An Encounter with Greatness

I was 18 years of age in the Summer of 1967 - the time that has come to be referred to as the "Long Hot Summer." 

There were 159 incidents of racial violence around the United States - sometimes referred to as riots, sometimes referred to as rebellions.

From July 12th to July 17th, violence broke out in the City of Newark. 26 people died, 727 people were injured, and 1,465 people were arrested. From July 23rd the July 28th violence broke out in the City of Detroit. It was a time when people began to question whether non-violence had run its course.

In response to all this violence, in the middle of the Detroit riot, President Lyndon Johnson on July 28, 1967 issued Executive Order 11365, establishing a commission to investigate the causes of these disturbances. The Commission was commonly referred to by the name of its chairman, former Illinois governor Otto Kerner.

One of the people I worked with in the summer of 1967 was John Lewis who, among other things, was on the board of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In August of 1967, John Lewis invited me to join him in Atlanta for the SCLC’s Annual Meeting. It was my first opportunity to spend any real time at Atlanta, other than to change planes. For an 18-year-old college student, this was pretty heady stuff - having the opportunity to spend time with people who had dedicated their lives to bringing about the kind of change which was so badly needed in this country, and particularly in the south - people like Reverend Al Sampson, Hosea Williams, Ralph Abernathy and, of course, Martin Luther King Jr.

The theme of this conference was “Where do We Go from Here?” and that was the theme that Dr. King took up in his Presidential Address. He stressed the fact that he thought non-violence was still a viable tool to bring about social change. He also stressed the importance of redirecting the Movement to focus on issues of economic justice and systemic change:

“When I say question the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation and the problem of war all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated. . . . One day, we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

In December of 1967, Dr. King unveiled the SCLC's plan to conduct a Poor People's Campaign that following year. The campaign would bring together poor people of all races and from across the country to a new March on Washington, to demand better jobs, better homes, better education, and better lives and the ones they were then living. In the early part of 1968, Rev. Sampson paid a visit to Bard College for the specific purpose of generating support for the Poor People's Campaign and, during that visit, he asked me to help organize support for the Campaign in the Mid-Hudson area, which I agreed to do.

On February 29 1968, after seven months of investigation, the Kerner Commission issued its Final Report. The report concluded that the insurrections of the previous summer were caused by black frustration at the lack of economic opportunity. In its most famous passage, the Report warned that our nation was rapidly approaching two societies - one black one white - separate and unequal. The Report called for the creation of jobs, an end to de facto segregation, the establishment of government programs that provided needed services, the hiring of more diverse and sensitive police forces, and the investment of billions of dollars in new safe sanitary and desegregated housing. Dr. King's response was to call on the nation to adopt the Commission’s recommendations.

In the Spring of 1968, there was an effort to organize a union among sanitation workers in the city of Memphis Tennessee. Dr. King aligned with a struggle of the poor and black sanitation workers in Memphis. He suggested that their struggle for dignity was a dramatization of the issues taken up by the Poor People's Campaign: a fight by capable hard workers against dehumanization, discrimination and poverty wages in the richest country in the world.

One day Rev. Sampson called me and told me that Dr. King was coming to do a tour of New Jersey. He asked me to come and help support that tour. That's how I came to spend the day doing advance work for Dr. King on March 27, 1968.

This tour was pretty heavily covered in press reports, so we have a pretty good record of what happened.

The first stop was Mt. Calvary Baptist Church, where Dr. King held a press conference and explained the purpose of the Poor People's Campaign.

The next stop was Queen of Angels, where Dr. King thanked Monsignor Thomas Carley for making space available for the SCLC staff.

Then the party proceeded downtown for a luncheon with representatives of the Greater Newark Chamber of Commerce.

After lunch, Dr. King paid a surprise visit to Spirit House. There Dr. King visited and paid respects to the playwright known as Leroy Jones, who later became known as Amiri Baraka. Despite their philosophical differences, they talked about the need for a united front.

The next stop was Southside High (now known as Shabazz), where Dr. King spoke for 20 minutes to a crowd of 1,200 students. With the recent civil disturbances in Newark fresh in everyone's minds, Dr. King urged the students to reject the popular mantra of “burn baby burn,” and instead embrace another mantra – “learn baby learn” – which would take them on a path toward “earn baby earn.”

At the Community Baptist Church in Paterson, a thousand people greeted Dr. King outside the sanctuary and another 500 people heard him inside.

At Metropolitan AME Zion Church in Jersey City, Dr. King spoke to a crowd estimated at 2,000.

Several hundred more people were on hand to cheer him at the next stop, Union Baptist Church in Orange.

He also visited Colonnade Apartments.

He concluded his tour at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Newark where, despite being two hours late, the motorcade was met by 1,500 people at the curb. He again urged the crowd to support the Poor People's Campaign.

At every stop, Dr. King received a warm reception. He promised that this would not be his last visit to New Jersey – that he would be back

Abyssinian was not the last stop on the schedule. At some point, everyone realized that this whole tour was running late. Dr. King’s speeches began to be prefaced with “I would rather be Martin Luther King Jr. late than the late Martin Luther King Jr.” People in the inner circle began to realize that we were would not be able to make all of the scheduled stops. 

Eventually, Rev. Sampson and I were asked to go ahead to some of the venues that Dr. King would not be able to reach. Our job was to explain the delay, extend everyone's apologies, and try to encourage folks to overlook their disappointment and nevertheless support the goals of the Poor People's Campaign.

We now know that, despite his promise to return to New Jersey for another visit, Dr. King never returned. He also never got a chance to lead a Second March on Washington.

The next day, March 28^th, Dr. King and Dr. Abernathy flew to Memphis to take part in a march to support sanitation workers. This particular march got out of hand. There were reports of violence on the part of some of the participants.

All of a sudden, people began to raise new questions about the legitimacy and viability of non-violence, and about SCLC's ability to conduct a disciplined non-violent March. If people began to lose faith in SCLC's ability to lead a non-violent march, the future of the Poor People's Campaign would be in doubt. And so, so whatever plans Dr. King may have had to focus on the Poor People's Campaign and the New March on Washington, it became clear he would have to spend some more time in Memphis, showing that non-violence still worked, and that the March 28th incident was a fluke.

That's how it happened that Dr. King was in Memphis on April 4th 1968.

So when we gathered on the National Mall later that summer for the extended Second March on Washington, in the venue on the National Mall that became known as Resurrection, City, Dr. King was not with us.

But we carried on.

We carried on because we knew that that was what Dr. King would have wanted us to do.

Copyright © 2018 Charles S. Johnson. All rights reserved.