By speaking out sharply against the Vietnam War, as he had been doing for more than a year, he had plunged into a cauldron of controversy. His critics claimed that no true patriot could slam the nation’s military engagement while hundreds of thousands of American troops were in harm’s way. His plans for the Poor People’s Campaign were arousing more hostility against him. He was threatening to plague lawmakers in Washington with militant civil disobedience until they committed the federal government to an immense program to end poverty. To many Americans he was a radical, a threat to civil order. Many believed he was leading the country into an abyss of strife and chaos. By inserting himself into the Memphis strike, resulting in a march turned riotous, he had aggravated the fears. Now he was returning to Memphis to lead another march and restore his credibility as a nonviolent leader. It would expose him to greater controversy, greater risk. Fearful, but courageous in his resolve, he was flying to Memphis, come what may.
The Tennessee city, as Mark Twain wrote in 1882, was “nobly situated on a commanding bluff” overlooking the majestic Mississippi River.2 For the 60 percent of whites among its total population of six hundred thousand, Memphis had a long, noble tradition, and not just in geography. For them Memphis was a proud Southern city of well-attended churches and well-tended lawns, a paragon of order and civility. At the junction of northwestern Mississippi, Southwestern Arkansas, and southeastern Tennessee, the city stood as the gateway to the Deep South, and it reflected much of that region’s gracious character.
For blacks it was a very different story. Gradual desegregation had been under way since the early 1960s, but the city was still largely divided into two cultures, a dominant class of whites and a subservient class of blacks. The garbage strike, which had begun on February 12, had cast the depth of the racial divide into bold relief. Local historian Joan Beifuss would write that the conflict over the strike had quickly stripped away “the thin veneer of dialogue and handshakes and politeness and kindly interest” and exposed such a “depth of ill will” and “intensity of hostility” as to declare that “the bitterness had always lain somewhere close to the surface.”3
The black community had rallied behind the strike. Henry Loeb, the newly elected white mayor, had the strong backing of the white establishment against the strike, and he had taken a hard line against it. As garbage piled up and the strikers staged demonstrations against Loeb’s hiring of replacement workers, tensions mounted by the day.
King had spoken for the first time in support of the strike at a rally on March 18. He had come back to Memphis ten days later to lead a march. He had been expecting the march to proceed lawfully through downtown streets. Barely had the march begun when it turned violent. Police responded with clubs, tear gas, and guns. Four looters were shot, one fatally. Five police officers were hospitalized, and about sixty other people received medical care for their injuries.4
Splashed on newspapers and TV screens around the country, the story of the Memphis riot was big news. King was outspoken in deploring the violence, which he attributed to a small number of young rowdies who had tagged along behind the great throng of peaceful marchers. At a news conference the next day, he told a reporter for the Commercial Appeal that he had been blindsided. He said that he had had no warning about the potential for violence and had “no part in the planning of the march. Our intelligence was totally nil.” King went on to fault the police for having dealt brutally with many marchers.5
But his credibility as a nonviolent leader who could keep the movement free of violence was under fierce attack. There were potshots from segregationists like Robert Byrd of West Virginia. While not surprising, the invective from the right had more bite than usual. Byrd, then one of the most zealous segregationists in the US Senate, assailed King as a “self-seeking rabble rouser,” as quoted in an FBI memo. If King were allowed to “rabble-rouse” in Washington as he threatened, Byrd declared, the city “may well be treated to the same kind of violence, destruction, looting and bloodshed” that had erupted in Memphis.
The Commercial Appeal echoed Byrd with a scalding editorial on March 30: “Dr. King’s pose as a leader of a non-violent movement has been shattered. He now has the entire nation doubting his word when he insists that his April project—a shanty-town sit-in in the nation’s capital—can be peaceful.” A more sympathetic newspaper, the New York Times, cautioned King in its editorial on the same day against engaging in “emotional demonstrations in this time of civic unrest.”
Worse, King had to contend with spasms of doubt from within the civil rights movement. In 1963 Adam Clayton Powell, the first African American elected to Congress from New York, had hailed him as “probably the greatest human being in the United States today.”6 Now he mocked him as Martin “Loser” King.7 Responding to a reporter’s question about the violent eruption in Memphis, Roy Wilkins, the influential head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, commented about the upcoming antipoverty campaign: “The great danger of Dr. King’s demonstration is that he might not be able to keep control of it.” Privately Wilkins was saying that King ought to cut his losses and scrap the Poor People’s Campaign altogether.8
King himself had his doubts. Like Wilkins, he pondered whether he ought to call the whole Washington thing off. Wouldn’t the rioting in Memphis and attacks against King blunt poor people’s interest in joining the Washington demonstrations? “They will hold back if they think they will be in a campaign that will be taken over by violent elements,” King confided to a close adviser.9 In his despair King thought perhaps he should fast in a show of penance.
