Even as he was preparing to besiege Washington, King’s political ideology was shifting leftward. He kept his most radical views out of the public eye, but he confided to aides and friends that he had little faith in capitalism to lift people out of poverty. In a private meeting with SCLC staff, in December 1967, he spoke about capitalism and socialism. According to historian David Garrow, King said that he “didn’t believe that capitalism, as it was constructed, could meet the needs of poor people, and that what we might need to look at was a kind of socialism, but a democratic form of socialism.”32
So strongly did he hold that view that he berated Andrew Young for lacking it. King and his close aide were attending a party at Harry Belafonte’s apartment in New York. It was March 27, two days after King’s all-night session with Marian Logan. King was in a sour mood, expressing his sympathy with the rage of inner-city youths and fuming that the “system” was to blame.
Young commented, as quoted by Belafonte in the singer’s memoir: “Well, I don’t know, Martin. It’s not the entire system. It’s only part of it, and I think we can fix that.”
King snapped at him: “I don’t need to hear from you, Andy. I’ve heard enough from you. You’re a capitalist, and I’m not.”33
King objected to the capitalist economic model because he doubted that it alone would spread wealth fairly and widely. His view was not absolute. He valued a zone of private enterprise as a ladder of opportunity for African Americans. Franchising fast-food outlets he saw as one such ladder, as did his friend Judge Ben Hooks of Memphis. In 1968, Hooks and famed gospel singer Mahalia Jackson were building a chain of black-owned chicken restaurants. They had franchised more than twenty of the fast-food outlets under the name of Mahalia Jackson’s Glori-Fried Chicken. According to Hooks, King was intrigued by the Mahalia Jackson concept because he saw it as a potential form of “economic power” enabling African Americans to own franchised businesses.
By the spring of 1968 King was speaking and writing sharply, harshly, to deplore economic injustice. His manner marked a departure from what he had exhibited as a young civil rights leader. The tone of the younger King had been gentle and reassuring. He had talked of goodness as the guiding light of the movement. He had talked of Christian love, the spirit of reconciliation, and the promise of beloved communities. He had endorsed moderation. As he told students at the University of California at Berkeley, in 1957: “If moderation means moving on with wise restraint and calm reasonableness, then moderation is a great virtue.”34
Reassuring words about a commitment to wise restraint would have been welcome to Logan in 1968. King’s dispute with Logan and his caustic words for Young showed how far his center of political gravity had shifted. He and Logan seemed to turn a deaf ear to the other’s arguments. Her haggling with him over the Poor People’s Campaign was a continual burden on him. It was yet another weight on his spirits when he was already feeling crushing pressure from all sides in Memphis.
Chapter 13
The Stalker
To this day the white poor also suffer deprivation and the humiliation of poverty, if not of color.
—MLK, in his book Why We Can’t Wait, published in 1963
DESPITE THE NAME, the New Rebel Motor Hotel was not so much a hotel as a forty-two-room motel on the southern outskirts of Memphis. It stood just inside the city limits facing the road known both as Highway 78 and Lamar Avenue. Highway 78 was a main artery from the Deep South. For travelers from Birmingham (250 miles to the southeast) and Atlanta (155 miles beyond), it offered a straight shot to Memphis.
Looming over the motel was a gleaming, red-and-white sign proclaiming its name. The sign beckoned to travelers arriving from the Deep South, for whom the name must have struck a sympathetic chord. The name New Rebel evoked not just old-fashioned nostalgia but also the defiant battle cry of the old Confederacy. Lest there be any doubt about its down-in-Dixie essence, the motel created its own postcards to underscore the theme. The postcards boasted: “Home of Southern Hospitality.”
It was 7:15 in the evening of April 3, as the sky was turning black and the air blustery, when a Ford Mustang pulled off Highway 78 and halted at the New Rebel. In the dim light the Mustang, a pale yellow, looked white or off-white. On the rear of the car was a red-and-white Alabama license plate. A Mexican visa sticker labeled “Turista” adorned the windshield.
A slender, dark-haired man of medium height exited the Mustang into the chill air and entered the office of the New Rebel. He was of medium height. He had a long, sharp nose and a cleft chin. He had turned forty less than a month before, but he looked at least a few years younger. He was wearing a somber business suit, white shirt, and dark, narrow knit tie.
The man asked the motel’s desk clerk, Henrietta Hagemaster, for a room. The rate was $6.24 a night. On a registration card the man scrawled the name Eric S. Galt and the address 2608 Highland Avenue, Birmingham. He was checked in to Room 34.
The roughhewn twang of the few words the man spoke to Hagemaster seemed to peg him as a Southerner of humble origins. In the months to come, the FBI would interview lots of people who had encountered the man in the months before he arrived in Memphis. Something had been puzzling about him. He did not seem to fit into an obvious occupational category. Probably an accountant, one person said. He looked “for all the world like a preacher,” another said.1
He was not an accountant, a preacher, or a Southerner.
