When a great man is killed for no reason and he happens to be your friend, you feel the loss twice over. In Martin’s case, it was all one feeling because with him it was like the nation had lost its greatest friend. That’s what Martin was—America’s best friend. And a lot of Americans didn’t even realize it.
When the shock wore off I called Mr. Neely and talked to him for a long time about the assassination. Like a lot of people, I knew it was going to bring a great deal of violence, burning, and death, and I knew everybody would lose by it. I didn’t want it to happen, and I knew Martin wouldn’t want it to happen. I told Mr. Neely I wished there was something I could do to prevent it.
When I hung up I thought there was one thing I could do. I called my radio stations in Knoxville and Baltimore and had them put me on the air live. I urged the people to stay calm, to honor Dr. King by being peaceful. Then I made more taped messages like that and instructed the station managers to play them until the trouble passed. I believe they had some effect because those two cities had less trouble than most.
The next day, Friday, I was tied up taping some segments for a television special—the same special they had filmed my Apollo show for. I didn’t want to do it that day, but it was scheduled to go on the air in early June and I didn’t have any other time I could do it. I went from the studio directly to the airport and flew to Boston. I wanted to go through with my concert there because I thought it would give me an opportunity to keep some people off the streets that night—the night everybody was predicting the worst rioting for—and to talk to them about the situation.
I was met at Logan Airport by Mayor Kevin White’s limousine and a city councilman named Thomas Atkins. I believe he told me he was the first black ever elected to city-wide office in Boston. As we drove to the Garden, he filled me in on the situation. The night before hadn’t been too bad in Boston—everybody was still in shock—but they were worried about that night. The National Guard was on alert and standing by. He said city officials had spent the morning arguing about whether to let my concert go on. The mayor wanted to cancel it, but Atkins told him that would just make matters worse. If many people from Roxbury showed up downtown at the Garden and found a lock on the door, trouble would start. Atkins said he told the mayor he’d be lucky if his own office was left standing. Then somebody came up with the idea of televising the concert live. That way people could stay home and see the show, and the people who showed up wouldn’t find a locked door. So Atkins got in touch with a disc jockey named Early Byrd on WILD, the local soul station, and Early Byrd contacted my people in New York and told them that it was either televise the concert or the mayor was going to cancel it. While they were trying to get to me, others in the mayor’s office persuaded WGBH, the local public TV station, to put the concert on live. They needed some lead time to get set up, and the mayor’s office needed time to get the word out about the broadcast.
My people couldn’t reach me because I was taping the television program, but they gave Early Byrd a tentative okay, subject to my veto. Atkins passed the word to the mayor’s office, but he told them there was no guarantee that I would agree—and then they’d really have a mess on their hands. Once the mayor got the tentative okay, Atkins told me, it was “off to the races.” The mayor put out a press release announcing that the concert would be televised. Taped announcements went out over WILD urging people to stay home and watch James Brown on television. The TV people were laying cable at the Garden.
“That’s where it stands now,” he said.
“I really want to help,” I said, “but there’s a very serious problem. I just taped a television special, and the contract prohibits me from performing on television for a certain period of time before and after the show is aired and in certain geographical areas. That period of time is now, and one of the areas is Boston. If I go on TV here tonight, I’ll have lawsuits and trouble every which way. I’ll cooperate in any way I can, but I cannot do a show on television.”
I was very disturbed. Here the people had been told they could see the show on television, and if it wasn’t on, I knew they’d feel tricked and then get mad. If the mayor cancelled the show entirely, there would be more trouble. We rode along not saying anything. It was rush hour, but the streets were deserted. Sort of like the calm before the storm. After a while we both started talking about how we felt about Dr. King.
“You know,” I said, “I want to do a show tonight because I want to dedicate it to him. I didn’t always agree with him, but he was a great man and he did a lot for all of us.”
“He was remarkable.”
“Yes, he was,” I said. “If I was faced with some of the same situations he was—people beating me, throwing things at me, cursing me, spitting on me—I don’t know if I could stay nonviolent, not as a matter of philosophy.”
“I know what you mean,” he said. “I once spent an entire night in Mississippi in 1964 arguing that point with him. I’m nonviolent if I have to be, but I don’t want anybody to ever make the mistake of thinking they could hit me and get away with it.”
“Brother, that’s where I’m at,” I said. “But I had the deepest respect and love for him.”
When we got to the Boston Garden I could see that people were coming in droves to get refunds on their tickets because they’d heard it was going to be on TV live. They didn’t want to be out that night, and if they could see it free, it made sense to them to get refunds. The Garden had also stopped selling any more tickets. Now things were really a mess. For the first time I got really mad.
“Without my permission this thing has been announced, and the announcement has now had the clear effect of killing the gate. I would at least have been able to get through to the fourteen or fifteen thousand young people who would have been here. I think it would have made a difference. But now I’m going to play to an empty house; I’m going to have to pay for it myself, and the thing can’t even be seen on television. The people who had tickets and the people who are excited about seeing it at home are going to be very angry. Instead of cooling things off, it’s going to heat them up. The whole thing is a disaster. I want to stop riots, not start them.”
I didn’t blame Atkins. He was a good man and wasn’t responsible for the mess. He wanted to try to fix it some way, and so did I. In a few hours people were going to turn on their TV sets expecting to see James Brown.
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll do everything I can to get released from my contract so I can be on television here tonight. It’s not going to be easy this late on a Friday, but I’m going to try. Now tell me what you’re going to do about the losses you’re inflicting on me.”
“I’ll undertake to see that the city guarantees the gate,” he said.
“Fair enough,” I said. “Let’s get to it.”
We found an office and got on the phones. I called my people in New York, and he tried to locate the mayor. I told my people to do whatever was necessary to get the release and have the TV people call me immediately if there was any problem. Within an hour they had it worked out. I told Atkins. He told me he was having trouble getting the mayor to go along. The mayor said to him, “We’re crazy to even be talking about this. If it ever gets out that we were discussing paying the city’s money to some rock ’n’ roll singer, we’re both through in politics.” The mayor hadn’t been mayor that long, but people were already talking about running him for vice president.
I could see Atkins felt bad about the whole situation. I believe he was starting to feel used. He got back on the phone with the mayor and told him I had acted in good faith from the very first and that the city had caused the problem and ought to solve it. Finally, the mayor agreed—but he didn’t want to. Then, I understand, they had a very interesting discusson about what it meant to guarantee the gate. Atkins told him it would be the difference between what we took in at the box office and the amount we would have taken in based on a sellout. The mayor didn’t like that either, and Atkins had to explain to him that I would have sold it out. When Atkins told me that we had an agreement, I was very appreciative. I would have gone on and done the show anyway and taken the losses, but by then I thought the city ought to do something right, so I accepted the offer.
I went to my dressing room and changed, the band set up, and the TV people finished getting the cameras in place. Even with all the announcements about the concert being televised, about two thousand people showed up at the Garden. The mayor showed up, too, wanting to go on the air to ask for calm. That was fine with me. Atkins introduced me, and I introduced the mayor. I think I even called him a “swinging cat.”
“All of us are here tonight to listen to a great talent,” he said, “but we’re also here to pay tribute to one of the greatest of Americans—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Twenty-four hours ago Dr. King died for all of us, black and white, that we may live together in harmony, without violence, and in peace. I’m here to ask for your help—let’s make Dr. King’s dream a reality in Boston. No matter what any other community might do, we in Boston will honor Dr. King in peace.”
I said I seconded that. “Let’s not to anything to dishonor Dr. King,” I said. “Stay home. You kids, especially, I want you to think about what you’re doing. Think about what Dr. King stood for. Don’t just react in a way that’s going to destroy your community.”
Throughout the show, between songs, I talked about Dr. King and urged the people to stay calm. I announced a song title and tried to work the title into a little rap about Dr. King and the whole situation. I talked about my own life and where I’d come from. At one point, when I was reminiscing about Martin, I started to cry—just a few tears rolling out, you know, nothing anybody could really see—but it was like it was all starting to really sink in what we lost. But I pulled myself together—I thought that would do the most good—and went on with the show.
“I’m still a soul brother,” I said at one point, “and you people have made it possible for me to be a first-class man in all respects. I used to shine shoes in front of a radio station. Now I own radio stations. You know what that is? That’s Black Power.”
While the show was going on, the mayor and others backstage were monitoring the situation around the city. The police said the streets in Roxbury were almost empty. Not only was there no trouble, there were fewer people out than there would be ordinarily. Police said it was eerie. It was working so well that somebody got the idea of showing the whole thing over again as soon as we finished. I said that was fine with me. Near the end of the program I announced that the whole thing would be repeated immediately.
When we went into our finale, some of the fans at the Garden jumped up on the stage. They started dancing and shaking hands with me. That upset the police. They started to move in. I knew that all it would take to destroy everything I’d been trying to do all night long was for there to be an incident with the police and have it televised. I stopped the music and asked the police to back off. “I’m all right,” I said, “I’m all right. I want to shake their hands.” I shook some more hands and then asked the people politely to leave the stage. They did, and we finished the show without any problem. As soon as we finished, the television station started running a complete tape of the show. It wasn’t over until two o’clock in the morning. By that time the danger was past. Boston got through the weekend almost without any trouble at all.
Washington, D.C., wasn’t so lucky. There was looting and burning all over the city Thursday and Friday nights. They had a curfew, but nobody paid any attention to it. They had something like three hundred fires the first two nights. The burned-out buildings were collapsing and injuring people. Over two thousand people were arrested, and one person was killed Thursday and four more the next night.
Stokely was there, going around the streets trying to cool things off, I think. But it was kind of strange. I heard he was talking at Howard University on Friday and kept telling the people, “Stay off the streets if you don’t have a gun because there’s going to be shooting.” He said it over and over, and then he whipped out his own gun and showed it to the crowd.
On Saturday they called out twelve thousand troops and put them all around the city. That morning Mayor Walter Washington and some of the other officials decided to ask me to come down there. They called Dewey Hughes, the news director of station WOL, who got in touch with my people. By that time I had received several requests like that from different cities, but I went to Washington because it was really the symbol of the whole country.
I couldn’t believe the destruction: buildings smoking, smashed glass all over the streets, stores with their windows busted out. I don’t think I ever saw anything like it until I got to Vietman. “Soul Brother” was written on many black-owned stores to protect them, but in a lot of cases it didn’t do any good. They were looted, too. What disturbed me the most was the people dying. I didn’t want to see any more people die, white or black.
I went on live television from the Municipal Center. “I know how everybody feels,” I said. “I feel the same way. But you can’t accomplish anything by blowing up, burning up, stealing, and looting. Don’t terrorize. Organize. Don’t burn. Give kids a chance to learn. Go home. Look at TV. Listen to the radio. Listen to some James Brown records. The real answer to race problems in this country is education. Not burning and killing. Be ready. Be qualified. Own something. Be somebody. That’s Black Power.”
I talked a lot about Martin, too, like I did in Boston. “He was our hero. We have an obligation to try to fulfill his dream of true brotherhood. You can’t do that with violence.”
When I got through, I met with the city officials and then went on WOL radio to make some more appeals. While I was there, Lady Bird Johnson called me to say thanks. Her daughter, Mrs. Luci Nugent, called a little later. I think that was an audience the station didn’t usually get.
My next gig was in Rochester, so I went there ahead of time and went on the air to try to cool things down. I was glad to do it. I was glad to do it in all those cities. I would have gone to more if I could. Nobody gained anything from all that destruction. I knew it then, but a lot of people didn’t like the kind of things I was saying at that time. I think they understand now.