King Martin Luther - Burial for a King : Martin Luther King Jr.s funeral and the week that transformed Atlanta and rocked the nation

On the morning of April 5, 1968, a woman mourns as she views the body of Martin Luther King Jr. at the R. S. Lewis & Sons funeral home in Memphis. Hours later, the body was flown to Atlanta. AP Photo/Charles Kelly

BURIAL FOR A KING

Martin Luther King Jr.s

Funeral and the Week That

Transformed Atlanta

and Rocked the nation

Rebecca Burns

Scribner

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Copyright 2011 by Rebecca Burns

A few passages in this book previously appeared in a different format in the Atlanta magazine articles Funeral, April 2008, and Atlanta Student Movement: 50 Years Later, March 2010, and in the masters thesis Mourning and Message (Georgia State University, 2008), all by the author.

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First Scribner hardcover edition January 2011

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2010029980

ISBN 978-1-4391-3054-4
ISBN 978-1-4391-4309-4 (ebook)

BURIAL FOR A KING

Mourners in Kings funeral procession march past the gold-domed Georgia capitol on the morning of April 9, 1968. AP Photo

THE WINDOWS ON THE second floor of City Hall provided a clear view of Georgias state capitol, and Mayor Ivan Allen could plainly see what Governor Lester Maddox was up to. Dozens of state troopers climbed out of armored trucks and marched up the wide walkway toward the capitol. Although the April morning was a drizzled gray, the troopers bayonets gleamed, as did the capitols gold dome. Mayor Allen and Vice Mayor Sam Massell watched silently as soldiers took their positions. There was no sign of Maddox, but they knew he was in the capitol. , thought Sam Massell. Hes drawing a line and daring anyone to cross it.

Directly across the street from the capitol, people streamed in and out of the double arched doors of Central Presbyterian Church. For days the church had served as a makeshift shelter, kitchen, and hospitality center for tens of thousands of mourners. Some gathered on the lawn in front of the sanctuary now. They wore neat church dresses and dark suits and clutched umbrellas, rain hats, and Bibles. Bolder mourners looked over at the troopers. Some soldiers stared right back. In just a few hours, the mourners at Central Presbyterian would be joined by many more; police predicted todays crowd would reach 150,000 by noon. That mass of grieving humanity would move down Central Avenueright between the church and the capitol, and right behind the coffin of Martin Luther King Jr.

The mayor turned from the window and walked out of his office. In the anteroom a few staff members manned phone lines. Everyone appeared subdued, exhausted after five days and nights of anxiety. In 110 other cities, the reaction to Kings April 4 assassination had been arson, looting, and deadly riots. In response, 57,500 National Guard troops deployed around the country, the largest domestic military mobilization since the Civil War. By contrast, the 160 troopers positioned at the perimeter of Georgias capitol seemed a puny forceexcept that the mayor knew Maddox had thousands more soldiers on alert just outside of the Atlanta city limits. There had been no rioting in Atlantayet. But on that Tuesday morning, no one in City Hall could predict how the day would unfold. All of the racial tension of the citys past replayed at fast speed, triggered by the death of a thirty-nine-year-old Atlanta preacher whose pulpit was just a mile from the governors fortified base of operations.

Mayor Ivan Allen left City Hall and headed to Kings church, Ebenezer Baptist, for the days first event, a service organized by Kings widow and family members. The big procession through downtown Atlanta and past the capitol would follow a few hours later.

Secret Service agents were interspersed among the mourners, crouched on rooftops along Auburn Avenue, and hidden in the choir loft and aisles of the church. At the time the funeral duties were divvied up, Lonnie Kings task monitoring guests at the church doorhad not seemed too challenging, and the assignment was certainly appropriate for a former prizefighter. But with each minute the crowd grew larger and surged threateningly closer to the sanctuary. He checked his list again. Robert Kennedy. Michigan governor George Romney. Sammy Davis Jr. Jackie Kennedy. Rabbi Abraham Heschel. Thurgood Marshall. Diana Ross. John Lewis. Vice President Hubert Humphrey. It was an unlikely gathering.

But then, Lonnie King was in the unlikeliest of situations. Eight years ago, he had been the leader of a student group that held sit-ins to protest Atlantas segregated lunch counters and department stores. The sit-in movement grew, and adults joined the student protesters, and blacks boycotted downtown businesses for months. During the boycotts, Lonnie King had sat in on negotiation sessions with Police Chief Herbert Jenkins, white business leaders, and black lawyers and pastors. Now, less than a decade later, Lonnie King, Mayor Ivan Allen, and Chief Jenkins were working togetheralong with hundreds of other Atlantansto strategize about how to keep the city from erupting in the kind of violence that overwhelmed more than a hundred other cities. Less than a decade earlier, Lonnie King and Martin Luther King Jr. were photographed as police officers took them to jail for staging a protest at Atlantas venerable Richs department store. Today Lonnie King stood with a walkie-talkie in front of historic Ebenezer Baptist Church as thousands of people crowded close to pay tribute to Martin King, killed by an assassins bullet five days earlier.

As a little boy, Lonnie King came to this part of town almost daily, attending after-school programs at the Butler Street YMCA and services at Ebenezer. He knew Martin Luther King Jr.; everyone in black Atlanta knew Martin King, the pastors son they all called M.L. Now a quarter century later, everyone in the world knew M.L., and it seemed they were all desperate to be part of his funeral rites. The crowd got bigger. The cops in front of the church stood up straighter and looked around more alertly.