternberg, interview by author, Sacramento, CA, 26 January 2002.

138. Quoted in Branch, Pillar of Fire, 599; Acts 12:2–3, Est. 4:8.

139. Hampton, Fayer, and Flynn, Voices of Freedom, 226.

140. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 394.

141. Quoted in Fager, Selma, 1965, 93, 94.

142. Maria Varela, “Crumpled Notes (found in a raincoat) on Selma,” in Fager, Selma, 1965, 91, 99.

143. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 400.

144. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 405.

145. Quoted in Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 253–54; Michael R. Beschloss, ed., Reaching for Glory: Lyndon Johnson’s Secret White House Tapes, 1964–1965 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 231.

146. Quoted in Eric F. Goldman, The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson (New York: Dell, 1974), 372.

147. Johnson, Public Papers (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1965–70), vol. 2, pt. 1, 281, 284.

148. Quoted in Fager, Selma, 1965, 146.

149. Quoted in Susannah Heschel, “Theological Affinities in the Writings of Abraham Joshua Heschel and Martin Luther King, Jr.,” in Black Zion, ed. Yvonne Chireau and Nathaniel Deutsch (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000), 177, 175.

150. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 412.

151. Martin Luther King Jr., “Our God Is Marching On!” 25 March 1965, in Washington, Testament of Hope, 229–30.

152. Scott B. Smith Jr., interview by author, Philo, CA, 28 February 2002.

153. Quoted in Clayborne Carson, In Struggle (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1981), 166.

154. Cleveland Sellers, The River of No Return (New York: William Morrow, 1973), 151.

155. Quoted in The River of No Return, 153; quoted in Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power (New York: Vintage, 1967), 115.

156. New York Times, 1 May 1965; SCLC Newsletter, April/May 1965.

157. New York Times, 3, 5 July 1965.

158. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 430.

159. MLK/LBJ telephone conversation, 7 July 1965, in Beschloss, Reaching for Glory, 388–89.

160. Quoted in David J. Garrow, Protest at Selma (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1978), 113.

161. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 439, 440.

162. Quoted in Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 30–31.

163. Sellers, The River of No Return, 164, 169.

1. Martin Luther King Jr., “A Time to Break Silence,” in Washington, A Testament of Hope, 231–44.

2. Thich Nhat Hanh, “Letter to Martin Luther King from a Buddhist Monk,” 1 June 1965, published in Dialogue (Saigon: La Boi, June 1965), reprinted in Liberation, December 1965, 18–19.

3. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 445; Adam Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1987), 273–74; King, “To Chart Our Course for the Future,” address to SCLC staff retreat, Frogmore, SC, 29–31 May 1967, MLKP-GAMK.

4. “SNCC Position Paper: Vietnam,” The Movement, January 1966, in Judith C. Albert and Stewart E. Albert, eds., The Sixties Papers (New York: Praeger, 1984), 117–18.

5. Quoted in Mark Lane and Dick Gregory, Code Name “Zorro”: The Murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1977), 53–54.

6. Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect (New York: Times Books, 1995), 216–17.

7. Quoted in Nancy Zaroulis and Gerald Sullivan, Who Spoke Up? (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1985), 3.

8. Quoted in David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (Greenwich, CT: Fawcett/Crest, 1973), 779.

9. Daniel Ellsberg, Papers on the War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972), 42.

10. Martin Luther King Jr., “The Casualties of the War in Vietnam,” Los Angeles, 25 February 1967; Martin Luther King Jr., “Address to the Peace Parade and Rally,” Chicago, 25 March 1967; both in Martin Luther King Jr. Papers, King Center, Atlanta, hereafter MLKP-GAMK.

11. Young to Bevel and Dellinger, 14 March 1967, MLKP-GAMK.

12. MLK to Levison, 25, 27 March 1967, quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 550.

13. David Dellinger, From Yale to Jail (New York: Pantheon, 1993), 285; quoted in Zaroulis and Sullivan, Who Spoke Up?, 112.

14. Martin Luther King Jr., address, New York, 15 April 1967, MLKP-GAMK.

15. Face the Nation, 16 April 1967, CBS News.

16. Quoted in Michael Ferber and Staughton Lynd, The Resistance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), 81; Staughton Lynd, “The Movement: A New Beginning,” Liberation, May 1969.

17. Quoted in Alice Lynd, ed., We Won’t Go (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 206.

18. Paul Rupert, interview by author, San Francisco, 5 January 1975.

19. Washington Post, 6 April 1967.

20. Life, 21 April 1967.

21. Pittsburgh Courier, 15 April 1967; the black newspaper headlined its editorial, “Dr. King’s Tragic Doctrine.”

22. Quoted in Young, An Easy Burden, 431; Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 546.

23. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 554–55.

24. Quoted in Young, An Easy Burden, 434.

25. Martin Luther King Jr., “Three Dimensions of a Complete Life,” Chicago, 9 April 1967, MLKP-GAMK.

26. Pittsburgh Courier, 29 April 1967; also 8 April and 6 May 1967.

27. Martin Luther King Jr., “Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam,” Atlanta, 30 April 1967, MLKP-GAMK. Ali never served time in prison. He appealed his conviction for draft refusal, and the Supreme Court overturned it in June 1970 because of an illegal FBI wiretap on his telephone. He spoke widely against the war and regained the world heavyweight title in 1974.

28. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 561.

29. Patricia Williams, “Alchemical Notes: Reconstructing Ideals from Deconstructed Rights,” in A Less Than Perfect Union, ed. Jules Lobel (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1988), 64.

30. Quoted in King, Where Do We Go from Here, 130. Although this might have sounded like a sweeping rights claim, it did not go beyond the Universal Declaration of Human Rights approved by the U.N. General Assembly in December 1948.

31. John 3:1–21. Martin Luther King Jr., “To Chart Our Course for the Future,” Frogmore, SC, 29–31 May 1967, MLKP-GAMK.

32. Quoted in Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America, 343.

33. “Martin Luther King on the Middle East,” San Francisco Chronicle, 23 February 2003.

34. Chapter 5 typescript draft, MLKP-GAMK, box 12.

35. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 565.

36. Quoted in Bearing the Cross, 565.

37. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission) (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1968), 10.

38. Bob Clark, “Nightmare Journey,” Ebony, October 1967.

39. Jimmy Breslin, “Breslin on Riot: Death, Laughter, but No Sanity,” Detroit News, 25 July 1967.

40. Quoted in Report of the National Advisory Commission, 91, 92.

41. Quoted in Hampton, Fayer, and Flynn, Voices of Freedom, 384.

42. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 569, 570.

43. Martin Luther King Jr., “Telegram to the President,” press conference, Atlanta, 24 July 1967, MLKP-GAMK.

44. Martin Luther King Jr., “Standing by the Best in an Evil Time,” Ebenezer, 6 August 1967, MLKP-GAMK.

45. Norman Mailer, The White Negro (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1957), n.p.

46. Theodore Roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968, 1969), 50–51.

47. Martin Luther King Jr., testimony to U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization, 15 December 1966.

48. David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1950), 11.

49. Martin Luther King Jr., “A Realistic Look at Race Relations,” New York, 17 May 1956, MLKP-MBU.

50. Frady, Martin Luther King Jr., 191–92.

51. Testimony to Senate Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization, 15 December 1966.

52. Martin Luther King Jr., “Great, but,” audiotape recording, Ebenezer, 2 July 1967, MLKP-GAMK.

53. Quotations and dialogue from Coretta Scott King, interview by Charlotte Mayerson, Manchester, NH, 15 July–5 August 1968, pt. 27, quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 571.

54. Martin Luther King Jr., “A Knock at Midnight,” Los Angeles, 25 June 1967, MLKP-GAMK.

55. America, 22 July 1967; Commonweal, 17 November 1967.

56. Martin Luther King Jr., “The Crisis in America’s Cities,” address to SCLC convention, Atlanta, 15 August 1967, MLKP-GAMK.

57. Martin Luther King Jr., “Why Jesus Called a Man a Fool,” Chicago, 27 August 1967, in Carson and Holloran, A Knock at Midnight, 160, 163–64.

58. Peter Edelman, interview by L. J. Hackman, 5 August 1969, RFK Oral History Program, quoted in Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, 873.

59. Hampton, Fayer, and Flynn, Voices of Freedom, 453–54.

60. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 577, 578.

61. Martin Luther King Jr., keynote address, Conference for New Politics, Chicago, 31 August 1967, MLKP-GAMK.

62. Quoted in Zaroulis and Sullivan, Who Spoke Up?, 128–29.

63. Carl T. Rowan, “Martin Luther King’s Tragic Decision,” Reader’s Digest, September 1967.

64. “Good Company,” ABC News, 11 October 1967.

65. Quoted in Michael Ferber and Staughton Lynd, The Resistance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), 91.

66. East Village Other, New York, 1 November 1967.

67. Dellinger, From Yale to Jail, 307.

68. McNamara, In Retrospect, 303, 305.

69. Gregory Nevala Calvert, Democracy from the Heart (Eugene, OR: Communitas Press, 1991), 250–51.

70. Democracy from the Heart, 254.

71. Martin Luther King Jr., “What Are Your New Year’s Resolutions?,” Ebenezer, 7 January 1968, MLKP-GAMK.

72. Martin Luther King Jr., remarks to Birmingham mass meeting, 4 November 1967, MLKP-GAMK.

73. Martin Luther King Jr., “The State of the Movement,” address to SCLC staff retreat, Frogmore, SC, 28 November 1967, MLKP-GAMK.

74. Martin Luther King Jr., “Why a Movement,” Frogmore, SC, 28 November 1967, MLKP-GAMK.

75. Quoted in Ferber and Lynd, The Resistance, 209.

76. Charlotte Bunch, Passionate Politics (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), 4, 6.

77. Quoted in Sara Evans, Personal Politics (New York: Vintage, 1980), 211.

78. Joan Baez Sr., Inside Santa Rita (Santa Barbara: John Daniel, 1994), 83; Joan Baez, interview by Amy Goodman, 19 November 2002, “Democracy Now,” Pacifica Radio; Joan Baez, And a Voice to Sing With, 111–12.

79. Ira Sandperl, interview by author, audiotape recording, Stanford University, 2 February 1995, author’s archive.

80. Sandperl interview.

81. Martin Luther King Jr., “See You in Washington,” address to SCLC staff retreat, Atlanta, 17 January 1968, MLKP-GAMK.

82. Martin Luther King Jr., speech and press conference, Santa Rita, CA, 14 January 1968, Pacifica Radio Archive.

83. Martin Luther King Jr., press conference, Atlanta, 4 December 1967, MLKP-GAMK.

84. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 583.

85. Minutes of SCLC executive staff meeting, 27 December 1967, SCLC Papers, box 49, GAMK.

86. Thomas F. Jackson, “Recasting the Dream” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford Univ., 1993), 424.

87. Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, “A Strategy to End Poverty,” Nation, 2 March 1966.

88. Quoted in James T. Patterson, America’s Struggle Against Poverty, 1900–1980 (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1981), 188.

89. Quoted in Nick Kotz and Mary Lynn Kotz, A Passion for Equality (New York: Norton, 1977), 190.

90. Quoted in A Passion for Equality, 200.

91. King, Where Do We Go from Here, 164.

92. Martin Luther King Jr., “See You in Washington,” address to SCLC staff retreat, Atlanta, 17 January 1968, MLKP-GAMK.

93. Quoted in Michael Maclear, The Ten Thousand Day War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), 195.

94. Pentagon Papers (New York: Bantam, 1971), 592.

95. Quoted in Stanley Karnow, Vietnam (New York: Viking Press, 1983), 534.

96. Mark 10:35–45.

97. Martin Luther King Jr., “The Drum Major Instinct,” Ebenezer, 4 February 1968, in Washington, Testament of Hope, 259–67.

98. Quoted in Kotz and Kotz, A Passion for Equality, 249.

99. Quoted in A Passion for Equality, 249.

100. Quoted in A Passion for Equality, 249.

101. Quoted in A Passion for Equality, 252.

102. Quoted in Zaroulis and Sullivan, Who Spoke Up?, 153.

103. Martin Luther King Jr., “In Search for a Sense of Direction,” address to SCLC board meeting, 7 February 1968, MLKP-GAMK.

104. New York Times, 2 February 1968.

105. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 596.

106. Quoted in Bearing the Cross, 596–97.

107. Washington Post and New York Post, 26 February 1968, quoted in Anderson, Bayard Rustin, 305.

108. Bayard Rustin, “Social Dislocation and the Civil Rights Revolution,” 1964, Bayard Rustin Papers, Library of Congress.

109. Rustin to MLK, “Memo on Spring Protest in Washington, D.C.,” 29 January 1968, Bayard Rustin Papers, Library of Congress; also in Bayard Rustin, Down the Line (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1971), 202–5.

110. Rustin to MLK, 5 February 1968, Bayard Rustin Papers, Library of Congress.

111. Wachtel to Rustin, 25 September 1985, Bayard Rustin Papers, Library of Congress, quoted in Anderson, Bayard Rustin, 306.

112. Barbara Deming, “On Revolution and Equilibrium,” Liberation, February 1968.

113. Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, 848.

114. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 594.

115. James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (New York: Harper & Row, 1978, 1979), 422; J. M. Burns, interview by author, audiotape recording, Chilmark, MA, July 1979, author’s archive.

116. Quoted in Harris Wofford, Of Kennedys and Kings (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1980), 205.

117. Quoted in David J. Garrow, The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Norton, 1981), 182–83.

118. Quoted in Young, An Uneasy Burden, 444; Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 597.

119. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission) (New York: Dutton, 1968), 1–2, 107.

120. New York Times, 2, 5 March 1968.

121. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 602, 599.

122. Carson and Holloran, A Knock at Midnight, 187, 188.

124. Martin Luther King Jr., “Unfulfilled Dreams,” Ebenezer, 3 March 1968, in Carson and Holloran, A Knock at Midnight, 191–200; Martin Luther King Jr., “Prodigal Son,” audiotape recording, Ebenezer, 1966, MLKP-GAMK.

125. McNamara, In Retrospect, 311.

126. McNamara, memo to Johnson, 1 November 1967, quoted in ibid., 307, 308.

127. Clifford comment in Hearts and Minds, documentary film, 1976.

128. Quoted in Townsend Hoopes, The Limits of Intervention (New York: David McKay, 1969), 179–80.

129. Quoted in The Limits of Intervention, 192.

130. Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets (New York: Viking, 2002), 201–2.

131. William C. Westmoreland, A Soldier Reports (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976), 338.

132. Quoted in Hoopes, The Limits of Intervention, 216.

133. Walter Fauntroy, interview by Jean Stein, 11 November 1969, Stein Papers, quoted in Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, 873.

134. Albert Turner and Hosea Williams to Organizations in Alabama, 2 February 1968, SCLC Papers, box 177, GAMK.

135. Hosea Williams and Fred Bennette to Officers, Members and Friends, 9 March 1968, SCLC Papers, box 179, GAMK.

136. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 607.

137. Eleanor Eaton, American Friends Service Committee, to Andy Young et al., 29 February 1968, SCLC Papers, box 49, GAMK.

138. New York Times, 15 March 1968.

139. Horton to Andrew Young, 15 March 1968, quoted in Frank Adams with Myles Horton, Unearthing Seeds of Fire (Winston-Salem, NC: Blair, 1975), 180.

140. Martin Luther King Jr., “Poor People’s Campaign News,” 15 March 1968, SCLC Papers, box 179, GAMK; Jackson, “Recasting the Dream,” 521–23.

141. New York Times, 20 March 1968.

142. Hampton, Fayer, and Flynn, Voices of Freedom, 456.

143. PPC registration forms, SCLC Papers, box 181, GAMK; Jackson, “Recasting the Dream,” 507–8.

144. If he had been leading at a time when immigrants (resident aliens) comprised a larger social force, he might have extended this right to resident noncitizens as well.

145. “Statement of Demands by the Poor People’s Campaign,” MLKP-GAMK.

146. Martin Luther King Jr., testimony to U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Executive Reorganization, Committee on Government Operations, 15 December 1966.

147. Andrew Young to Arthur and Marian Logan, 21 March 1968, MLKP-GAMK, quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 601.

148. Marian Logan, interview by David J. Garrow, New York, 6 August 1980, quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 609.

149. New York Times, 27 March 1968.

150. Director to FBI field offices, “Counterintelligence Program, Black Nationalist Hate Groups,” 4 March 1968, quoted in Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul, 368.

151. Young, An Easy Burden, 446.

152. Hampton, Fayer, and Flynn, Voices of Freedom, 459.

153. Martin Luther King Jr., address at Mason Temple, Memphis, 18 March 1968, MLKP-GAMK; Joan Turner Beifuss, At the River I Stand (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1989), 194–95.

154. King, address at Mason Temple.

155. Hampton, Fayer, and Flynn, Voices of Freedom, 459–60.

156. Quoted in Beifuss, At the River I Stand, 203.

157. Raines, My Soul Is Rested, 465.

158. Calvin Taylor comments quoted in Beifuss, At the River I Stand, 253–54.

159. Atlanta Constitution, 30 March 1968; New York Times, 29, 30 March 1968.

160. MLK, telephone conversation with Levison, 29 March 1968, quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 614–15.

161. New York Times, 1 April 1968.

162. Quoted in Abernathy, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), 424.

163. Quoted in Marshall Frady, Jesse (New York: Random House, 1996), 224–25; quoted in Young, An Easy Burden, 457.

164. Quoted in Frady, Jesse, 224–25; quoted in Young, An Easy Burden, 458.

165. Quoted in Young, An Easy Burden, 458.

166. Raines, My Soul Is Rested, 467.

167. Quoted in Frady, Jesse, 225.

168. Jesse Jackson, conversation with author, Stanford University, 12 May 1992, author’s archive.

169. Levison, telephone conversation, 31 March 1968, quoted in Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul, 379.

170. Quoted in Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 616.

171. Jackson, conversation with author.

172. St. John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, trans. Mirabai Starr (New York: Riverhead Books, 2003), 178.

173. Rev. 21:4–5. Martin Luther King Jr., “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” Washington, DC, 31 March 1968, in Washington, Testament of Hope, 274, 277, 278.

174. New York Times, 1 April 1968; Atlanta Constitution, 1 April 1968; Washington Post, 1 April 1968.

175. Fauntroy, interview by Jean Stein, quoted in Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, 873.

176. Quoted in Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 343.

177. Quoted in Abernathy, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, 428.

178. Quoted in Beifuss, At the River I Stand, 269.

179. Quoted in At the River I Stand, 276; Hampton, Fayer, and Flynn, Voices of Freedom, 464.

180. Martin Luther King Jr., “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” Memphis, 3 April 1968, in Washington, Testament of Hope, 279–86.

181. Quoted in Beifuss, At the River I Stand, 279.

182. Quoted in Frady, Jesse, 226.

183. Georgia Davis Powers, I Shared the Dream (Far Hills, NJ: New Horizon Press, 1995), 227–36.

184. Atlanta Constitution, 5 April 1968.

185. Atlanta Constitution, 5 April 1968.

186. Young, An Easy Burden, 463–64.

187. The fact that Ray was staying in a second-floor room in the rooming house on April 4, 1968, and carried the rifle into his room was indisputable. The King family and their attorney, William F. Pepper, have contended that Ray did not actually shoot Martin King, and that he disposed of his rifle a short while before the killing. They have not claimed that Ray was uninvolved, but that he was set up as a “fall guy” for the murder by a conspiracy that included the Mafia, members of the Memphis Police Dept., and even Tennessee and U.S. government officials. The King v. Jowers civil case for wrongful death that the King family brought to trial in 1999 in a Memphis state court was decided by the jury in favor of the conspiracy claim by Pepper and the King plaintiffs. The truth about whether Ray killed King, and about the nature and extent of a possible conspiracy, are beyond the scope of this book. See William F. Pepper, An Act of State (London: Verso, 2003) and the King v. Jowers trial transcript (www.thekingcenter.org/news/trial). For an alternative view, see Gerald Posner, Killing the Dream (New York: Random House, 1998).

188. Quoted in Beifuss, At the River I Stand, 290.

189. Quotations (and dinner menu) from At the River I Stand, 290–92.

190. Quoted in Frady, Jesse, 227.

191. Andrew Young recollection in Voices of Freedom, 467.

192. Abernathy recollection in Voices of Freedom, 467.

193. Coretta Scott King, My Life, 293.

194. Quoted in Abernathy, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, 446.

195. Quoted in Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, 874–75.

196. Quoted in Beifuss, At the River I Stand, 314.

197. Howard Thurman, “Memorial Tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr.,” 4 April 1968, KPFK-FM, Los Angeles, author’s archive.

198. Quoted in Life, 19 April 1968, 4.

199. Coretta Scott King, “How Many Men Must Die?” Memphis, 8 April 1968, Life, 19 April 1968, 34–35.

200. Thomas A. Dorsey, “Precious Lord,” 1932.

1. Although the media spotlighted the minority who turned to violence, a growing number of American activists firmly embraced nonviolent action. During its most successful phase (1969–72), the antiwar movement, which broadened into the mainstream, engaged in exemplary nonviolent protest on a large scale. As President Nixon confessed in his memoir, these actions forced him to bring the troops home and move toward serious negotiations, which eventually ended the decade-long conflict. In the late 1970s and 1980s mass nonviolent action reached new heights with the campaigns against nuclear energy and weapons, marches for women’s rights and gay and lesbian liberation, and in the 1990s with “million man” and “million woman” marches in Washington. Environmental activism and the movement for global justice appeared to be carrying on this tradition into the twenty-first century.

On the world stage, nonviolent action looked even more promising. The relatively nonviolent French revolt of May 1968 was accompanied by the peacefully explosive “Prague spring,” that despite being crushed by Soviet tanks in August presaged the velvet revolutions and the Cold War’s end twenty years later. Western Europeans mounted colossal protests against U.S. and Soviet first-strike nuclear missiles in the 1980s. Nonviolent direct action inspired by King and the American movements swept through Eastern Europe and into the Philippines, China, Tibet, Burma, and (ultimately) South Africa, and other countries less noticed.

2. Determined to fulfill their slain leader’s will, the mule-train army of the poor arrived at the Washington Mall in mid-May 1968. Hundreds of many-hued souls set up a shantytown of canvas and plywood on the south side of the reflecting pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. They christened their new community Resurrection City. SCLC leaders hammered out a comprehensive manifesto of demands for economic justice. PPC activists led by SCLC lobbied Congress and Cabinet departments week after week for their Bill of Economic and Social Rights to end poverty. None blocked streets or bridges, as had been feared; occasional acts of civil disobedience were carefully controlled. There was no violence.

Bayard Rustin agreed to take charge of organizing a massive march on Washington for late June, hoping it to be an encore of his masterpiece of August 1963. But everything had changed in that epic half decade. Rustin resigned in a tiff with the tense new SCLC hierarchy over the demands, and the march was underwhelming. Racial tensions surfaced in Resurrection City, compounded by inadequate provisions. Punishing rains conspired with human foibles to make the flooded encampment inhospitable, the beleaguered residents soaked with mud. Police forcibly evicted them in early July. The poor, who always seemed to lose, were routed once again.