His was a far-reaching ideology—“revolutionary,” he called it. His vision of the federal government providing a minimal income or guaranteed job for all Americans would have fit neatly into the platform of a European socialist. For the Poor People’s Campaign to succeed, Washington lawmakers had to agree to adopt a system of that kind—a system at odds with the American tradition of free enterprise and limited government. How likely was that to happen?
Even Michael Harrington, the socialist activist and astute writer, had his doubts that King would prevail in Washington. Harrington said that bringing thousands of poor people to lay siege to the government in the name of antipoverty relief could “make a strong moral point,” but he did not think it would “register as a victory in the public eye.”19
King himself doubted he would see the response he desired from Congress and the president. As he confided in Young, he expected the powers that be to come down heavily on him in Washington. He expected that his civil disobedience would land him in jail yet again. He might be there a long time.
Young would remember telling him, “If we get locked up in jail, it’s not going to be any thirty or sixty days. You’re going to get three to five years.”
King replied, “That would be just the right amount of time. We would be strong enough, spiritually, coming out of jail to really transform this nation.”20
Perhaps he knew of the government’s delayed response to the kind of grievance that had triggered the veterans’ Bonus March in Washington in 1932. Though President Hoover had not supported their demand for a bonus and had forcibly removed the veterans from their makeshift camp, their protest may not have been entirely in vain. It may have led Congress to enact educational benefits for World War II veterans in the form of the GI Bill of 1944.
No matter the outcome of the Poor People’s Campaign, King insisted, he would win a moral victory. As he told a union rally in New York City on March 10, 1968, “People ask me, ‘Suppose you go to Washington and you don’t get anything? You ask people and you mobilize and you organize, and you don’t get anything. You’ve been an absolute failure.’ My only answer is that when you stand up for justice, you can never fail.”21
King’s aggressive new posture was exposing him to another risk besides failure. He was issuing an ultimatum: either Washington politicians approve the revolutionary ideology he advocated or his army of poor people would paralyze the business of Washington. He would be more visible and controversial than ever. His tactics were sure to provoke a harsh backlash. The establishment would vilify him, and he knew it. King was putting his life in greater jeopardy, and he knew that too.
At Ebenezer Church on February 4, he preached his own eulogy in what became known as the Drum Major Sermon.22 If his congregants read between the lines, they understood that he was sermonizing about his imminent death and how he had come to terms with it. He began by quoting from the tenth chapter of the Gospel of Mark. It tells of two apostles of Jesus—James and John—seeking to sit beside him in glory. In King’s telling, Jesus responds that “whosoever will be great among you” shall be thy servant, and “whosoever will be the chiefest shall be the servant of all.”
From that homage to humble service to others, as exemplified by Jesus, King drew a moral for himself. He went on to reflect on his low regard for what he called the “drum major instinct.” He conceded, “We all want to be important, to surpass others, to achieve distinction, to lead the parade.” He noted how that instinct can lead people astray in many ways—extravagant spending on cars and houses, self-puffery, crime, false gossip, a racist sense of superiority, and other evils.
Then he turned to his own legacy. That thought had him ruminating about his death, his funeral, and the kind of eulogy he would want. His legacy, he said, he would leave to the Ebenezer congregation to define. Not entirely, though. He implored them to remember him not for his Nobel Peace Prize or his three or four hundred other awards.
No, he cried out, as the sermon reached its climax, if they should remember him as a drum major, he beseeched them to remember him as a drum major for justice and righteousness. His voice taut, he went on to say that if he could do his Christian duty and “bring salvation to a world once wrought, if I can spread the message as the master taught,” then his life would not have been in vain.23
He imagined that he would die with a sense of redemptive virtue. That was the compensation he sought.
– Epilogue –
Eluding a massive manhunt to capture him, JAMES EARL RAY remained at large for sixty-five days after King’s death. On June 8, as he attempted to leave Heathrow Airport in London, bound for Brussels, he was identified and arrested. To avoid a jury trial that might have resulted in his execution, on March 10, 1969, he pleaded guilty in a Memphis courtroom to first-degree murder and was sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison. Three days later, he denied having shot King, claiming that he was the dupe of a conspiracy. Despite intensive investigations by the FBI, a Justice Department task force, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, no specific conspiracy was established, though the congressional committee theorized, based on circumstantial evidence, that some individuals, possibly one or both of Ray’s brothers John and Jerry, might have been coconspirators with him. Ray died in a Nashville prison of kidney failure
