If King’s energy on the road had seemed inexhaustible for many years, it was no longer so. Like any flesh-and-blood mortal, he could not maintain his punishing schedule of speaking engagements and almost incessant travel without a physical cost.
He was pushing himself to the brink of collapse. His doctors had hospitalized him or ordered him to days of bed rest for exhaustion on at least four occasions over the previous four years (in October 1964, February 1965, August 1966, and April 1967).10 By February 1968, the rush to organize the antipoverty campaign was wearing him down to such an alarming extent that he reluctantly heeded his doctor’s advice to rest. Along with Ralph Abernathy, he took a one-week break to recuperate in Acapulco.11
It was not only sheer exhaustion that accounted for King’s sinking spirits. His influence as a political and moral force had peaked in the mid-sixties. He was then riding the crest of a series of triumphs: the electrifying “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington of 1963; the Nobel Peace Prize bestowed on him the next year; and the landmark desegregation and voting-rights legislation enacted by Congress in 1964 and 1965.
His best years seemed behind him. His venture into the more complex racial and political minefield of Chicago had stalled. Rioting was plaguing the nation’s inner cities, as though defying his nonviolent leadership. Young Black Power militants had captured the dynamism of the movement. By 1968 it seemed that he was “old news,” as his friend and financial backer Harry Belafonte would note in a memoir.12 The book King published six months earlier, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?, sold poorly, and many reviewers panned it.13 For the first time in a decade the name of Martin Luther King Jr. did not appear on the Gallup Poll annual list of the ten most admired Americans.14
The turn of events in Memphis was propelling King back into front-page news, abruptly and disastrously. The torrent of adverse publicity was sapping his usual optimism, testing his resilience. “He was very, terribly depressed, a depression that I had never experienced before, and had never seen,” Abernathy would recall.15 Somehow over two soul-searching days back in Atlanta, King overcame the gloom, determined to move ahead. He would not yield to despair. He was returning to Memphis, resolved to lead a corrective march untainted by violence. Or so he desperately hoped.
Once aboard the Eastern jet to Memphis, King and his four aides sat close together. King and Dorothy Cotton were in adjoining seats. Hardly had they settled down before the pilot announced, “I have to ask everyone to leave the plane because Dr. King and some of his staff are on the plane and there has been a bomb threat,” as Cotton recounted years later.16
A wave of fear rippled through the plane, launching the passengers to their feet. “When the pilot made that announcement, we stood up,” Cotton continued, “and I was moving really rather energetically, and I stepped on Martin’s foot. I said, ‘Don’t you think we should move it? There has been a bomb scare,’ and he sort of glared at me.”17
As the other passengers surged down the aisle, King barely moved. Rather than rush off the plane, King “pulled back and let people get off,” Young recalled. That was not how Bernard Lee, who served King as a sort of aide-de-camp and unarmed bodyguard, reacted. Lee hastened toward the exit. He was “the first one off the plane,” said Young. The sight of his bodyguard leaving him behind in that moment of danger had King smiling. It was a moment that he would later play for laughs.18
King’s nonchalance did not surprise Young. Threats against King’s life were an almost constant menace. King had a stock reply to reports of death threats against him. He would say that he received them every day, and he could not worry about them, because no one could stop attempts on his life.
Once King and the other passengers disembarked from the plane, police officers brought dogs aboard to sniff for bombs. A thorough check found nothing suspicious. After an hour’s delay the passengers returned to their seats. King turned to Abernathy. “Well,” he said wryly, “it looks like they won’t kill me this flight.”19
Chapter 2
Detour
And I submit this afternoon that we can end poverty in the United States. Our nation has the resources to do it.
—MLK, speech at Stanford University, April 14, 1967
KING MIGHT HAVE returned to Memphis earlier in his quest to save his reputation. But a critical speaking obligation stood in the way. On March 31, three days before leaving for Memphis, he was in Washington, DC, delivering the Sunday sermon at the Washington National Cathedral. His remarks centered on the Vietnam War and the Poor People’s Campaign, though the crisis in Memphis must have been weighing heavily on him.
The storied cathedral offered him a platform for reaching the political elite of the nation’s capital. It was an occasion to build support for his stands against the war and for far-reaching federal antipoverty legislation. Sunday sermons, of course, were routine for King. So was the mixing of religion and politics whenever he preached themes of social justice.
But this time he was mixing two causes, both hurtling him deeply into two bitter national debates and blurring his image as the nation’s foremost champion of racial desegregation. His high visibility as a zealous foe of the US policy in Vietnam exposed him to attacks on grounds that he had no business expounding on military matters. The plan to besiege the nation’s capital in the name of ending poverty was causing even many of his supporters to reassess their opinions of him.
The Poor People’s Campaign would be like no other he had undertaken. A legion of volunteers would stage weeks, possibly months, of “militant” demonstrations in Washington until lawmakers enacted far-reaching programs for the poor. He was threatening epic disruption
