Martin Luther King Jr.: Never Again Where He
Was
The jetliner left Atlanta and raced through the night toward Los Angeles.
From his window seat, the black man gazed down at the shadowed outlines of the
Appalachians, then leaned back against a white pillow. In the dimmed cabin
light, his dark, impassive face seemed enlivened only by his big, shiny,
compelling eyes. Suddenly, the plane spuddered in a pocket of severe
turbulence. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. turned a wisp of a smile to his
companion and said: "I guess that's Birmingham down below."
It was, and the reminder of Vulcan's city set King to talking quietly of
the events of 1963. "In 1963," he said, there arose a great Negro
disappointment and disillusionment and discontent. It was the year of
Birmingham, when the civil rights issue was impressed on the nation in a way
that nothing else before had been able to do. It was the most decisive year in
the Negro's fight for equality. Never before had there been such a coalition of
conscience on this issue."
Symbol of Revolution. In 1963, the centennial of the Emancipation
Proclamation, that coalition of conscience insatiably changed the course of
U.S. life. Nineteen million Negro citizens forced the nation to take stock of
itself in the Congress as in the corporation, in factory and field and pulpit
and playground, in kitchen and classroom. The U.S. Negro, shedding the thousand
fears that have encumbered his generations, made 1963 the year of his outcry
for quality, of massive demonstrations, of wins and speeches and street
fighting, of soul searching in the suburbs and psalm singing in the jail cells.
And there was Birmingham with its bombs and snarling dogs; its shots in
the night and death in the streets and in the churches; its lashing fire hoses
at washed human beings along slippery avenues without washing away the dignity;
its men and women pinned to the ground by officers of the law...this was the
Negro revolution. Birmingham was its main battleground, and Martin Luther King
Jr., the leader of the Negroes in Birmingham, became millions, black and white,
in South and North, the symbol of that revolution--and the Man of the Year.
King is in many ways the unlikely leader of an unlikely organization--the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a loose alliance of 100 or so
church-oriented groups. King has neither the quiet brilliance nor the sharp
administrative capabilities of the N.A.A.C.P.'s Roy Wilkins. He has none of the
sophistication of the National Urban League's Whitney Young Jr., lacks Young's
experience in dealing with high echelons of the U.S. business community. He has
neither the inventiveness of CORE's James Farmer nor the raw militancy of
SNICK's John Lewis nor the bristling wit of Author James Baldwin. He did not
make his mark in the entertainment field, where talented Negroes have long been
prominent, or in the sciences and professions where Negroes have, almost
unnoticed, been coming into their own. He earns no more money than some
plumbers ($10,000 a year), and possesses little in the way of material things.
He presents an unimposing figure: he is 5 ft. 7 in., weighs a
heavy-chested 173 lbs., dresses with funereal conservatism (five of six suits
are black, as are most of his neckties). He has very little sense of humor. He
never heard of Y.A. Tittle or George Shearing, but he can discourse by the hour
about Thoreau, Hegel, Kant and Gandhi.
King preaches endlessly about nonviolence, but his protest movements often
lead to violence. He himself has been stabbed in the chest, and physically
attacked three more times; his home has been bombed three times, and he has
been pitched into jail 14 times. His mail brings him a daily dosage of opinion
in which he is by turn vilified and glorified. One letter says: "This isn't a
threat but a promise--your head will be blown off as sure as Christ made green
apples." But another ecstatically calls him a "Moses, sent to lead his people
to the Promised Land of first- class citizenship."
