Redemption

whatever the extent of his wife’s knowledge of King’s extramarital relations, he could not avoid self-reproach. The guilt about his being a “sinner,” as he would put it, appeared to be causing him great distress by the winter of 1968. As a matter of religious principle, he subscribed to the biblical prohibition against sex outside marriage.³³ In a sermon at Ebenezer on March 4 his feelings gushed forth in self-condemnation, though he left the details to the congregation’s imagination. The sermon, based on a biblical passage about King David of Israel not fulfilling his dream of building a temple in Jerusalem, dealt with the regret that comes from falling short of one’s standards. He told his parishioners that they need not “go out this morning saying that Martin Luther King is a saint” but rather that he was a “sinner like all of God’s children.”³⁴

The gnawing guilt over his sinful lapses, along with the marital tensions in his life, only added to the strain on him as he confronted the crisis in Memphis. According to David Garrow, some of King’s aides saw King’s marital troubles as an important factor contributing to the depths of despair into which he sank after the rioting in the Tennessee city.³⁵

Chapter 18

Invaders’ Exit

It would be an act of romantic illusions for the Negro to feel that he can win a violent revolution.

—MLK, speaking at an SCLC retreat in Atlanta, January 15, 1968

THE INVADERS WERE ON King’s mind as he dragged himself out of bed on Thursday morning. He struggled to his feet for a brief meeting with his staff.

His aides reported back that their meetings with the Invaders the day before had not produced a clear-cut pledge from the Black Power group to cooperate with King on terms that were acceptable to him. The Invaders were still pressing hard for money as a condition of their support, and they were not clearly disavowing violence.

The haggling seemed nonstop. King’s patience was wearing thin, his trust in the Black Power group ebbing.¹ He asked his staff to redouble their efforts to bring the Invaders around. Still weary from too little sleep, he returned to bed for more rest.²

Refreshed by the catnap, King left his room to look for Dorothy Cotton. A deeply committed civil rights activist, she was an integral part of his staff in Atlanta. And in Memphis, she had a key role to play.

Cotton was thirty-eight, a year younger than King. Round-cheeked and bright-eyed, quick to laugh, she favored stylish dresses and dangling earrings. She had grown up poor in segregated Goldsboro, North Carolina. Working to pay her way, she earned an undergraduate degree at Virginia State College in Petersburg, Virginia, and a master’s degree in education from Boston University.

She joined the SCLC staff in 1960 and threw herself heart and soul into the movement. She relocated to Atlanta, leaving her husband of five years, George Cotton, behind in Petersburg.

King asked her to head educational programs at the SCLC. Her specialty was training civil rights activists in the philosophy and methods of nonviolent protest. In that role she helped to organize workshops that trained the members of the so-called Children’s Crusade, the young people who took to the streets during the Birmingham campaign in 1963.

Now King intended to repeat the strategy of Birmingham, at least to the extent that time allowed, in Memphis. He was relying on Cotton to organize workshops in Memphis that would train people in nonviolence. But she had less than a week to do in Tennessee what it had taken many weeks to accomplish in Alabama. Recruiting the Invaders was a central part of King’s strategy. He was asking the Invaders to cooperate with the SCLC in endorsing nonviolence and helping to build “a larger coalition across the city,” as Cotton would put it years later.³

On that Thursday morning, King found Cotton in her room at the Lorraine. She was seething from his not having met her for a snack the night before, as they had agreed. Now she confronted him. They argued.⁴ Furious, she told him she was leaving for the airport to catch a plane back to Atlanta. “Get a later plane,” she would quote him as saying. She left anyway. In Cotton’s memoir, published decades later, she said that she had left Memphis to attend a meeting in Atlanta.⁵

Lawyers and witnesses, meanwhile, were convening at the US District Court in downtown Memphis for a hearing on Judge Brown’s injunction. If Brown did not vacate the order before Monday and King stuck to his vow to march anyway, the judge was likely to find him in contempt. King could wind up in jail. To jail him and prevent him from marching would escalate the already heated racial tensions in Memphis.

The hearing opened with the testimony of Frank Holloman. “I am convinced that Dr. Martin Luther King, his leaders or any others cannot control a massive march of this kind in this city or elsewhere,” the police director stated.⁶ He went on, “I fear for the lives and property of the citizens of Memphis during the march.”

When it was the turn of Andrew Young and James Lawson to testify later that day, they would reassure the judge that King and his aides meant to keep the march orderly and nonviolent. Their lawyer, Lucius Burch, urged the judge to allow the march to proceed under King’s guidance. Surely, he argued, violence would be less likely to erupt with King in charge than if thousands were to march without him.

Back at the Lorraine, meanwhile, King’s aides were resuming negotiations with the Invaders. The Black Power group included Charles Cabbage and a half dozen others. In the SCLC delegation were Bevel, Williams, Orange, and Lee.

A FBI field report, drawing on the observations of undercover police officer Marrell McCollough, who was in the meeting, would describe what happened. The lanky Cabbage did most of the talking in his sonorous drawl. He repeated the group’s willingness to serve as parade marshals. But