On the outskirts of Memphis he found the New Rebel Motel and checked in. No one would report seeing Ray leave Room 34. At 10:20, during his evening rounds, night clerk Ivan Well would note that lights were burning brightly in Room 34. Ray may have been watching television. If so, he might have seen the late evening news on Channel Five, which reported King’s arrival in Memphis that morning. A clip of the footage showed King entering Room 306 at the Lorraine.32
Chapter 14
Summoning Dr. King
And so I call upon labor as the historic ally of the underprivileged and oppressed to join with us in this present struggle to redeem the soul of America.
—MLK, speaking to the Illinois State AFL-CIO, Springfield, Illinois, October 7, 1965
WHILE JAMES EARL RAY was holed up in the New Rebel Motel and a thunderstorm was raging outside, hundreds of strikers and their supporters were filtering into Mason Temple to hear King speak. They clustered in the front section, shedding their rain-spattered jackets as they took their seats. Looming above them was a raised platform from which King would speak. All eyes were turned expectantly toward the front. King was not yet there.
Almost lost in the overwhelmingly African American crowd was a sprinkling of white faces. Mike Cody, the young white lawyer assisting Lucius Burch to fight the federal injunction against King, was in the central, main-floor section near the podium. That section of the auditorium was packed with people. Cody would remember the air feeling stuffy, a sense magnified by the fury of the storm outside, its thunder and lightning stifling the crowd’s murmuring to speakers’ remarks from the podium.1
On this Wednesday night, though, the crowd filled at most half the seats in the vastness of Mason Temple. Estimates of the turnout would range from two thousand to four thousand.2 In its edition the following morning the Commercial Appeal would term the audience “disappointingly small.”
The sparse turnout was a setback for the garbage workers, who had little reason to believe that their strike would end with a favorable outcome anytime soon. If they were losing heart, they were not without hope. They had faith that the man they knew reverently as Dr. King might somehow shift the momentum of the strike to save the day. (The honorific recognized the doctorate in systematic theology King earned at Boston University in 1955.)
Union leader Joe Warren would say: “We ain’t never had a man, black or white [who was the equal of Dr. King].”3 Taylor Rogers, another garbage worker in the crowd, would remember waiting eagerly to hear King speak again. Rogers had thrilled to King’s speech on March 18. “It had ignited a much needed spark,” he would later recall.4
The March 18 speech had boosted the strikers’ spirits at a critical moment. Some workers who were initially on strike but who had returned to their jobs were so stirred by King’s words that they had rejoined the strikers’ ranks. Now Rogers was expecting another speech packed with power and emotion. He was praying that King’s return to Memphis marked a turning point that would lead to victory for the strikers.
As the rally was getting under way, the storm bearing down on Memphis was lashing King’s motel room with torrents of rain. He could hear the roar of thunder and see fearsome lightning strikes through the motel window. Worse, the scream of sirens continued to warn of tornadoes (which would strike nearby areas in Arkansas and West Tennessee, destroying houses and leaving two people dead and many injured).
Some Memphians were hunkered down at home. There were reasons other than the storm to stay put. For one, at 7:30 p.m., a revue of the talent acts in the upcoming Miss Memphis Pageant would be on television.
Mayor Loeb too was at home that night. Frank McRae telephoned him to tell his pal that he ought to expect a visit on Friday morning from a biracial delegation of Memphis pastors. The clergymen would be coming to city hall to question the mayor’s unyielding attitude toward the strike. McRae asked if the mayor would receive the clergymen. “Fine,” Loeb replied. “Be glad to see you, Frank. But you’re going to waste your time, and all you’re going to do is get yourselves in trouble with your congregations, and you’re going to be misunderstood. You’re not going to change my mind one way or another.”5
Compared to many houses, Mason Temple offered a safe haven from tornadoes. But behind its brick facade it was nothing fancy. The seats were hard, straight-back, wooden chairs arrayed in semicircular rows under a lattice of steel girders. The official capacity was seventy-five hundred. Two or three thousand more, some standing, had somehow crammed into its two levels, a ground floor and balcony, for King’s speech on March 18.
Entering the thick of a bitter labor strike like the one in Memphis was a rare, almost unprecedented step for King to take. Once, in 1964, he had briefly joined a picket line of workers on strike against a Scripto, Inc., facility in his hometown of Atlanta.6 For years he had courted unions in other ways. In a landmark pro-labor speech at the National AFL-CIO Convention at Bal Harbour, Florida, in 1961, King had proclaimed common cause between the labor and civil rights movements. On that occasion, he heralded the potential for unions to improve the wages and working conditions of African Americans. “If the Negro Wins, Labor Wins” was the title of the speech.7
A few unions with large black memberships had supported the SCLC financially. The United Packinghouse Workers of America had been a steady source of funds for the organization’s often-depleted coffers. Walter Reuther of the United Automobile Workers was a fervent backer, and his union had been a major benefactor.8
But King’s gratitude toward the labor movement had its limits. Many unions, particularly in the South, excluded blacks from membership and denied them apprenticeship training and vocational education.9
