The crowd is silent as he begins his speech. He can hear them fidgeting. The applause is light and polite, when it comes at all. King reminds them that America is still a segregated nation, one hundred years after the slaves were freed. It is a powerful thought, but his matter-of-fact delivery robs the words of their full impact.
King rambles on, the sound system carrying his voice out across the Mall and television cameras transporting his voice and image into homes across the nation.
John Kennedy is considered a great orator for his speeches’ carefully chosen words and phrasing, as is Dr. King. But on his best days, Reverend King takes his oration to an even higher level than Kennedy by adding the techniques learned from countless Sunday mornings speaking from the pulpit: thunder and whisper as his voice rises and falls, the changing pace as the reverend speeds up and slows down to make the listener hang on his every word, the stretching or shortening of syllables to accentuate a point. King, in particular, is fond of coming down hard on the letter
Normally, King’s delivery is fearless and sure, transforming words of damning rage into a hopeful prayer.
But today his delivery is flat. His long syllables and prepared words sound no different from those of any of the day’s other speakers. Martin Luther King Jr., truth be told, is dull.
He talks about poverty and the fact that America separates black from white. Today is the eighth anniversary of Emmett Till’s murder. King’s words testify that little has changed since then.
Many in the crowd have traveled hundreds of miles to be here today. They are black and they are white. The day has been long, filled with hours of speeches—many of which have been downright boring.
But Martin Luther King Jr. is the man they’ve waited to hear. And the fatigue and the heat and the claustrophobia are all forgotten as these 250,000 people strain to hear his every word. They have come for the cause of civil rights, but they have also come to hear the great orator shape this day for them. As they listen to the speech, King’s mellifluous voice carrying out over the reflecting pools between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, the audience knows in their hearts that King will rally them to greatness.
This is their expectation: that before this speech is done, Martin Luther King Jr. will say something so powerful that this day will never be forgotten.
The crowd listens closely, but as King’s speech passes the nine-minute mark, he has said almost nothing that excites them.
Two minutes later all that changes.
* * *
Meanwhile, in the White House, John Kennedy watches King’s speech on television. It is exactly three weeks since Jackie went into labor with baby Patrick. She is mourning in seclusion on Cape Cod, her easy smile replaced by a solemn downward gaze and her eyes hidden behind oversize sunglasses. The president has been vigilant about breaking away from Washington whenever possible to be with her.
But today, a Wednesday, is one day he absolutely must be in Washington, D.C. Bobby Kennedy and their brother Teddy, the new senator from Massachusetts, join JFK as he watches King begin speaking.
The attorney general is a major advocate for the civil rights movement, but his relationship with Dr. King is strained. Part of this is because he has heard J. Edgar Hoover’s wiretap recordings of King, and part is because Bobby is being protective of the president.
Since King announced the March on Washington three months ago, it is Bobby who has become its reluctant organizer. He knows that his brother’s foray into civil rights will fail if the rally at the Lincoln Memorial turns hostile or is sparsely attended. So the attorney general, working closely with his staff at the Justice Department, has quietly guided the march into a shape that can be easily controlled. He made sure that the Lincoln Memorial was the site of King’s speech, because it’s bordered on one side by the Potomac River and on the other by the Tidal Basin. This would make crowd control smoother in case of riots and also keep marchers away from the Capitol Building and the White House.
Bobby ensured that Washington’s police dogs were not on the scene, because dogs would remind people of Bull Connor and Birmingham. He saw to it that all bars and liquor stores were closed for the day, portable toilets were available to avoid his brother’s fear about public urination, and that troops were on standby at nearby military bases in case the crowd turned into a mob. To avoid the appearance that the civil rights movement was supported only by blacks, Bobby worked with the United Auto Workers Union to encourage attendance by its white members. And he even arranged for an aide to position himself below the speaker’s platform with a copy of Mahalia Jackson’s “He’s Got the Whole World (in His Hands)” to be played over the sound system the instant one of the day’s speakers said something inflammatory or anti-American.
Nothing can be done that reflects poorly on the White House or its belated push for civil rights.
And all this, to support Martin Luther King Jr., a man of whom Bobby acidly commented just last night, “He’s not a serious person. If the country knew what we know about King’s goings-on, he’d be finished.”
Just as the Kennedys would be finished if the country knew about the president’s goings-on.
So it is that the president and his brothers watch King’s speech with great interest, praying that their unlikely political ally will deliver on the promise of this great march on Washington.
* * *
“We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote,” Martin Luther King Jr. preaches—and that is exactly what he is doing right now, on the verge of swerving away from his prepared speech to quote from the Old Testament book of Amos.
King’s anxiety is so great that he often develops painful stomach problems before a big event. But now his nervousness is gone. His voice begins to rise. His long syllables become staccato. He hits hard on the letter
Looking out across the Mall, King can see that the weariness of those hundreds of thousands listening to his speech has vanished. His voice rises. He has spoken in paragraphs until now, but, as the words begin to flow, those paragraphs become simple, powerful declarative sentences.
Martin Luther King Jr. has found his rhythm.
Gone is the monotone. Gone is the matter-of-fact delivery. He stands in the pulpit now, a minister exhorting his flock. King’s voice turns golden.
