When Harlem Nearly Killed King (7 page)

When Martin Luther King, Jr., landed in the media capital of America to promote his new book, the challenge was to convince
most of the nation that the country hadn’t been built solely for Caucasian individuals. The challenge was to convince most Caucasians that supporting Negro rights wasn’t tantamount to supporting the Kremlin. By September 1958, the idea that Gotham was the country’s media capital, open to the expression of new ideas, originated largely from the fact that the city had always been a polyglot of immigrants from around the world, forced to deal with each other because the designated
them
freshly off the latest passenger ship docked at Ellis Island might live only a block away stacked in a tenement around the corner from your own tenement. The city’s massive size necessitated the largest, most ambitious public works projects in the country—a comprehensive city hospital system, the most extensive and sophisticated public school system (including colleges and universities), gargantuan public housing complexes, bridges, mass transit systems. In New York City, the concept of the collective good had long existed in tandem with the rights of the individual, and it remained that way even during the post–World War II economic boom. In the rest of the nation, however, a sense of the collective good (as it applied to Caucasians) only enjoyed popularity during economic hard times (the inequality and horrendous working conditions of the Industrial Revolution, the Great Depression, and so on), only to recede once prosperity returned. In many ways, you might say, the typical New Yorker viewed group rights as superseding individual rights, even though the group he usually fought for was his own. And what added to the prevailing atmosphere in the city during the post–World War II years was the primacy attached to a mission of
justice for the oppressed emanating from the 1.5 million Jews living in the city, by far the largest Jewish community in the nation.

For these reasons New York City, including the outer boroughs, always seemed like foreign territory to the rest of America, physically and mentally set off, lying on three islands off the coast of the continent (except for the Bronx) divided into something strange called “boroughs.” And there was the typical New Yorker arrogance and brashness. Manhattan’s massive collection of skyscrapers were a wonder to behold, from which corporate managers wielded the straws that stirred the economic fluid of the country. Yet they didn’t represent the spirit of the nation. Rather, in the interest of profits, they
played to the nation’s spirit
. With condescension, yes. “Will it play in Peoria?”; “How will Dorothy in Kansas receive it?” However, every once in a while, among the media occupying these office towers, attempts were made to enlighten the rest of America. In an effort to explain what the Montgomery revolt was all about, the publicity department of Harper and Brothers set about promoting King’s book.

On September 17, 1958, the official day of publication, the
New York Herald Tribune’s
Maurice Dolbier, who reviewed books in the same section where the editorials and columns of that august newspaper were featured (among them, the opinions of the nation’s most eminent journalist, Walter Lippmann), spoke glowingly of it. In the center of what he had to say was a portrait of twenty-nine-year-old King in suit and tie, looking pleasant and distinguished. But elsewhere in that prestigious organ of journalism in the nation’s most liberal city, support for the idea King’s
Montgomery victory represented was mixed. To the far left of Dolbier’s review, columnist Roscoe Drummond asked, “Will Integration Mean End of the South’s Public Schools?”, a piece apropos of the ongoing controversy in Little Rock.

It was
understandable that a community would want to avoid integration
, wrote Drummond. But only if it could do so without penalty. The way Drummond saw it, the Supreme Court had made its decision, and the need for public schools superseded any aversion for Negroes because public schools were a dire necessity if the United States was to produce “more scientists, more engineers, more scholars to meet the scientific and industrial challenge of Communist imperialism.” Despite Drummond’s opinion, the order of the day across the country was still thick with belief that individual liberty for Caucasians ought to win out over collective liberty for Negroes. In the column to the immediate left of Dolbier’s review, David Lawrence, based in Washington, noted that many people were writing in to him trying to learn more about “the dubious origins of the Fourteenth Amendment [to the Constitution]—supposed basis of the desegregation decisions—to which reference was recently made in these dispatches.” That amendment, ratified in 1868, guaranteed the newly freed slaves equal protection under the law. And Lawrence insisted that in 1868 the state legislatures that ratified it were of doubtful legitimacy because so many of them were made up of Negroes in Southern states who had been elected to serve in the state capitols through the federal government’s questionable Reconstruction policies. Ninety years after the fact, Lawrence was implying that
the South, at the time, had been under the spell of Negro barbarism and chaos.

Martin Luther King had been in town for two days when this particular issue of the
Herald Tribune
hit the newsstands. The previous day he had taped his appearance with Dave Garroway on
The Today Show
. As the
Herald Tribune
review of the book appeared, his interview with Garroway was aired. The two men were seen in a pleasant, informative, hopeful conversation in which King reiterated his concept of nonviolence. After the taping, King made his way back to the Hotel Statler where he was staying.

The next day he made his way to Harlem to sign copies of his new book at the Empire State Bookstore. After the signing he again mingled with admirers. Then that evening he made his way to a rally held at Williams Institutional CME Church, also in Harlem. Originally planned to raise money for the Crusade for Citizenship—the voter registration drive King was organizing through SCLC—it turned instead into a rally to support King himself due to the embarrassment the movement had suffered because of the Abernathy fiasco.

King drank in the sympathy of the parishioners, who displayed one more example of the rousing emotionalism characteristic of Negro worship services. A succession of speakers preceded King, including not just the pastor of Williams Institutional but also Dr. Thomas Kilgore, pastor of the Friendship Baptist Church, sponsors of the evening. King electrified the overflow crowd of eight hundred people. The collection plate was passed, and $1,100 was raised for SCLC. Then King socialized some more with admirers,
answering their questions. Afterward he retired to the Hotel Statler and rested for the following day’s political rally on the corner of 125th Street and Seventh Avenue in front of Harlem’s historic Hotel Teresa.

The next day, as the crowd gathered for the rally, besides containing hostile persons such as Lewis Micheaux and Izola Curry, there were others in the audience who could hardly be expected to welcome King’s message of nonviolence. Since the beginning of the twentieth century when the Harlem real estate bust began, causing speculators to begin renting apartments and rooms to Negroes, Negroes from throughout the diaspora—the West Indies, the Deep South, and Africa—had been attracted to the community, bringing with them a variety of political viewpoints they felt far freer to express than Negroes were able to elsewhere in the country. As stated earlier, the street-corner orators venting these opinions started out on the corner of 135th Street and Lenox Avenue (from approximately 1917 to the early 1940s). Then, once the Caucasian-owned stores on 125th Street were integrated, compliments of the civil rights protests of the Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the soapbox orators migrated down. Most of them tended to do as all street-corner orators do—espouse views at odds with those of the prevailing establishment in their communities. In 1918, the prevailing establishment among Negro leaders in the Northeast had converted to the point of view of the NAACP. At that time the organization had decided to subordinate its call for immediate civil rights, and call instead on Negroes to faithfully serve their country on the battlefields of World War I,
under the theory that once Negroes proved their patriotism, the civil rights struggle would then be far easier. One of the soapbox orators who spoke out in complete opposition to that point of view was A. Phillip Randolph. By Friday, September 19, 1958, A. Phillip Randolph was now considered the dean among established Negro leaders, and as such would mount the stage with King at the scheduled political rally in front of the Hotel Teresa.

While Randolph was busy organizing his labor union in the 1920s, the Marcus Garveyites began dazzling the masses on the same street corner Randolph had enthralled them on. Garvey’s followers organized themselves into the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), promoting their “back to Africa movement” with fantasies of Negro glory complete with military pageantry. Under a different agenda (minus the military pageantry and espousal of absolute separatism, yet every bit as insistent on Negro freedom), Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., delivered the street-corner orations that would gain him the renown that would return him time and time again first to the New York City Council and then to the U.S. Congress, representing Harlem. And very shortly it would be in this manner that Malcolm X, King’s most serious rival for the hearts and minds of young Afro-Americans, espoused the black Muslim point of view.

Once the epicenter of the exhortations moved to Seventh Avenue and 125th Street, ideologues constantly jostled for attention. And unlike in the Deep South, none of the speakers had any qualms about calling for the complete destruction of Caucasian America. But the corner was also a place from which established
Harlem leaders (elected officials) often spoke along with invited guests such as other New York politicians and national political leaders. During such rallies traffic was closed off and crowds were allowed to fill the intersection and the space directly in front of the Hotel Teresa, the stately twelve-story white structure dominating the Harlem horizon. Yet whoever spoke had to be ready for anything. Harlem was the toughest spot in America (perhaps the entire world) for any aspiring Negro leader or ally of Negroes, just as right around the corner from the Hotel Teresa, the Apollo Theater was the toughest nut for any Negro to crack in the entertainment industry. If you could win a crowd over in Harlem, you could win one over anywhere.

Friday evening of September 19th arrived, and King prepared to win over an even bigger slice of Harlem to his activist point of view. Governor Harriman and his phalanx of aides arrived first and mounted the stage. Later came Rockefeller and his entourage. Both made their way through the throng, hopeful that they would convince enough voters of the rightness of their respective messages; hopeful that their third visit to Harlem in a week would pay off as listeners tried to decide which one of them had been the better friend of Negroes.

Shortly after they took their places on stage, King and his aides made their entrance. They were flanked by Manhattan Borough President Hulan Jack, baseball great Jackie Robinson, A. Phillip Randolph, and Reverend Gardner Taylor. Duke Ellington stood at the base of the dais and prepared to conduct his band. Soon the music began, and afterward the introductions were made.
Robinson spoke first. Referring to the upcoming election, the dashingly handsome dark-skinned slugger intoned, “We are the balance of power.” Gesturing behind himself toward Harriman and Rockefeller, to the thunderous applause of the audience he continued, “We can put Governor Harriman back in office or we can put Mr. Rockefeller in. I’m sure these two gentlemen realize the tremendous potential of you and me.” Next came the words of Randolph, who criticized the civil rights record of President Eisenhower, accusing him of going slow on integration and emphasizing the cautious manner in which he had handled the school desegregation quagmire in Little Rock. In a fiery follow-up to Randolph’s words, Gardner Taylor leveled the same criticism. Then it was time for the next speaker.

Though Governor Harriman had arrived before him, Rockefeller spoke before Harriman. Cognizant of the fact that he was compelled to show at least some degree of party loyalty, he decided that he had no alternative but to defend Eisenhower, who only a week earlier, after the Supreme Court issued its ruling ordering the integration of Little Rock schools, released a statement that merely called upon the citizens of the city to obey the decision. Plenty of people took this to mean that Eisenhower was lukewarm on the issue of integration (which, indeed, he was).

“This business about [Eisenhower] going slow on integration,” Rockefeller asserted in the raconteurish manner that would become his trademark over the years. “I know the man! I worked with him.… Who sent the troops to Little Rock? That takes courage in this country.”

Then he tried to steer attention away from the national Republican party and back to his own more liberal attitude. “We cannot rewrite the laws in Arkansas,” he intoned. “But we can embark on a bold program to solve the problems in our own state. We have a proud record of combating prejudice based on race, creed, and color.”

As Rockefeller continued, there was one heckler in particular making herself a nuisance. Izola Curry appeared behind the stage in a nice dress and her trademark expensive eyewear. While listening to Rockefeller, she voiced her hatred of Caucasians. William Rowe, an assistant to Borough President Hulan Jack who served as King’s escort while in the city, did his best to calm her down. And Frederick Weaver, a platform guest, motioned for police officers to make her stop. But the police were reluctant to get tough with her, fearing that to do so might start an incident among the throng of five thousand Harlemites that could escalate into a larger racial disturbance. Rockefeller finished his speech, declaring to great applause, “Let’s take civil rights out of the talk stage and put it in the active stage!”

Now it was Harriman’s turn. Invoking the names of Harry Truman and Franklin Roosevelt—the two Democratic presidents whose policies were responsible for catalyzing a sea change in the attitude of Afro-Americans toward the Democratic party after so many years of loyalty to the Republicans as the party of Abraham Lincoln—he continued the references to the Little Rock crisis begun by the others. He criticized Eisenhower for waiting so long a year earlier, when the crisis began, before sending in the
National Guard to ensure the safety of the six young Negro students integrating Little Rock Central High School. These students had to withstand the jeers and violence of Caucasian spectators while a national television audience watched in horror. “For three weeks [Eisenhower] waited. Well, I ask you, my friends, how long would it have taken Harry Truman?”