“Self-Portrait of a Symbol: Martin Luther King”

Author: King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Date: February 13, 1961 to February 15, 1961

Location: New York, N.Y.

Genre: Published Article

Topic: Martin Luther King, Jr. - Political and Social Views

Details

On 7–8 February, King appeared on “The Mike Wallace Interviews” on WNTA-TV. Wallace had interviewed King in 1958 for a column he wrote for the New York Post.¹ During his appearances King clarifies his views regarding the distinction between just and unjust laws. He also denies organizational conflict between NAACP and SCLC. Responding to Wallace’s comparison of King with Jesus, Henry David Thoreau, and Gandhi, he says: “Their ideas were greater, and I feel that I am dependent upon them, and I’ve been greatly inspired by them and influenced by them.” He also discusses his increasing comfort with his role as a symbol in the civil rights movement: “I’m bent on doing what I think is right, and I think this is a great cause and I’m caught up in it and I get a great internal satisfaction as a result of this.” The transcripts of the interviews were published in the New York Post over the course of three days.²

13 February 1961
New York, N.Y.

WALLACE: Our guest is the leader of a new movement in the American Negro’s struggle for dignity and equality. In the words of one reporter: “The new gospel of the American Negro is rooted in the theology of desegregation. Its major prophets are Christ, Thoreau, Gandhi and Martin Luther King.”³

We’ll talk with Martin Luther King about this new gospel, about the sit-ins in the South, and we’ll ask him to explain what he calls “the tragic fact that the federal government is the nation’s highest investor in segregation.”⁴

Dr. King, a recent article in Harper’s magazine talking about the struggle now going on within the ranks of the American Negro had this to say: “For nearly a century a small ruling class has served as spokesman and has planned the strategy for all American Negroes.” And it goes on: “Now it is being overwhelmed by an upsurge of aggressive young people who feel that the NAACP is far too conservative and slow-moving.”⁵ So my question to you is, how serious is this struggle within the ranks of the American Negro?

KING: Well, I don’t think the present problem—the present revolt—is against the NAACP as such. I think the revolt is against the snail-like pace of the implementation of the Supreme Court decision on desegregation in 1954. Now, the NAACP isn’t responsible for this, but it’s often accused, because it is the organization that has worked through the channel of legalism to achieve citizenship rights for Negroes. But I don’t think it is valid to say that it is the NAACP that is bringing about, or rather using, the delaying methods—the delaying tactics. It is rather the forces at work in the South that are seeking to delay and nullify the decision.

WALLACE: The New York Times has said something a little bit different from that. They say, “There has been some conflict between the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,” which is the group that you’ve organized. And then the Times goes on to say this: “Roy Wilkins, executive secretary of the NAACP, and King have sought to hold it” [i.e., the conflict] to a minimum, “but some of the more ambitious men in the SCLC have made no secret of their scorn for the NAACP, calling it the Black Bourgeoise Club, and worse.”⁶ And you know that there is a joke in Harlem to the effect that the NAACP is the “National Association of Certain People.”⁷ So what really is at the core of this conflict?

No Official Conflict

KING: I don’t think there’s any conflict. Certainly this isn’t the official policy of SCLC or the NAACP. As in any organization, you may have individuals who have their points of view, but as far as the organization itself taking a stand against the NAACP, or the NAACP taking a stand against the SCLC, this isn’t true and we have worked together very cooperatively on various projects. In the other registration drive, in the various pilgrimages that we have had to Washington, and in so many other areas so that there isn’t any conflict on the basis of the official policy of either organization.

WALLACE: Well, then what is the conflict between individuals in the two groups? Is it a question of direct action on the part of SCLC versus more legal action on the part of NAACP?

KING: Well, this is a matter of emphasis here. SCLC is committed to non-violent action as an approach to the problem. The NAACP has worked mainly in the area of legal strategy and has achieved excellence in this area. But this is not to say the NAACP has ignored the other approaches. The NAACP has worked in the area of non-violent direct action also.⁸

WALLACE: Also, they’re late to the game. Wasn’t the NAACP’s hand forced to a certain extent by the activities particularly of certain of the Negro young people of the South?

KING: Well, I don’t know about that. I’m certain they could answer that a little better than I can, but I would simply say that the NAACP has supported the sit-in movement. They have supported it financially, helping the students in the court cases that they faced, and I don’t think there has been any negative statement concerning the sit-ins from the officials of the National Association.⁹

WALLACE: So you, Martin Luther King, are perfectly satisfied with the progress that is being made by the NAACP?

KING: Oh, I think the NAACP has done more than any other organization to achieve citizenship rights for Negro people in the U.S. and I would say that our organization does not seek to substitute for the NAACP but to supplement the noble work that has been done. And I think we can work together in a very cooperative and creative manner. There need be no conflict.

WALLACE: All right, sir, let’s move to something else. We’ve been hearing for a long time that the Supreme Court decision to desegregate the public schools is the law of the land. The NAACP has been trying to impress this upon the segregationists in the South. Now you come along and have said in defense of your methods from time to time, and I think I quote you accurately, “When conscience tells someone that a law is unjust, then I think a righteous man has no alternative but to conscientiously disobey that law.”¹⁰ Is there no conflict here?

KING: Well, not for me. I think when we deal with this question, we must face the fact that there are two types of laws—what I call just laws and unjust laws. Now, what is a just law and what is an unjust law? I would say that an unjust; first on the moral plane, is a law that serves to degrade the human personality—a law that stands against that which is morally right, what I call the moral laws of the universe.

On What’s Just and Unjust

Now, this would only appeal to those persons who are religious or who have a philosophical bent. So I would say there are other things that we must say would constitute an immoral or unjust law. I would say that a law is unjust where the majority enforces a code on the minority which is not binding on itself. Also, a law which comes into being which all the people had no part in bringing into being, in creating or enacting. This is true in the South where many Negroes don’t vote. So I would use all these arguments for the basis of an unjust law.

On the other hand, a just law is a law in which we have respect for the dignity of the human personality, from the moral point of view, and on the other hand, a law in which all the people had the right to participate by voting and a law in which the majority enforces a code that the minority will have to follow, but the majority itself follows.

Now, this is a sameness made legal, where on the other hand you have difference made legal. So I would say when we find an unjust law, on the basis of all these points that I’ve brought out, a moral individual has no alternative but to take a stand against that law—to protest it, not to evade it, not to defy it. I’m against defiance of the law, seeking to evade it, but I mean to openly disobey that unjust law and willingly accept the penalty in order to arouse the conscience of the community so that it will ultimately be altered.

WALLACE: Would you and the NAACP agree, sir, that the Southern whites, if they feel that a law is unjust, have the same right or duty to consciously disobey that law?

Opposes Defiance of Law

KING: Well, I would say on that question, if they actually feel that these laws are unjust—say the laws calling for integration of the schools—if they actually feel this, on the basis of conscience, and if they can also prove to themselves that this is something that the majority is forcing on them, and the majority is not following it itself, then I’d say they would have a right.

But they can’t prove that. Number one, I would doubt very seriously if most of these people deep down within think it’s right morally. On the other hand, I think they rationalize sometimes and try to convince themselves it’s right. But on the other hand, the majority, the people of the nation, accept this, and not only do they accept it, they follow it. So I think they are wrong in disobeying it. But if they, on the basis of conscience after all of this, decide to disobey it, I think they should certainly do it peacefully and non-violently, and this is what they are not doing. They are seeking to evade the law. They are seeking to defy the law. And I think this is wrong, and I think these persons should be condemned morally and legally for doing this.

14 February 1961
New York, N.Y.

WALLACE: Dr. King, do you feel that there is no feeling among some Negro leaders that the methods of sit-ins and economic boycotts, which you and your group employ—that there’s no feeling that they have perhaps alienated many Southern moderates who were formerly more sympathetic to your cause?

KING: Well, I am sure there are some Negroes who feel this. I don’t think it’s a majority opinion. I think there are some few.

WALLACE: Some older, more conservative groups, perhaps?

KING: Well, there are some few, yes. But I don’t think this would be the majority. I think the vast majority of Negroes and Negro leaders feel that they are good.

WALLACE: Is there some small minority, too, who feel that you’re not moving fast enough?

KING: Well, I’m sure there are.

Moving Too Fast?

WALLACE: For example, did you share the concern of some Negro leaders over the mass wade-ins in which Negro bathers hit public, but segregated, beaches last summer.¹¹ One Negro leader said, “We must keep moving all right, but this is too fast. Half-naked bathers raised the sexual fears that are at the bottom of the whole racial question in the South.”¹² Did you feel that that was moving too fast?

KING: Well, I think we have to work in many areas simultaneously and I think as we know we are in a period of social transition and whenever we find ourselves in such a period, various methods will be used, and I would not condemn the wade-in approach. Maybe some things are more important right now, if you put a sort of hierarchy here and say that this should be at the top and other things following. But I would not say, of course, that the wade-in should be thrown out altogether.

WALLACE: In the current issue of The Nation magazine, Dr. King, you say, “The intolerably slow pace of civil rights is due at least as much to the limits which the federal government has imposed on its own action as it is to the action of the segregationist opposition,” and then you add this: “We must face the tragic fact that the federal government is the nation’s highest investor in segregation.”¹³ What did you mean by that?

KING: The federal government has done more. I mean it places more money in segregated situations than anything in the nation.

Bias Examples Cited

WALLACE: For instance?

KING: Most of the housing in the U.S. would fall somewhere under the federal government, either FHA, PHA, urban renewal or veterans’ loans. Now, it is a known fact that in many of these housing situations, many of these agencies have received money from the federal government. We find outright discrimination. Levittown [N.J.], for instance, is a situation where they boasted that they would not allow Negroes to live, and many of the houses were built with FHA loans.¹⁴

These are common situations. Not only housing, airports are constructed every day, every week and every month in the South—with federal funds, and yet many of them have segregated facilities. Hospitals are constructed almost every week throughout Southern communities with funds from the Hill-Burden Act.¹⁵ Yet, these hospitals practice open discrimination. The same thing in businesses and industries receiving big money—receiving government contracts—and yet they refuse in many instances to employ Negroes and if they do, in many instances they are employed in discriminatory capacities.¹⁶ So this is what I mean.

WALLACE: Whose fault is it that this situation exists?

KING: Well, it’s the fault of the government itself on the one hand, and the fault of the people on the other hand for not pressing the government more to end the situation.

WALLACE: In your article you say, “It is leadership and determination that count, and these have been lacking in recent years.”¹⁷ Are you pointing the finger at President Eisenhower on that score, Dr. King?

KING: Well, honesty impels me to say that I don’t think Mr. Eisenhower gave the leadership that the problem demanded. I would say that I don’t think he’s a man of ill will, but I don’t think he ever understood the depths and dimensions of this problem. And I am convinced that if he had taken a strong forthright stand, many of the problems and the tensions that we face in the South today would be non-existent.¹⁸

WALLACE: You say in this article, “A truly decisive President would work passionately and unrelentingly to change these shameful conditions.”¹⁹ Do you think that President Kennedy will meet this challenge?

KING: I think he has a real opportunity. I think he understands the problem and I think he has a real concern and I’m very hopeful. I hope I’m not engaging in a superficial optimism, but I’m very hopeful about the possibilities. Now, I don’t think he will do it without the aid and the support that will come from forces working to implement the Supreme Court’s decision in the community itself. Unless the people act, the President himself may not act. The people can greatly strengthen the President as he moves on in this type of action.

WALLACE: When he was still a Senator, and running for President just before the election, Mr. Kennedy made a phone call to your wife expressing his sympathy on your arrest down in Georgia. And recently a New York Times reporter said, “There is considerable evidence that the telephone call enhanced the Democratic nominee’s standing with the Negro voters.”²⁰

And then only two months later, an attempt by Senate liberals to change the filibuster rule was defeated, as you remember, and another reporter observed that one phone call from President Kennedy at that time might have swung the vote to the liberals.²¹ Were you disappointed about the fact that Mr. Kennedy did not make that phone call, or try to swing that vote, to change the filibuster rule.

What Can President Do?

KING: Well, of course, many people would argue that it’s changed, we will not get the type of meaningful legislation in civil rights that we so desperately need. And I would certainly hope that the President will take a determined stand on this issue and seek to use the whole weight of his office to do it, and if he failed to do it this time, I think it’s a mistake, and I think he should seek to do it next time.

WALLACE: What, specifically, can he do? You have said, “The President could give segregation its death blow through the stroke of a pen.”²² What can Kennedy do?

KING: Well, I think he can work in three main areas. I think he should use his influence with the legislative branch of the government—this can be done, and it has been done in the past, and I think he can do it in this situation, using his influence to cause the legislative branch to render meaningful legislation.

Secondly, the President can move in the realm of moral persuasion. His very personal power can be a great force in bringing about integration and solving the problems which we face in this area. If the President refuses to participate in any way in anything that is segregated, if he from time to time will counsel the nation on television about the moral implications involved, this would be great. And finally, probably, I think, the most decisive area is that of executive order.

The President has the power, with a stroke of the pen, as I said in that article, to end many of these conditions in housing that I mentioned earlier, in employment, and in hospital and health areas. These are some of the things that he could end almost overnight. And we must never forget that the Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order, as well as ending segregation in the Army.²³ And there are many, many areas where the President can end segregation in this way.

Serious Suggestion

WALLACE: You’ve even talked about a Secretary of Integration.

KING: Yes.

WALLACE: Did you make that suggestion seriously?

KING: I certainly did. I think this is vital. I think this is necessary. And if we are going to solve this problem, I think ultimately we must mobilize all of the forces that we can possibly gain behind the process of integration, and I think one of the ways is through a Secretary of Integration.²⁴

WALLACE: Do you have a man in mind for the job?

KING: No, I haven’t gone that far. I think there are many, many capable persons who could work in this area.

WALLACE: Are you hopeful that President Kennedy will do some of these things you suggest?

KING: I certainly am, and I plan to submit these plans to him—some of the things that I suggested in the article.²⁵ And I certainly hope that he will follow through.

15 February 1961
New York, N.Y.

WALLACE: Dr. King, your name has been mentioned in the same breath with Christ, Thoreau, Gandhi. You’ve been called a saint by some. Does that sort of thing please you or does it ever worry you a bit?

KING: Well, I would say that it proves to be quite embarrassing sometimes, because when I compare myself with all these great persons that have entered human history, I can see such a great difference. I am sure that the commitment of all proved to be much greater than my commitment. Their ideas were greater, and I feel that I am dependent upon them, and I’ve been greatly inspired by them and influenced by them.

WALLACE: You understand the necessity, though, of people comparing you, of using you as a symbol?

KING: Well, I always appreciate people holding me in high esteem and I think we all have a desire to be appreciated and to be respected, but I don’t want anybody to feel that I’m a Christ, or that I’m a Gandhi or that I’m a Thoreau.

Ideas Personified

WALLACE: But when discussing your importance as a symbol recently, you said this: You said, “People cannot become devoted to Christianity until they find Christ, to democracy until they find [Abraham] Lincoln and [Thomas] Jefferson and [Franklin D.] Roosevelt, to communism until they find [Karl] Marx and [Vladimir] Lenin and [Joseph] Stalin.”²⁶

KING: Well, I think it’s quite true that people are often led to causes and often become committed to great ideas through persons who personify those ideas. They have to find the embodiment of the idea in flesh and blood in order to commit themselves to it.

WALLACE: What happens to a man when he becomes owned by a cause? What happens to you as you become the symbol of the segregation struggle? As a man?

KING: It has its advantages and its disadvantages.

When you are aware that you are a symbol, it causes you to search your soul constantly, to go through this job of self-analysis, to see if you live up to all of the high and noble principles that people surround you with, and to try at all times to keep the gulf between the public self and private self at a minimum—to bridge this gulf so that it serves at least to inspire the individual to seek to rise from the is-ness of his present nature to the eternal ought-ness that forever confronts him. On the other hand, it has its disadvantages in that you do lose some of your individual life, your private life. You lose something of the time that you would give to your family and to many of the other things that are important.

Growing Up

WALLACE: What about you when you were a much younger person, before your every thought and act were channeled toward a cause? How did you feel about whites when you were a boy?

KING: Well, I went through stages. As a young boy, I had the same experiences that most children have, Negro and white. That is, I had no feeling about it. I wasn’t aware of it until I was about 5 or 6 years old and some of my playmates, who happened to have been white, suddenly couldn’t play with me any more.

Their parents ran a store in front of our home and we played together for all these years and then the time came when we couldn’t. And my mother went through the process of explaining the best way that she could to me at my young age the meaning of this system and the history of it, and at the same time saying to me that this should not give you any sense of inferiority, that you must feel that you are as good as anyone else.²⁷

Then I went through the experience as I came to the point of adolescence, of developing a resentment. I experienced segregation in all its dimensions living in the South and I did develop this feeling of resentment. I don’t think it ever went to the point of being an extreme bitterness, but it was certainly a resentment where I for a period just felt like all white people were bad. Now, this was a temporary experience. It was never something that took its toll in terms of damaging my whole personality and giving me an eternal bitterness and hate.

WALLACE: You can say, with all candor, that there is little bitterness—there is no hate in you now about white people?

KING: I don’t think so. This is something that I always try to say to myself—that we must not become bitter and we must not hate the white man—and this is part of my basic philosophy of nonviolence. And I really feel that I have risen above all of the bitterness and hate that can engulf the human personality in a conflict situation.

WALLACE: When the Negro youngsters started to go to formerly white public schools in New Orleans recently, one segregationist in the state legislature down there warned—his direct quote was: “The burr-headed Congolese raping our daughters.”²⁸

Now, when you hear something like this, are you really able to satisfy your feelings by turning the other cheek, or explaining it away with historical theories or psychological theories? Do you never allow yourself the momentary luxury of a little human anger, or hate?

KING: I’m sure that I’m human enough to go through those moments of righteous indignation. I think we all do. When I hear things like this—these very tragic statements—I have a sort of mixed response. On the one hand, I do have this temporary sense of resentment. On the other hand, I pity the person, and I find myself saying, “This person is really to be pitied more than condemned”—although we must condemn them also.

It’s the System

And I try to keep the struggle centered on the system, and I think when we do that we can rise above many of these experiences of anger. When we seek to defeat the evil system, the system which causes individuals to make statements like that, we somehow develop the attitude that “this person is misguided, he is caught up in an evil system and we must free him.” And so the struggle is not merely a struggle to free the Negro, but a struggle to free many of our white brothers from their fears, from their prejudices and from their bigotry.

WALLACE: In the current Harper’s magazine, James Baldwin says: “I think it is of the utmost importance to realize that King loves the South. Many Negroes do.”²⁹ What’s there to love, from your point of view?

KING: Well, it’s like a parent who loves a prodigal child, a child who strays away. Here is a section of the country that has some beauty, that has been made ugly by segregation. There is an intimacy of life that can be beautiful if it is transformed in race relations from a sort of lord-servant relationship to a person-to-person relationship. And I think there are other things about the South that will make it one of the finest sections of our country once we solve this problem of segregation.

North and South

WALLACE: If you had your choice and you were not the symbol that you are, would you rather live North or South?

KING: Well, I don’t know about that. I would say that there are some things in the North that are much better than some things in the South.

At least in the North, the problem of desegregation is solved to a great extent. It’s not thoroughly integrated, but the legal barriers are broken down, so you have desegregation, whereas in the South we still have segregation and I don’t like it.

WALLACE: Chances are you might move North, then?

KING: Well, I’m sure that there is a possibility that I would. On the other hand, before I entered the movement, before I became involved in the Montgomery struggle, I went back South mainly because I felt that there were great opportunities there to transform a section of the country into something rich. I mean rich in spirit and beautiful. And I had an opportunity to live in the North because I had one or two jobs offered. So I went back mainly because I saw the vast potentials there.³⁰

WALLACE: You’re used to being called names, of course, by Southern whites, Dr. King. But again, according to the New York Times article by Claude Sitton: “Some Negroes regard King as a pious interloper, bent on personal aggrandizement.”³¹ How do you feel when members of your own race say that about you?

Friends and Enemies

KING: Well, I don’t think one can ever be involved in a movement of this nature, or, to put it in more general terms, one cannot be a public figure without constant attacks and without being criticized. So that I take it two ways. On the one hand, I’m again human enough not to want to be attacked from an unwarranted point of view. On the other hand, sometimes your best friends can be the people who call themselves your enemies, because they cause you to examine yourself. And certainly I have no pretense to absolute goodness, or to omniscience. I don’t know all of the answers. And it’s good every now and then for somebody to remind you so that you keep your feet on the ground. And also, sometimes criticisms are constructive criticisms and you must look at them as that.

WALLACE: After the successful Montgomery bus boycott in 1957, you said, in regard to your nationwide publicity: “Frankly, I’m worried to death.” You said, “A man who hits the peak at 27 has a tough job ahead. People will be expecting me to pull rabbits out of the hat for the rest of my life. If I don’t, or if there are no more rabbits to be pulled, they’ll say I’m no good.”³² Are you still worried to death about that?

KING: Well, I don’t think about it now. I think at that point I did have these worries to a degree, but now I’m bent on doing what I think is right, and I think this is a great cause and I’m caught up in it and I get a great internal satisfaction as a result of this. I’m not worried about the future and my own career.

^1. Wallace (1918–2012) rose to prominence in 1957 for his show “Night Beat.” For Wallace’s 1958 interview with King, see King, Interview by Mike Wallace, 25 June 1958, in Papers 4:431–441.

^2. The transcripts were also published in the Baltimore Afro-American on 4–18 March 1961.

^3. Wallace quotes from Louis E. Lomax, “The Negro Revolt against ‘The Negro Leaders,’” Harper’s Magazine, June 1960, p. 42.

^4. See King, “Equality Now,” 4 February 1961, p. 140 in this volume.

^5. In his Harper’s Magazine article, Lomax argued that the sit-in protests demonstrated impatience among African Americans with traditional top-down leadership and that organizations would have to accept “being servants rather than catalysts” to survive (Lomax, “The Negro Revolt,” p. 48).

^6. Claude Sitton, “Dr. King, Symbol of the Segregation Struggle,” New York Times Magazine, 22 January 1961. At the SCLC-sponsored founding conference of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in April 1960, James M. Lawson reportedly criticized the NAACP for being “too conservative” and stated that its magazine, The Crisis, was for the “black bourgeois club” (Sitton, “Negro Criticizes N.A.A.C.P. Tactics,” New York Times, 17 April 1960; Roy Wilkins to King, 27 April 1960, in Papers 5:444–446).

^7. During the 1910s and 1920s African American writer Hubert Harrison and activist Marcus Garvey referred to the NAACP as the “National Association for the Advancement of Certain People.”

^8. In the summer of 1958, members of the NAACP youth councils in Wichita, Kansas, and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, initiated sit-in demonstrations which led to the desegregation of several local and statewide lunch counters and drugstores.

^9. At its 1960 annual convention, the NAACP passed a resolution backing the lunch counter sit-in, promising “moral, financial, legal, consultant, and participatory” aid to demonstrators (Farnsworth Fowle, “N.A.A.C.P. Upholds Students’ Sit-Ins,” New York Times, 26 June 1960).

^10. Sitton, “Dr. King, Symbol of the Segregation Struggle.”

^11. African Americans in Biloxi, Mississippi, were attacked and arrested in April 1960 while attempting to swim at an “all-white” beach maintained by public funds.

^12. Quoted in Loudon Wainwright, “Martyr of the Sit-Ins: Dr. Martin Luther King Gets New Woe, Prestige,” Life, 7 November 1960, p. 132.

^13. See King, “Equality Now,” 4 February 1961, p. 140 in this volume.

^14. Although the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) pledged to extend benefits to people regardless of race, color, creed, or national origin in 1950, the U.S. Commission of Civil Rights estimated that less than two percent of FHA funds were allocated to African Americans in 1959. In Levittown, New Jersey, the FHA insured the builder’s development despite his public intention to enforce segregation.

^15. In 1946 Senators J. Lister Hill and Harold Burton sponsored the Hospital Survey and Construction Act, which sought to modernize hospitals.

^16. In May 1961, the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity, headed by Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, threatened to seek contract cancellation with Lockheed Aircraft Corporation unless Lockheed desegregated its facilities and provide its African American employees more training and job advancement opportunities.

^17. See King, “Equality Now,” 4 February 1961, p. 144 in this volume.

^18. King made a similar claim in a 6 November 1960 interview, adding that, given Dwight D. Eisenhower’s popularity, “he could have at least used moral persuasion to get people to see that this is the law of the land, it is morally right, and this is something that we as a nation must do in order to maintain our position in the world” (King, Interview by Zenas Sears on “For Your Information,” in Papers 5:549).

^19. See King, “Equality Now,” 4 February 1961, pp. 141, 144 in this volume.

^20. In a 27 November 1960 New York Times article, Anthony Lewis cited Kennedy’s call to Coretta Scott King as “the most important single campaign move” (Anthony Lewis, “Negro Vote Held Vital to Kennedy,” New York Times, 27 November 1960). For more on Kennedy’s call, see Introduction in Papers 5:36–40.

^21. When the Senate convened in early January 1961, a motion to change the requirements needed to filibuster was tabled by fifty senators favoring the change. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield recommended tabling the bill out of fears that it “could disrupt the party unity needed” to pass Kennedy’s legislative program (“Mansfield Urges Filibuster Foes to Defer a Fight,” New York Times, 12 December 1960).

^22. See King, “Equality Now,” 4 February 1961, p. 145 in this volume.

^23. Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on 22 September 1862, and it went into effect on 1 January 1863. On 26 July 1948 Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9981 mandating the desegregation of the military.

^24. For a fuller discussion on King’s idea of a Secretary of Integration, see King, “Equality Now,” 4 February 1961, and King to Percival Leroy Prattis, 26 April 1961, p. 149 and pp. 208–209 in this volume, respectively.

^25. Despite several requests since March 1961 to meet with Kennedy, King did not meet with the president until October 1961 (King to Kennedy, 16 March 1961, King, Press Conference after Meeting with John F. Kennedy, 16 October 1961, p. 175 and pp. 308–311 in this volume, respectively).

^26. Quoted in Wainwright, “Martyr of the Sit-Ins,” p. 123.

^27. This story is recounted in William Peters, “Our Weapon Is Love,” Redbook, August 1956; Ted Poston, “Fighting Pastor: Martin Luther King,” New York Post, 8 April 1957; and Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), pp. 18–19.

^28. The previous November, Leander Henry Perez, a leading segregationist in the Louisiana state legislature, told a New Orleans crowd of 5,000: “Don’t wait for your daughter to be raped by these Congolese. Don’t wait until the burr-heads are forced into your schools. Do something about it now” (“Segregation Planner: Leander Henry Perez, Sr.,” New York Times, 28 November 1960).

^29. Baldwin, “The Dangerous Road Before Martin Luther King,” Harper’s Magazine, February 1961, p. 38.

^30. In Stride Toward Freedom, King wrote that he had offers from churches in Massachusetts and New York (King, Stride Toward Freedom, p. 16). King was also recommended as a possible candidate for the open pastorate at Mount Zion Baptist Church in Dayton, Ohio (Melvin H. Watson to King, 27 April 1954). In a 1957 interview, King’s wife, Coretta, said that she would have preferred staying in the North because of the greater opportunities to pursue her own career in music (Poston, “Fighting Pastor”).

^31. Sitton, “Dr. King, Symbol of the Segregation Struggle.”

^32. Quoted in Ted Poston, “Where Does He Go From Here?,” New York Post, 14 April 1957.

Source: New York Post, 13–15 February 1961.