King nonetheless continued to believe that he could redirect even the angry extremism of Brown’s followers into nonviolent protest to confront the government in Washington. He would convince Black Power militants that his nonviolent movement to end poverty was not meek or passive but a militant civil disobedience. In his history of the SCLC, Fairclough explains King’s strategy this way: “Young blacks could be won to nonviolence, King believed, if they had a chance to join a movement of sufficient militancy and power.”15
Now in Memphis King was assuming that, if he could draw the Invaders into the movement on his terms, they would come to recognize nonviolent protest as a great force for social change. They would recognize his leadership to advance a common purpose. Their cooperation, he imagined, would be the linchpin to keeping the march on April 6 peaceful.
It was a dubious assumption. It was not the Invaders who had broken windows and looted stores on March 28 in Memphis. Few of them were in the marchers’ ranks, according to an FBI after-action report.16 Rather, as James Lawson would say, the rioters were “small time shoplifters and thieves in the Beale Street area who took advantage of the march to loot stores.”17
There was little evidence that the Invaders caused the riot, and they were denying that they had. But they meant for King to believe that they could prevent a riot from happening again. If he believed that, they had bargaining power. An FBI informant close to the Invaders reported: “Cabbage and his group want to give the illusion that they are the only force which can control militant Negro youths in Memphis and can prevent trouble.”18
It did appear that the Invaders had something of a following in the city’s high schools. Some students were intrigued enough by the group’s rhetoric to outfit themselves in jackets emblazoned with the word “Invaders” across the back. The youths wore the jackets “as a symbol of self-identity with Black Power,” not necessarily because they were allied with the Invaders or would follow their instructions, the FBI informant said.19
If King succeeded in recruiting the Invaders to his cause, he expected them to mobilize a significant number of parade marshals. Cabbage was promising twenty-five. But how many could he deliver? His core group totaled only ten to fifteen adherents. It was a loose-knit bunch. There was no membership roll. There were no dues. They had no resources to speak of. They had conferred on Marrell McCollough, the undercover policeman posing as an Invader, the lofty title of minister of transportation. He earned the title because he owned a car.20 “Largely ineffective” was how Robert Blakey, the counsel of a congressional committee that would investigate the Invaders, summed up the militants’ sway over the “younger, more disillusioned” blacks in Memphis.21
By Thursday afternoon, King no longer had any illusions about the Black Power group. He had come to see them as a distraction and a menace. As the staff meeting wound down, King said there was no point in continuing to negotiate. Hosea Williams conceded the point. He left the meeting to look for Charles Cabbage. When he found Cabbage, he delivered a blunt message: the SCLC did not regard the Invaders as trustworthy, and their refusal to renounce violence made them unfit to take part in the march on Monday.22 Williams ordered the Invaders to vacate their motel rooms for arriving guests to occupy.
At 5:50 p.m. all the Invaders spilled out of Room 315, toting bags, and quickly left the Lorraine. They left without paying their room and food costs totaling $167. The SCLC was stuck with the tab.23
In their rush to Memphis neither King nor his staff had had enough time to learn much about the city’s inner workings. King, lacking an understanding of the racial politics of Memphis, had misjudged the Invaders.
Chapter 19
Melancholy Afternoon
I can’t take it anymore. I’m going to the country to stay with one of my members. I need to go to the farm, and I’m going down there.
—MLK, comment to Ralph Abernathy, as he contemplated returning to Memphis, March 30, 1968
THE SURVEILLANCE DETAIL of officers Ed Redditt and Willie Richmond was on the King watch for a second day. They were still entrenched in their observation post in the back of Fire Station #2 across Mulberry Street from the Lorraine Motel. They had observed members of the Invaders and the SCLC staff buzzing from room to room of the motel as they gathered for meetings.1 They would report no sightings of King all morning or afternoon.
King remained in Room 306 for much of the morning, leaving only to confront Dorothy Cotton and eat lunch in the motel dining room. Once he and Abernathy had finished their catfish, they returned to the room. They were hoping for word from Andrew Young about the outcome of the hearing in Judge Brown’s courtroom.
They had heard nothing from Young all morning. They feared that a prolonged hearing meant bad news, that the judge would not vacate the injunction.2 If Young had called, he could have informed them that the testimony by three Memphis police officials had lasted all morning and that Young and Lawson were to testify after a lunch break.
While waiting for word from the courthouse, King busied himself on the phone. He telephoned SCLC headquarters in Atlanta, asking his secretary, Dora McDonald, for messages. He called Harry Wachtel, a back-channel lawyer and confidante of King, at his New York law firm.3 He called Ebenezer to notify church officials about the theme and title of his Sunday sermon. It would reflect his somber mood at the time. The title was: “Why America May Go to Hell.” King had found time to plan the sermon even as he grappled with the crisis in Memphis. He was able to convey a point-by-point preview to McDonald.4
With still no word from Young, King went downstairs to Georgia Davis’s Room 201. His brother, A.D., was already in the
