
          Of Movements and a Man.
          By Chalmers, DavidDavid Chalmers
          Vol. 9, No. 3, 1987, pp. 20-22
          
          Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther
King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference. By David J. Garrow. (New York: William Morrow and
Company, Inc., 1986. $800 pp. 19.96)
          Society castrates its saints and turns them into idealized
plaster-cast statuary. In order to live with them, we trivialize their
lives and dilute their message to the point that they no longer make
us uncomfortable. St. Francis, whose radical poverty challenged the
wealth and power of the Church, became the kindly friend of the birds
and animals, and the Martin Luther King of memorial orations and
student papers offers an unthreatening message of love and
non-violence. In the Epilogue to his Pulitzer-prize winning account of
King and the civil rights struggle, David Garrow approvingly quotes
Vincent Harding's complaint that King is being turned into a "rather
smoothed-off respectable national hero." However, if anything
threatens to crack the plaster of that respectability, it is not
King's radicalism, but his humanity. As the recent struggles of
presidential candidates, TV evangelists, the United States Marines,
and the Roman Catholic Church remind us, there are no easy answers to
coming to terms with human sexuality, and there is always the danger
of discrediting information falling into unfriendly hands, in King's
case, the FBI which set out to destroy him.
          At the core of western Christianity is the Jesus who is both
suffering human and son of God, and a deep religious conviction was
the mainstay of King's thirteen-year public ministry. King was
twenty-six in 1955 when he was called to lead the bus boycott in
Montgomery; when he was killed in Memphis, he was thirty-nine. It was
in Montgomery, sitting alone in prayer at his kitchen table, that he
found himself in the voice of Jesus which told him to fight on and
promised "never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No never alone."
From that vision, which echoed through the rest of his life, he came
to accept the role from which he realized he could never escape and
that he foresaw would lead to his death. This acceptance is central to
his life and the account of that ministry which David Garrow
appropriately entitles, Bearing the Cross. Martin Luther King,
Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
          It is a monumental piece of research, based on more than seven
hundred interviews (over two hundred conducted by Garrow himself),
tens of thousands of pages of material obtained from the government
under the Freedom of Information Act (including hundreds of King's
tapped phone conversations), and the careful search of archival and
secondary sources. For years, David Garrow, an associate professor of
political science at the City University of New York, has been the
best-informed and most thoughtful historian of the Southern civil
rights movement, freely sharing his work with other interested
students. His previous studies on Protest at Selma
(1978) and The FBl and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1981)
also helped prepare the ground for Bearing the
Cross.
          Although the Pulitzer award was for biography rather than in the
history category, a shift made by the governing board, Garrow is
basically interested only in King's life in the civil rights
movement. Until his death, first the Montgomery Improvement
Association (MIA) and then the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC) were his life, and his, theirs. What was going on in
Washington, Mississippi, Chicago, in the King family, and elsewhere,
are presented only from the angle of his participation; the rest
simply lies outside of the scope of Garrow's book.
          From this "movement book," much can be learned about movements for
social change. Overshadowing everything else is how difficult it was
to keep going. Unlike a corporation, political party, or government,
it did not sell a product candidate, or the exercise of public
power. There was no 

firmly institutionalized structure and
source of income. The SCLC was essentially one man; King was its
policy, image, and, often, funding. He had to make the decisions, give
the word on the strategy of the campaigns and the tactics in the
streets, reconcile the conflicts within SCLC and between it and SNCC,
the NAACP, and the power structures of Birmingham, Chicago, and
Washington. Often the fees for his speeches were SCLC's major source
of income. As a result, he was continuously in motion, not just in the
South but across the country, speaking, preaching, fund raising,
planning, conferring, negotiating, persuading. Mixed in with these
were marches, court appearances, jail time, and violence. He was the
recipient of blows, missiles, and a stab wound close to the heart,
death threats, and pressure from the FBI. The combination of all of
these repeatedly brought him to the point of physical and emotional
exhaustion.
          The civil rights movement was threatening not only to white
supremacy, but to black arrangements as well. This meant the hostility
of the NAACPs Roy Wilkins as well as the National Baptist Convention's
Joseph Jackson. Cooperation often proved difficult for black ministers
more accustomed to domination over their own congregations. The
jealousy of Ralph Abernathy, the prickly independence of Fred
Shuttlesworth, the imperiousness of Wyatt Walker, the uncertainty
about Jesse Jackson's motives, the alienation of E.D. Nixon and Rosa
Parks, and the hostility of Ella Baker produced problems, and there
was always conflict between top staffers to be addressed. In his
emotionally demanding world, King was closest to his old Montgomery
friend Abernathy and particularly came to depend on Andrew Young and
Stanley Levison.
          Levison's recent ties with the Communist Party were the occasion
for FBI surveillance that wrapped itself around and sought to destroy
King's life. Despite warnings from the Justice Department and the
White House, King maintained his relationship with Levison. By
Garrow's account, Levison served King well as editor, advisor, and
friend, showing no signs of a separate agenda.

          After Selma, Levison summed up for King the limitations that the
civil rights movement faced. The American people were "not ready for a
radical restructuring of the economic order." While they would react
strongly against "shocking violence and gross injustice," they were
not prepared to make deep changes in order to free the Negro, and the
movement had to act within this limit. It was King who was becoming
more radical than Levison, but the question was always how to
proceed. He never deviated from his commitment to non-violence, but he
came to realize that it had to be a political strategy as well as
moral persuasion. By the mid-sixties, no one any longer talked about
"redeeming the soul" of the South or of America. The concern was with
the power to make changes.
          The failure of the Albany campaign in 1962 had been a particularly
instructive experience. The key to change was "federal commitment" and
provoking violence was the essential way to force its hand. A "Bull"
Connor or a Sheriff Jim Clark was necessary to dramatize the
situation, bring tensions to the surface, reach a national government
that placed "order" above social justice. Action had to be
focused. Specific targets were necessary. Attacking segregation in
general was too broad. Where voting strength was lacking, it was a
mistake to go after the politicians. The economic power structure was
more crucial and the local business community could be frightened by
the threat of black disorder. Not only were school children used as
demonstrators in Birmingham, but crowds of black spectators were
liable to erupt into brick and bottle throwing when the police used
dogs and firehoses on demonstrators. This and masses of unrestrained
black teenagers downtown had more of an impact on businessmen than
peaceful picketing and sit-ins.
          Coming off of the failure in Albany, the lessons of Birmingham were
those of better planning and preparation, the importance of selecting
specific goals, and the power of economic boycott, youthful protest,
and spontaneous participants. Both King and the Kennedys became
convinced that legislation was necessary. The murder of Medgar Evers,
on the night of the President's television address against
segregation, surely underlined that persuasion alone was not
enough. Protest tactics alone were not enough. Political action and
coalitions were necessary for change.
          Although the crucial audience had become national, the battle for
that attention had to be fought locally. This meant local people,
local organizations, and local goals. Despite appearances, local unity
was often fragile or lacking; middle-class black people and college
students were often hesitant to take part. One of the real
achievements in Selma was the participation of the school
teachers. Local campaigns could not be sustained for very long
periods. There had to be a way to convince local people that it had
all been worthwhile. Focus on two or three points could produce a
sense of victory, so the campaign could wind up and move on
elsewhere. It was sometimes difficult for local people to understand
the broader symbolic consequences of small, tangible gains. The
irresolvable conflict between King and SNCC was that SCLC was using
local turf to fight national battles within the system, while SNCC's
young activists sought to develop grassroots organization and
power. SCLC's strength was the person of Martin Luther King, Jr., not
participatory democracy, and King's jail time was a strategic
resource, not an everyday tactic.
          Like everything else, the role of the press was ambiguous. Its
coverage was the essential gateway to the national scene, but it fed
on conflict, praised Albany Police Chief Laurie Prichett for
"remarkable restraint" when he didn't produce any, and undercut civil
rights strategy by sharing their inside information with him. The
agendas of the press were not always favorable; when King committed
himself against the Vietnam War, it was not only Life
Magazine but also the New York Times and the
Washington Post that denounced him.
          For King and SCLC, the problem was always "What next?" As he went
north to Chicago to agitate about jobs, housing, and education, he was
increasingly concerned about the problems of wealth and class in
American society. By failing to speak out against the Vietnam War, he
believed that he was shirking his responsibility. Racism, militarism,
and economic exploitation were all tied in together. His radicalism
and his pessimism grew together. The civil rights movement was too
middle class and America as a nation had never committed itself to
economic justice. The leaders who preached non-violence through the
democratic system were "not given enough victories," but still within
its context he searched for a new strategy. Although no one was really
enthusiastic over it, he decided on a "poor people's campaign." Waves
of the "poor and disinherited" would descend on Washington, practice
civil disobedience in the streets, and lobby and pressure
Congress. Tired, drained, increasingly melancholy, he more and more
referred back to his kitchen vision in Montgomery, and talked of his
own death. A march in support of striking garbagemen in Memphis broke
down into a riot, so King went back again to Memphis, to Golgotha, to
show that it could be carried off nonviolently.
          
            David Chalmers is Distinguished Alumni Professor at the University
of Florida and is author of Hooded Americanism, The History of
the Ku Klux Klan. He is at work on a history of social change
in the 1960s.
          
        