“Coleen challenged me, too, right here in this room. Of course, she was not aware of all that you know.” He paused. “She called me a liar when I told her that I was given the coin by someone else. Which probably only propelled her to make the call to Valdez even quicker. I handled the situation with her terribly. I’ve decided to handle this one better.”
He motioned and we entered a dining room filled with a shiny mahogany table, four chairs, and a sideboard. The windows, sheathed in opaque curtains, allowed in only a halo of late-afternoon sun. Atop the table sat an old reel-to-reel tape recorder. I hadn’t seen one since I was a kid. Cassettes and CDs were the norm now. I noticed that a half-full reel was already threaded to a blank spool.
“I need to explain a few things,” Foster said. “Some of which we discussed in Micanopy, some we did not.”
I recalled the conversation.
“The years 1965 and ’66 were relatively calm for Martin. After the incident with the lurid recordings sent to the King house, the FBI seemed to keep their distance. But when Martin came out against the Vietnam War in April of ’67, the FBI again increased their surveillance. Hoover also gradually became terrified of a messiah who might unify and electrify the militant black nationalist movement. Jansen spoke of that to me. Malcom X could have been that messiah, but he was killed. Hoover was deathly afraid that Martin would abandon his obedience to nonviolence and embrace black nationalism, becoming their messiah. Of course, that would have never happened. It ran contrary to everything Martin believed. But Hoover didn’t know Martin Luther King Jr.”
“That may explain why they wanted him dead,” I said. “But it doesn’t explain why you wanted him dead.”
“It actually doesn’t explain their motives, either. Martin always sought to work with the federal government, not against it. Federal judges were our closest allies. The federal government was all we had in the fight with state and local authorities. Martin was no danger to the United States. He was liberal to moderate compared with Stokely Carmichael, Malcolm X, or Roy Wilkins. Hoover had the situation read all wrong.”
“Hoover hated King. It was personal between them.”
He nodded. “We know that now. In ’62, when Martin questioned the FBI’s credibility and motives on civil rights, he made an enemy for life.”
Foster pointed toward me.
“But the differing sexual mores between the two men certainly came into play. Hoover was either asexual or homosexual. We’ll never know for sure. Martin was pure heterosexual. He loved women. He routinely cheated on his wife, and that repulsed Hoover. To him it showed a man who could not be trusted by anyone. Martin was greatly conflicted by that weakness, knowing it was a contradiction to all he preached. But he accepted the flaw as a human frailty.”
I wondered about the point of all this but kept my mouth shut.
“By the fall of 1967, Martin was in dire trouble,” Foster said. “He’d been working nonstop for twelve years, and the strain had taken an enormous toll. He smoked, drank, and downed sleeping pills almost every day. His marriage was crumbling, and his criticisms of the Vietnam War cost him valuable allies, which included the president of the United States. He was no longer welcome at the White House. His base of support, which had once been enormous, had eroded. Nonviolence was losing its appeal, dismissed by many blacks as out of touch. George Wallace was running for president, and his segregationist message had begun to take hold. Martin felt frustrated, like all of his work had been in vain. A great depression came over him.”
I could see that the memories were painful. Whatever was racking this man’s conscience seemed to be finally bubbling to the surface. His expression, tone, even his posture, all signaled that he was telling the truth.
“In January of ’68, Martin told Coretta about his love affairs. She’d always known in her heart, even before the FBI sent those tapes to their house three years before, that he’d wandered from the marriage. They’d been steadily growing apart. What many never realized, for all his progressiveness on race, was that Martin was a chauvinist at home. He thought a woman’s place was raising children. Coretta desired a more active role. She wanted to be out on the road with him. He lived in the spotlight, which to a degree she resented. Money was also an issue. He took little salary from the SCLC and accepted no gifts of cash from anyone. He even donated the $54,000 he won for the Nobel Peace Prize to civil rights groups. She wanted it kept as a college fund for their children. They never took a family vacation and rarely went out socially together. His life was the movement, but the movement was leaving him behind.”
I’d never heard these details before on King.
“When we first met you asked me what Martin was like. I told you fiery, with an ego. He liked recognition, adulation, and respect. That’s all true. I remember in early ’68 when a Gallup poll showed that he was no longer in the top ten of admired Americans. That hurt him deeply. By then, SCLC fund-raising was dropping because of his antiwar stance. Universities began to withdraw their lecture invitations. No publisher was eager to sign on with him. Above all, the civil rights movement had split into two factions. One that favored civil disobedience and nonviolence, the other pushing for more militant acts. It hurt to his core that violence was winning out. By the time we arrived in Memphis on April 3, 1968, Martin was politically dead.”
I pointed at the tape recorder. “What is this?”
“In a moment,” Foster said. “You must understand some things first.”
I nodded, conceding that this was his show.
“You heard on the cassette tape when I told Jansen about the March 30 meeting in Atlanta of the SCLC leadership. Everyone was there. Tempers flared. Martin wanted to go back to Memphis, then on to the DC Poor People’s March. Everyone else favored another course. He stormed from the building, angry, more so than I’ve ever seen. A few hours later he called and said he was going to come by my house. He came, and we spoke for about an hour. He brought a recorder and taped every word.”
A tight feeling grabbed my throat.
“He wanted there to be no questions. No misunderstandings. He assumed my house was not being bugged, and it wasn’t.” He pointed at the machine. “This is the original tape from that day.”
He sat at the table.
I did, too.
Chapter Fifty-eight
King: Ben, it’s been a year since I stood in the pulpit of the Riverside Church and denounced the war. Three-quarters of America now thinks I was wrong to do that. Nearly 60 percent of Negroes agree with them.
Foster: When have you ever been motivated by public opinion? This whole movement runs counter to everything popular in this country.
King: “You’re a preacher, not a politician. Don’t overstep.” “You’re a Nobel laureate with opinions on race relations that people all over the world listen to.” “A leader of your people.” “Why risk all that by taking a stand on an issue that is irrelevant to your purpose.” Those are the questions I’ve been asked over and over.
[PAUSE]
King: For the past year, I’ve asked myself the same questions. Was I wrong, Ben? Did all common sense leave me? With all my being I believe the war is wrong. It would have been a sin to remain silent. The worst part, though, is how the war protests have nearly all turned violent. I understand why that has happened. Frustration has brought forth an idea that the solution resides in violence. I simply cannot get across to those young people that I embrace everything they feel. It’s just tactics we can’t agree on. I feel their rage, their pain. But the system is choking them, and us, to death.
Foster: It can’t be the entire system. Parts have worked in our favor. The other parts you can fix.
King: No. I can’t. I’ve tried and look where we are. The reality is we live in a failed system. Capitalism will never permit an even flow of economic resources. A privileged few will be rich beyond conscience, and almost all others are doomed to be poor at some level.
Foster: But we’ve had successes. Desegregation is happening.
King: I’ve come to believe that we are integrating into a burning house.