I grinned.
“The FBI cut me loose after Martin died, too. They gave me the coin and told me to disappear. That’s when I decided to go back to preaching. By then I’d changed. I was a different person. Martin’s death made me someone else entirely. A new man, one I came to embrace and like.”
I needed more details so I decided to probe. “Why in Memphis?”
“Martin didn’t want it to happen in Atlanta. That would be too close to his family. He also wanted to die at a dramatic moment. His death had to mean something. Memphis seemed the perfect place. Tensions were high. The danger real. Looking back, it seems that fate was working with us the whole time. The night of April 3, before he went to sleep, he told me to set it up for the next day at 6:00 P.M. He said he would make sure he was out on the balcony at the Lorraine for several minutes. The perfect target. So I told Jansen where and when and to be ready if the opportunity presented itself. Of course, I knew that it would.”
I could only imagine the courage that had taken.
“There was a big rally scheduled for the night of the third at the Masonic Temple. The weather was bad. Rain, with a threat of tornadoes. Martin was battling a cold and was a little depressed, as you might imagine, so he opted not to go. Abernathy went instead to address the crowd, but they wanted Martin. They chanted for Martin. So Ralph called the Lorraine. Martin was already asleep. I answered the phone and, at Ralph’s insistence, went to wake him. He was really moved that so many people wanted him to be there, so he dressed and we both went over to the temple.”
I was amazed listening to history, seen through Foster’s eyes, ingrained in his memory.
“When we got there a huge thunderstorm erupted. Rain pounded the roof. Thunder clapped. It was almost biblical, like a sound effect from a movie. Martin took the pulpit and the place went dead silent. Keep in mind he hadn’t intended on coming, so he’d prepared no remarks. He spoke straight from the heart. It was nearly a year to the day since he’d denounced the war and started a public free fall. The last year of his life was about over. He already knew that a white man would gun him down at 6:00 P.M. the next day. Have you ever studied what he said that night? What they now call the Mountaintop Speech.”
I shook my head.
Foster stood from the table and left the room for a moment, returning with a book containing the published works of Martin Luther King Jr.
He opened to the right page and passed it to me.
I read.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Something is happening in Memphis.
Something is happening in our world.
And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now, and the Almighty said to me, “Martin Luther King, which age would you like to live in?” Strangely enough, I would turn to the Almighty, and say, “If you allow me to live just a few years in the second half of the 20th century, I will be happy.”
Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around.
That’s a strange statement.
But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding.
Something is happening in our world.
The masses of people are rising up. And wherever they are assembled today the cry is always the same. We want to be free. Now, I’m just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period to see what is unfolding.
And I’m happy that He’s allowed me to be in Memphis.
Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history?
It means that we’ve got to stay together. We’ve got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt he had a favorite formula for doing it.
What was that?
He kept the slaves fighting among themselves.
But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh’s court and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together that’s the beginning of getting out of slavery.
Let us maintain unity.
We’ve got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We’ve got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. If it means leaving work, if it means leaving school, be there. Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.
Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness.
Let us stand with a greater determination.
And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation.
And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you.
You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, “Are you Martin Luther King?” I was looking down writing and said, “Yes.” The next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital.
It was a dark Saturday afternoon.
And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. Once that’s punctured, you’re drowned i
n your own blood. That’s the end of you.
It came out in the New York Times the next morning that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. About four days later they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheelchair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in from all over the states and the world.
I had received one from the president and the vice president.
I’ve forgotten what those telegrams said.
I’d received a visit and a letter from the governor of New York, but I’ve forgotten what that letter said.
But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I’ll never forget it.
It said simply,
“Dear Dr. King, I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School. While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I’m a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”
And I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn’t sneeze.
Because if I had sneezed I wouldn’t have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1961, when we decided to take a ride for freedom and ended segregation in interstate travel.
If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent.