Hampton Sides - Hellhound on His Trail - The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. And the International Hunt for His Assassin

Still, Galt realized this was no time to be wandering around at night in an unfamiliar town hunting for lodging while a storm raged. The wind was howling with such force around the New Rebel that one guest later said he "thought the roof of the motel might blow off." So Galt put his money down, 306signing the registration card "Eric S. Galt, 2608 Highland Avenue, Birmingham, Alabama." He filled out the standard form, dutifully noting that he was driving a Mustang bearing Alabama plate number 1-38993.

The desk clerk, Henrietta Hagermaster, put him in room 34. After paying the nightly rate in cash, Galt pulled his car through the narrow entranceway and parked directly in front of his door. He inserted the key into the lock, turned it, and stepped inside.

AT THE LORRAINE, King and Abernathy looked out the window and grimaced at the gravid skies and listened to the eerie sound of the air-raid sirens. They knew what this kind of weather meant: the turnout for the rally at Mason Temple was going to be low--maybe anemically low. How many people could be expected to brave a tornado warning to come out tonight? This was not good for King, they both realized; the media would note the low attendance, and possibly use it to suggest that his local support was waning. Besides, King desperately needed to rest. His cold was worsening, his throat was scratchy, and he thought he might have a slight fever. This was not his night.

"Ralph," he said, "I want you to go speak for me tonight." 307

Abernathy balked. "Why don't you let Jesse go? He loves to speak."

King dismissed the idea. "Nobody else but you can speak for me."

"OK, OK," Abernathy said. "But can I bring Jesse?"

"Yes, but you do the speaking."

At about 8:30, Abernathy arrived at Mason Temple and was startled to behold nearly three thousand people, most of them garbage workers and their families, gathered in the large hall. It was clear they had come to see King, not him. They were clapping and singing in anticipation--struggling to be heard over the din of the pummeling rain and thunder.

Abernathy found a phone in the church vestibule and called the Lorraine. "Martin," he said, "you better get over here right now. There's two thousand people braved the storm for you. This is your crowd."

IT WAS GOING to be a perfunctory appearance, a courtesy call. King was just going to slip on a suit and go over and acknowledge the crowd, say a few words, and get back to the Lorraine to nurse his cold. When he walked into Mason Temple at around 9:00 p.m., however, the spirit of the crowd caught him. He was wearing a long black raincoat over his suit, and as he walked down the aisle, people reached out and touched his sleeves, his lapels, his coattails.

Abernathy gave a meandering introduction that went on for nearly half an hour, his words echoing through the vast hall as the tornado sirens keened outside. With a slightly embarrassed smile, King sat on the platform, puzzled by what sounded more and more like a eulogy. Periodically, the shutters high in the gallery would bang in the lashing wind, and King would flinch. There would be a spate of thunder and lightning, and then-- bang --the shutters would slam once more, and King would jump again.

Finally Abernathy was done. King rose and approached the podium without notes. After the usual salutations, he settled into an ominous tone. "Something is happening in Memphis," 308he said. "Something is happening in our world. The nation is sick, and trouble is in the land." Still, he said, he would rather be alive today than in any epoch of history--because the stirrings in Memphis were part of a larger movement across the globe. "The masses of people are rising up," he said. "And their cry is always the same: We want to be free! "

The crowd was a mix of sanitation workers, church folk, and admiring preachers; representatives from the Invaders were also present. At least one FBI agent was there, too, dutifully taking notes in the back. As King fell into the familiar rhythms, people periodically erupted with calls of "Amen!" "Tell it!" "Preach it!" The television news cameras whirred. The shutters banged. The thunder grumbled on.

King made it clear that his lawyers were going to fight the injunction in court the next day and that the march would go on no matter what. "Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness," he said. "We're not going to let any injunction turn us around."

He seemed tired and harrowed, his nerves frayed, but slowly he began to ease into a groove. He reached for metaphors from the book of Exodus, metaphors that resonated with this churchgoing crowd, so close to the river and to slavery themselves. "You know," he said, "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 amongst themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery."

Outside, the thunder and lightning seemed to be dissipating, the worst of the storm passing to the east. The banging noise stopped, and there was only the hissing hush of steady rain on the corrugated roof.

King spoke of the bomb threat on his plane that morning, and the delays it had caused. "And then I got into Memphis," he said. "And some began to talk about the threats that were about--about what would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers." With a slow trolling gaze, he surveyed the audience, as if to say to any would-be assassin, Are you out there?

For ten minutes, he veered off on a theme of thanatopsis, exploring different angles of his own mortality. He recalled the time a decade earlier when a deranged black woman plunged a letter opener into his chest at a book signing in a Harlem department store, and how the blade nearly punctured his aorta. The doctor told him that if he had sneezed, he would have ruptured his artery and drowned in his own blood.

King went on to reminisce about the glorious events that had happened since 1958--Birmingham, Selma, the March on Washington, and the other benchmarks of the civil rights movement--all the things he would have missed had he died from his stabbing wound. "And I'm so glad," he said, "that I didn't sneeze."

Sweat poured off his face now, and his eyes seemed to moisten, as he moved toward a crescendo. "We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop."

Tell it!

"And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place."

Amen!

"But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land."

Hallelujah preach it uh-huh .

"I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land. So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

Drowned in rapturous applause, King turned and collapsed in Abernathy's arms. Other ministers swarmed the stage, awed by the pathos of King's words. A local pastor noticed that King had tears in his eyes--"it seemed like he was just saying, 309'Goodbye, I hate to leave.'"

In the audience, the mood was triumphant. People were crying, shouting, chanting. One striking sanitation worker recalled, "It seemed like he reached down 310and pulled everything out of his heart." Said another: "I was full of joy 311and determination. Wherever King was, I wanted to be there. It seemed to me from where I was sitting, his eyes glowed."