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

Coretta's daughter Yolanda marched in a pink dress, while the two boys, Martin III and Dexter, wore natty sport coats and ties (the youngest, Bernice, was back home in Atlanta). The children looked all about them, distracted and awestruck, at the crying people and the soldiers and the overflying helicopters and the signs that said, HONOR KING--END RACISM and DR. KING: NOT IN VAIN and I AM A MAN. It was such a strange experience for them to be a part of, such a beautiful grim pageant--not a funeral procession, exactly, and certainly not a celebratory or cathartic New Orleans-style dirge, but its own kind of hauntingly purposeful piece of political theater. "The people were kind," 556Dexter King wrote years later, "yet Memphis seemed like a forbidding place, a different evil kingdom where my father was killed."

Coretta King hadn't really planned on coming back to Memphis to join Abernathy's great silent march. She had a funeral to organize in Atlanta, she had a family to look after, and she had her own world of grief. But Memphis needed her there, she realized; the movement needed her, the garbage workers needed her. So that morning, Harry Belafonte had arranged a plane for her to return to the city of her husband's murder. She arrived with the children, and her motorcade sped downtown, escorted by good-ol'-boy policemen astride fat Harley-Davidsons in swirls of flashing lights, and she saw for the first time the world of shadows that Memphis had become. She joined the march at Main and Beale--the literal and figurative intersection of white and black Memphis. It was the very spot where King had been when the rioting erupted during the March 28 demonstration, the violence that had swept King toward the dark eddy that overwhelmed him.

This time around there was no violence whatsoever. The march was silent, just as Abernathy had promised it would be: only the sound of soles scuffing on pavement. Bayard Rustin had carefully choreographed every inch of the march--and had done so with his usual good taste and raptor's eye for detail. He was thrilled and relieved by the outcome. "We gave Dr. King what he came here for," 557he said. "We gave Dr. King his last wish: A truly non-violent march."

It had come about through meticulous planning. The Reverend James Lawson had personally trained the hundreds of marshals of the march--many of them members of the Invaders, who only a few days earlier had been calling for burning the city down. Lawson had had flyers printed up that were handed out to the marchers: it was to be a solemn and chaste affair, a requiem. There was to be no talking, no chanting, no singing, no smoking, no chewing of gum. "Each of you is on trial today," 558Lawson said. "People from all over the world will be watching. Carry yourself with dignity."

Almost no uniformed policemen could be found along the route of the march. Holloman, rightly figuring his men in blue had outworn their welcome in the black community, did not want to risk provoking another confrontation. Instead, several thousand National Guardsmen lined the street--projecting a federal and presumably more neutral presence. The guardsmen's M16s were fixed with bayonets, but (though the marchers didn't know this) the rifles were kept unloaded .

Holloman, for his part, was much less worried about potential violence from within the ranks of the marchers than from outsiders who might be "intent on discord," as he put it. He genuinely feared that King's killer was still in Memphis and that he might attempt an encore, setting his sights on Abernathy, or Mrs. King, or any one of the score of powerful dignitaries and popular celebrities marching in the procession. His fears were well-grounded. Jim Lawson, for one, had received a death threat the previous night; someone had called his house and vowed that "once you reach Main Street, 559you'll be cut down." Abernathy said he was worried about people out there for whom "the spilling of one man's blood 560only whetted their appetite for more."

All morning, before the march started, Holloman had his men sweep the entire march route clean: All office building windows were to remain closed, and no one would be allowed to watch from a rooftop or balcony. Every potential sniper's nest was investigated and blocked off. Hundreds of undercover cops and FBI agents were posted throughout the march to look for suspicious movement.

All their precautions proved unnecessary, it turned out. The march was beautiful, pitch-perfect, decent. It moved forward without incident, a slow river of humanity stretching more than a dozen city blocks. Arranged eight abreast, the mourners silently plodded past department store windows that had been carefully cleared of lootable items, which were replaced with discreet shrines honoring King. Coretta marched at the front, with Abernathy, Young, Jackson, and Belafonte. There were clergymen, black and white, and then labor leaders and garbage workers. Farther back could be found such celebrities as Sammy Davis Jr., Bill Cosby, Ossie Davis, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Isaac Hayes, and Sidney Poitier (whose racially charged In the Heat of the Night was up for Best Picture in the now-postponed Academy Awards).

Most of the marchers were black, but there was also a surprising sprinkling of prominent white Memphians--some of them well-known conservatives. Foremost among these was Jerred Blanchard, a lawyer and staunch Republican city councilman who'd gotten drunk on whiskey the previous night and then awakened with something of an epiphany. "I guess it was my mother 561speaking to me, or my wife," Blanchard said. "I really am a right-wing Republican. I've fought in several wars ... I've never liked labor unions. But it was decency that said, 'You get your old south end in that march. To hell with the country club.'"

The long column of mourners kept snaking north on Main Street toward city hall, with Mrs. King still in the lead. "There she is, there she is!" bystanders exclaimed under their breaths.

Among the businesses that Mrs. King passed was the York Arms Company, the same sporting goods store Eric Galt had visited just four days earlier. The shop's owners had removed all the hunting rifles from the windows and locked the place up tight in advance of the march. One of the items left in the window, however, was a pair of binoculars: they were Bushnell Banners, 7x35, with fully coated optics.

THAT SAME DAY, as Mrs. King and her legions of marchers slowly approached city hall, two of Robert Jensen's G-men, Agents John Bauer and Stephen Darlington, were driving out on Lamar Avenue, near the city's border with Mississippi. Bauer and Darlington, two rookies who both happened to hail from Pennsylvania, had been stopping at scores of economy inns all over Memphis, trolling for scraps of information--mainly about the models and makes and colors of the automobiles that motel guests had been driving the past week. It was hard, tedious work, and so far their efforts had turned up nothing promising. Now the agents pulled their bureau sedan 562in to the puddled parking lot of the New Rebel Motel. In the misty rain, the wipers slapped the windshield. The Confederate colonel glowered down from his sign.

Bauer and Darlington walked into the office and had a word with Anna Kelley, the New Rebel's owner. "We're with the FBI," Darlington said, and asked if she'd mind if they asked some questions. Mrs. Kelley nodded her consent.

Darlington and Bauer especially wanted her to concentrate on the night of April 3, the night before Martin Luther King was killed. Had anyone checked in to the New Rebel driving a white Ford sports car?

Anna Kelley consulted her records and soon found someone. His name was Jerry Goalsby, from Ripley, Mississippi. He had checked in to the New Rebel that night, April 3, and had left the following morning. According to the registration card, Goalsby was driving a Ford of some type.