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AFTERWARD

If Dr. King had lived, what might he say about what he sees today? This is but a small piece of what I think he might have thought about a few personal and social issues, offered in the same spirit that he penned his letter to the American church as the Apostle Paul. The occasion for the interview is a celebration of Dr. King's 80th birthday, which, of course, had he lived, would be nowhere near a national holiday.

QUESTION: Dr. King, how does it feel to turn 80 years old? It's such a milestone.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING: I must confess to you that I never thought I'd make it to this age. During the most intense moments of our struggle, there was a great deal of hatred and danger directed at us. I personally faced constant death threats. Many of our greatest leaders and most stalwart activists were brutally murdered. Medgar Evers was shot down like an animal in Mississippi, and in the same state, those three brave young civil rights workers were viciously murdered. And one can't forget the incredible sacrifice that those four young girls made when they were blown to premature martyrdom in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. Spike Lee's very fine documentary, Four Little Girls, captures the sense of terror we all faced during those times, but also the dig­nity and courage of the people too.

As far back as 1956 I had to face the real possibility that I would die. After all, my house was bombed during the Montgomery bus boycott. When I look back on many of the sermons and speeches that I gave during the sixties, I can clearly see that I was trying to address our people's grief and suffering, and trying to inspire them to keep going in the midst of the death and hatred we faced on a daily basis. But to be honest, I was also trying to come to grips with my own mortality in a movement where it seemed guaranteed that I would be made a sacrificial lamb. But contrary to what some might have believed, I had no martyr complex. I repeatedly stated that I wanted to live as long as anybody, and so...

QUESTION: Well, that's certainly borne out by a statement you made in Montgomery, Alabama, in May of 1965, where you expressed a great deal of frustration and anger over the killing of Negroes while the government sat idly by. You said that "when they kill Negroes and civil rights workers in Alabama, nothing is done about it. Under the administration of Governor George Wallace alone 10 peo­ple have been killed during civil rights demonstrations." Do you remember that statement?

KING: Absolutely, like it was yesterday. I also said, "What we are saying now is that we are tired of this. Our lives are too precious. We are saying to the State of Alabama, now you're not going to frighten us into submission. If you kill one Negro, or one white ally, then you're going to have to kill ten, and if you kill ten, you're going to have to kill 20, and if you kill 20, you're going to have to kill 100, and if you kill 100, then you're going to have to kill a thousand!"

QUESTION: But did you ever have a stronger sense you were going to die than at other times? There's famous newsreel footage of you explaining in rather stark and dramatic terms how you thought you were going to die one night in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Could that be considered such a moment?

KING: Yes, it really can. There were policemen who were preceding us as we marched, and they spotted several peo­ple in trees ahead of us, ready to shoot us if they could get us in their sights. I really just gave up. As I said then, I wouldn't say I was so afraid, as that I had yielded to the real possibility of the inevitability of death. I really had concluded that day in Philadelphia, Mississippi, that it was all over. When I look back, I can find a kind of humor in the situation that was awfully difficult to see then. But we had stopped to speak and pray, and I gave a few words, saying that the murderers of the three civil rights workers who had gone to Mississippi to work, Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman, were probably around us somewhere. And all of a sudden, my speech was interrupted by a man standing behind me who said, "You damn right, I'm right behind you." I just knew my life was over, because I could tell that he wasn't bluffing at all. And when it was time to pray, Ralph Abernathy said he kept his eyes open as he spoke to God. We had a good chuckle about that later.

QUESTION: Some people who've heard it think that the speech you gave on April 3rd, 1968, before an audience of striking sanitation workers and their allies at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, contained a strong sense of premonition of death. It's not one of your better known speeches, and the only reason I bring it up is because scholars who've studied the civil rights movement and your life suggest that it might have become one of your best known speeches had you been killed that night, or shortly afterward. In retrospect, it does tend to read as a last will and testament. Did you think you would be murdered soon after you delivered that speech?

KING: Well, as I've said, death was our constant companion in the movement, and I was having an especially tough time of it. The first demonstration on behalf of the striking workers in Memphis in late March had turned violent, and there was rioting; a young black man was shot and killed. I was extremely depressed. Then the Poor People's Campaign was not going very well either. I was wearing myself out, ruining my health, really, ripping and running from one side of the country to the other trying to drum up support for our mass mobilization in Washington, D.C. My own SCLC board was against me, especially our wonderful benefactor Marian Logan, the fiery and brilliant wife of the renowned physician Arthur Logan, with whom I had many heated disagreements about the direction of our group in 1968. On top of all that, when I was flying into Memphis to lead the march, the pilot announced, before we took off, yet another bomb threat because I was flying on the plane. Of course this kind of thing had by then become routine, but I must say to you, the thought of being killed never gets old or routine. There's an insistent, and troubling, freshness to each new threat, as if the possibility of being snuffed out renews in one's spirit a deep sense of one's fragility and finitude. I beat the feeling back, or at least I tried to, but when we landed in Memphis, there was a horrible downpour, and tornadoes in the area had already killed several people. The bleak weather seemed to match my dampened spirit, and I retreated to the Lorraine motel to get some rest, since I didn't feel very well. I sent Ralph over to the Mason Temple to speak in my place at the rally that night. Ralph rang the room and insisted I get right over because it was, how did he frame it, a Martin moment. I got dressed as fast as I could and rushed over to Mason Temple.

What you and the folk who were there that night probably heard was my fatigue, my despair, my depres­sion, my feeling out of sorts. All of that came gurgling to the surface, I suppose, when I spoke. I can't honestly say I had any more a sense of my impending end that night than on many other nights when I felt that I could die at any moment because of the actions of our sick white brothers. In fact, I was much more convinced of my death in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1964 than on that night in Memphis. By the way, it turns out that the man who shouted his warning was Neshoba County Sherrif Rainey, who was allegedly implicated in the murders of those young men along with his deputy, Cecil Price. Sick broth­ers indeed.

QUESTION: Since you've already mentioned it, can you speak to us a bit about your depression? You were one of the most famous black people ever to publicly acknowledge that you've struggled with depression, a subject that's not often spoken about since mental health remains a big taboo in black circles.

KING: Certainly. Although I know some who read this may think I'm grossly exaggerating, I consider the announce­ment of my struggles with depression nearly two decades ago every bit as important in the psychological realm as breaking my silence about my opposition to the Vietnam War in 1967 was in the political realm. I decided to break my silence about my depression so that I could encourage more of our people to own up to the enormous psychic burden and emotional stress that we too often carry around. And it can have a horrible impact on our overall health. Black people have been shouldering the weight of the world, and it tells on our physical and mental health.

I figured that if I told the truth, perhaps a few others might be heartened in their own struggles, and encour­aged to confront what we now know is an illness that is just as much biological and physical as anything else. There should be no shame in addressing the profoundly dispiriting emotions that sometimes seize us. I began experiencing severe bouts of depression in Montgomery during the bus boycott, when the pressures and anxiety were building at such a fast pace, and I had to call on every spiritual resource I had. I remember once I was on the podium about to speak at a mass meeting, when a wave of deep emotional suffering washed over me so strongly that I couldn't continue. My own ego and my sense of male pride kicked in, and later, when folk started saying I nearly passed out and had a small emotional breakdown, I denied it, but I eventually confessed that it was true. Of course that's not something that's easy to admit for any of us, especially for men, but I felt I had to tell the whole truth of my own battles with depression, because I'd sought the same way out—through excessive drinking and other habits of which I'm not proud—that many others have taken. But it ultimately doesn't work. Oh, it may narcotize you for a while, but it doesn't address the underlying causes of depression, which range from the chemistry of the brain, to deep psychological suffering that comes from enduring different traumas, to the stress and strain of our professions and personal lives.