From Lawrence Dunbar Reddick
Author: Reddick, Lawrence D. (Coppin State Teachers College)
Date: May 9, 1961
Location: Baltimore, Md.
Genre: Letter
Details
In a 4 May 1961 letter, King invited Reddick, who accompanied him on his trip to India and wrote the first biography on King in 1959, to attend a 10 May luncheon of SCLC’s administrative committee, prior to an executive board meeting in Montgomery.1 In the letter below, Reddick regrets his inability to attend the meeting but suggests a few items to discuss with the members, including commending Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy for his statement that schools would be integrated as mandated by the Supreme Court.2
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Ebernezer Bapist Church
407 Auburn Ave N.E.
Atlanta, Georgia
Dear Martin:
Greetings! It’s been a long time! However, I keep up with you somewhat through the newspapers and magazines. I hope that all are well at home and that SCLC is now sailing along smoothly.
I really wish that I could make it to the Board Meeting. My re-entry at Montgomery, as well as yours, would be symbolic.3 However, here at school, we are in the pre-closing festival season: ever day or night there is some event, and since I am taking the whole summer off, I thought that I ought to stick around just now. During the summer, if you and Wyatt [Tee Walker] are available, we can consult daily, if necessary, since I’ll be in Atlanta.
There are several matters that I trust you and Wyatt will be sure to place before the Board:
The students of Jackson Mississippi deserve special commendation.4
Bob Kennedy should be commended for his candor and political courage in coming to Athens, Georgia and telling a white, Southern audience that Civil Rights laws and U.S. Supreme Court decisions will be enforced. (In the course of his remarks, he stated a theory of obeying any and every law. Even though we do not agree with him in this, please let us not be drawn into debating that now. Let’s get the full effect of his warning to those who defy the law and courts on Civil Rights.)
John Kennedy should be commended for making a good start in restoring the faith of Negro Americans in the concern and fairness of the federal government. His fair employment order is as sound as words could make it—now let’s urge full and immediate implementation.5
- Our Board should urge President Kennedy, specifically, to do two things:
use more Negro Americans in the diplomatic and foreign service with African Nations. (This is most important or we will be left out of the redemption of Africa. The supporting evidence is included in the enclosed speech)6
the President should make a positive statement on the meaning of the Civil War Centennial or the Confederates will turn the war into a festival for reaction. This will build a psychological (and political) wall of resistance to desegregation and social welfare legislation. I also make that point in the speech.
Perhaps this is enough suggestions and advice for now.
Give my best to all—especially [Ralph] Abernathy, [Joseph] Lowery and [Fred] Shuttleswurth,
Our cause speeds on.
Sincerely yours,
[signed] Lawrence
Lawrence D. Reddick
LDR/obg
P.S. I’m sending a copy of this to Wyatt and in care of Abernathy just in case your copy to Atlanta misses you.
1. The executive board of SCLC met 10–11 May 1961. For Reddick’s account on King’s first press conference upon his arrival in India, see Account by Lawrence Dunbar Reddick on Press Conference in New Delhi on 10 February 1959, in Papers 5:125–129.
2. On 6 May, Kennedy delivered his first formal address as attorney general at the University of Georgia Law School in Athens, Georgia. Kennedy told the audience: “You may ask: Will we enforce the civil rights statutes? The answer is: Yes, we will.” Regarding the rule of law, Kennedy remarked: “The decisions of the courts, however much we might disagree with them, in the final analysis must be followed and respected. If we disagree with a court decision and, thereafter, irresponsibly assail the court and defy its rulings, we challenge the foundations of our society” (“Text of Attorney General Kennedy’s Civil Rights Speech at University of Georgia,” New York Times, 7 May 1961). At the 10 May meeting the executive board expressed its “sincere appreciation for the Attorney General Robert Kennedy and his forthright leadership he is giving the enforcement arm of the Federal Government” (SCLC, Press release, “King and SCLC meet in Montgomery,” 12 May 1961).
3. In June 1960 Reddick was fired from his post as chair of the history department at Alabama State College in Montgomery because of his support for student activists at the college. Reddick then moved to Baltimore, Maryland, and became a professor of history at Coppin State Teachers College. For more on Reddick’s firing, see King to Patrick Murphy Malin, Roy Wilkins, and Carl J. Megel, 16 June 1960, in Papers 5:471–472.
4. At SCLC’s executive board meeting, the members declared their support for the Mississippi students and avowed their “complete opposition to the inexcusable brutality directed against peaceful Negroes by Mississippi police and the use of dogs and weapons” (SCLC, Press release, “King and SCLC meet in Montgomery”).
5. On 6 March 1961 Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925, which prohibited employment discrimination based on race in businesses contracting with the federal government and established the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity to investigate, regulate, and sanction employers not meeting the requirements of the order.
6. In the enclosed speech Reddick argued that “the strongest and most natural bond between Africa and America is that between the African people and their transplanted Negro American brothers.” Reddick further argued that the greatest weakness of the Kennedy administration’s policy toward Africa is its “abysmal failure to use Negro Americans” in diplomacy with African nations (“Africa, the Confederate Myth and the New Frontier,” 22 April 1961).
Source: MLKP-MBU, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers, 1954–1968, Boston University, Boston, Mass.