Crusader Without Violence: The First Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

I.

The Man

Martin Luther King Jr. has attracted world-wide attention by his leadership of the Montgomery bus boycott in 1956 and the projection then and afterward of his philosophy of nonviolent social change. He has shown a rare combination of courage, wisdom, and compassion. Perhaps more than any other American he has reminded us of the practical usefulness of the ideals of Henry David Thoreau and the techniques of Mohandas K. Gandhi.

He has undergone tests which were not merely theoretical: He has been caricatured in cartoons and abused in editorials by those who oppose the cause he serves; his home has been bombed and he himself has been maltreated by police and convicted in Southern courts; and in September 1958, he was almost assassinated in New York City by a woman who appeared to be demented.

On the other hand, Martin Luther King is a hero to the Negro people of the South and to others elsewhere. He has been honored beyond his years at universities and ethical societies. His name has been carried to many lands and nations by the written and spoken word.

But the image of the hero or monster or saint scarcely reveals the man. Or satisfies the human heart that asks how the man came to be as he is—and may become. Quite naturally, people want to know what kind of person Martin Luther King really is and how it happens that one so young could achieve, apparently, such poise and moderation in the face of danger and fame. Above all, they search his life as they search their own, seeking after that which is real and rejecting that which is false.

PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL

Martin Luther King is not tall. You may not be aware of this when he is up in the pulpit or on the rostrum. But when he comes down to shake hands with the audience, you realize, with him on the same level, that he is a little below the medium height. He has a well-formed, brown-skinned body, with good muscle and bone, strong shoulders and arms. His torso, firm and broad, is worthy of a larger man. King’s shortness is in his legs, which are quick and fleet. Until September 1958 he was unscarred but for a slight nick below the knuckles of his left hand.

At that time, Dr. King was stabbed almost to death by a Negro woman as he sat autographing copies of his book in a Harlem store. Whether this was the senseless act of an unfortunate psychopath or part of a ploy to destroy the leader of a movement is still in question. The wound and subsequent operation left him with a surgical mark on his chest, a few inches right of his heart, and minus his second rib and part of his breastbone.

King’s face is boyish. His features are soft and rounded, except for his eyes, which have a slight Oriental slant. His lips and nose are full and well-formed; his forehead is rather high with a receding hairline. His clear brown eyes sparkle. He wears a small moustache. He shaves daily with an old-fashioned English razor, a gift from his father, who also shaves with an open-faced blade. King keeps his crinkly black hair close cut and well-trimmed.

He is in excellent health and has seldom known sickness. Yet on the few occasions when he has fallen ill, as during his visit to Ghana, King has wondered if he would pull through.

King sleeps well. In general, he relaxes easily and once in bed does not worry about the affairs of the day, unless there is some especially pressing problem. He usually gets to bed early and rises at about 5 or 6 A.M. He would like seven or eight hours of sleep but seldom gets that much. During the crises of the boycott he was averaging about four hours in bed a night. Fortunately, he could take a fifteen- or twenty-minute catnap during the day and bounce up from it feeling refreshed. When he is lounging informally, he habitually stretches himself, placing his feet on a stool or a second chair or his desk.

King’s favorite exercises are walking, tennis, and swimming. As a youth, he loved basketball, football and baseball. Although he did quite a bit of walking while in the seminary and graduate school, he cannot walk very far in Montgomery without having somebody stop him for conversation. There it is also difficult to find a tennis court open to Negroes. But it is King’s own fault that he does not make more use of the splendid swimming pool at Alabama State College—just seven blocks away, on his own street, South Jackson.

As a sports spectator, King keeps up fairly well with big-time football, baseball, and boxing, although most of the games and bouts that he sees now are by way of television. His long-time ring heroes are Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson. He admires Jack Johnson, who won the heavyweight crown when race feeling in sports was much more intense than it is today. He also likes Gene Tunney; Henry Armstrong, who held three world championships at the same time; and Tiger Flowers, the great middleweight from King’s hometown, Atlanta.

King loves food. Eating, he says, is my great sin. His tastes are wide and varied—steaks, chops, chicken, sauces, gravies, vegetables, fruits, cakes, pies, ice cream . . . He is especially fond of collard greens and black-eyed peas. But like almost everybody else, King has to watch his diet. He restricts himself on starches and denies himself that second helping—most of the time. When the scales tell him that he needs to do it, he will drop one meal, eating a late breakfast and an early dinner. Occasionally he takes vitamin pills.

In a word, Martin Luther King is an attractive, healthy, physical type, easygoing, with good motor control and all of his senses active. His robust health is perhaps part of the basis for his energy and poise.

In matters of dress, King is impeccable. Those who have seen him on his lecture tours may have noticed that the shades of his suits, ties, shirts, and shoes blend harmoniously and that he wears a handkerchief—often an embroidered one—in his upper coat pocket. His clothes are of good quality, and his wife, Coretta, helps him select them. He likes suits that have a dressy sheen. The habit of giving attention to his personal appearance goes back to his youth. In high school he was addicted to tweed suits. At college he was a fancy dresser, leaning heavily towards sports clothes.

Today he is more reserved. Wayne Phillips of the New York Times has remarked that King dresses in conservative good taste. He favors gray or brown suits. He does not care for formal attire, has no tails, but does have a tuxedo and a light summer tux jacket.

He wears the standard, string-up footgear, not caring for casuals or loafers. His shoes are always shined; he brushes them up each morning himself. His socks do not hang down over the upper edges of his shoes in the collegiate fashion but have elastic tops or supporters. He prefers silk and hand-painted ties and wears hats winter and summer. His nails are kept closely trimmed but he does not have them manicured.

During the height of the Montgomery boycott, the rumor was circulated by the opposition that King had taken the people’s money to buy himself a Cadillac. Those who knew him laughed at this, because for one thing he does not care at all for big, flashy automobiles. He owns a 1954 Pontiac, and his church has a station wagon.

King finds little time for social life and attends formal functions only out of a sense of obligation. As a youth, he liked to dance and was considered quite a good jitterbug. But as he moved toward the ministry, he gave up these pleasures. He was never interested in card playing but believes that he is still good at billiards.

King is a member of a college fraternity—Alpha Phi Alpha—which he did not get around to joining until he had finished college. He is also an honorary Elk and a duly initiated member of Sigma Pi Phi—a sort of super fraternity of mostly elderly and distinguished Negro men.

He enjoys weekend visits with a small party of friends in the mountains, on the seashore, or at a suburban home. He likes to fish and someday hopes to go yachting in pursuit of the prizes of the deep sea. Recently, he has taken up golf.

He enjoys movies if he can pick and choose. On TV he prefers the quiz programs, where he tries to beat the contestants to the answers.

Whenever he is in New York for several days, King tries to get in at least one Broadway or little theater show. He has seen Mr. Wonderful, South Pacific, and Damn Yankees.

He does not read detective stories, the pulps, or novels in general, nor does he know of the great imaginative works of modern literature. He has not read Kafka or Proust and little even of Hemingway and Faulkner. Having fallen into social action as soon as he completed his education, he has not had the time for general reading. But he likes to quote the more communicable poets in his speeches and sermons. He reads Negro writers—especially James Weldon Johnson, Richard Wright, and Langston Hughes.

King enjoys getting about and seeing America and the world, although most of his traveling thus far has been in connection with his speaking engagements. When flying, which he does frequently, he insures himself heavily: $50,000 when he is flying north and south; $100,000 on east and west flights, when he has to cross over the mountains. His wife and children, he says, deserve to be well taken care of.

FAMILY

As that remark suggests, King is very much a family man. From both a personal and a theoretical standpoint he believes in the monogamous family. Two persons absolutely devoted to each other, he maintains, bring out the best in marriage by attaining a high standard of mutual understanding and self-fulfillment.

What is wrong with the American family, he insists, is not monogamy. Much of the blame for unhappy and broken homes he places on the strains that arise out of our struggle for material possessions and prestige. It is good that economic development permits more women to work—and they should have equal pay for equal work. But somebody should be at home, he feels. Biologically and aesthetically women are more suitable than men for keeping house. And for the children, there is no substitute for an attentive mother. If the economic grind to stay ahead of the Joneses were not so great both husband and wife could spend more time at home.

Children should be neither drastically inhibited nor permitted to run wild. King emphasizes that children are not young adults. Accordingly, they should be given freedom to express their innocent inclinations. They need guidance, not suppression. Physical punishment of any sort should be necessary only rarely. He favors spanking children whenever necessary, for sometimes there is no other way. Whippings must not be so bad, for I received them until I was fifteen, he says with a laugh.

King looks upon divorce as the court of last resort. A family should prayerfully exhaust all other possible remedies before breaking up. But separation is better than prolonged and fundamental unhappiness.

In his column in Ebony magazine, Advice for Living, King has said: In advising anyone on marital problems I usually begin by urging each person to do an honest job of self-analysis. . . . People fail to get along with each other because they fear each other. They fear each other because they don’t know each other. They don’t know each other because they have not properly communicated with each other. . . . A marriage that is based only on external beauty lacks the solid rock of permanence and stability. One must discover the meaning of soul beauty before he has really discovered the meaning of love.

King’s home life fits the theoretical picture he paints. The atmosphere is positive, cooperative and informal. A moderate number of receptions are held there for visiting personalities. Church members and other friends come in at almost any time.

Coretta Scott King is attractive and intelligent. She has no job of her own outside the home, but maintains an active interest in whatever her husband does and wherever he goes. She attends quite a few meetings of various women’s groups and represents him now and then when he is out of town. For her own career, she takes on a few singing engagements each year. She is a soprano.

King and his wife talk over major problems together. When his life was threatened almost daily, she chose to remain in Montgomery with him even though both her parents and his felt that she should retire to a safer location. She and the baby were in the home the night of January 30, 1956, when a bomb exploded on their front porch. Luckily, no one was hurt.

The Kings have two children—Yolanda Denise King, better known as Yoki, born November 17, 1955, and Martin Luther King III, born October 23, 1957. Yolanda is thus a pre-boycott and Martin a post-boycott child. In his son’s loud cry, King professes to detect the voice of a future preacher.

King describes himself as an ambivert—a cross between an extrovert and an introvert—and this is about right. He is outgoing, direct and not at all a worrier or a brooder. At the same time, he does live an inner contemplative life. Martin Luther King may be striking or different and his point of view may be considered unusual or even odd, but he himself is not internally complicated. Neither is he all balled up inside by inhibitions or torn apart by deep-seated frustrations. As much as any ordinary human being, King is normal and his behavior is predictable.

No matter what people have heard about him or the mental picture they have formed of him, King’s naturalness is felt by everyone who comes face to face with him. To meet him is to enter an atmosphere of simplicity, free of pretense or posing. He smiles and shakes hands easily. He is unhurried. He never seems to respond impulsively or impatiently. This delayed and calm reaction has helped him out of many an explosive situation.

He enjoys conversation, is a big talker himself and a patient listener—at times too patient for those who have appointments with him and who often have to wait while he is still accommodating somebody who just dropped in.

THE MAN

Obviously, King likes people. He is the opposite of an egotist. One Southern white woman was impressed by his almost touching modesty. A cynical New Yorker, who came all the way to Montgomery to look him over, said afterward: There are few men like him in public life today. He’s like the old-timers—really sincere.

King listens well but makes his own decisions. He is not argumentative but he has will and direction. He does not quibble over details but constantly advances his main point. He is so persuasive that almost everybody is happy to let him have his way.

For all his amiability, he has a touch of suspicion in his nature. In high school and college he thought at times that the big boys who elected him to student committees were not so interested in honoring him as in pushing him up to do jobs that they found to be a little risky, as, for example, negotiating with the faculty.

King also has a quiet shrewdness underneath his kindliness. Usually he can see through the motives of men, though this discernment may be difficult at the first meeting, when the atmosphere is friendly and positive. Along with this sagacity there is also a strong sense of responsibility for the material security of his wife and children. All his life the value of the dollar has been pounded into him, though his natural predisposition may have been otherwise.

He takes special pains with public monies. During the height of the bus boycott, contributions came to him in every conceivable shape and form—check, money order, currency, silver. Some of it came to his home, much of it was addressed to him personally. He was careful to have it counted and taken to the office of the organization the day that it arrived. One of his secretaries, who worked very closely with him in those days, has said privately that the Reverend King is the most honest man I ever knew; unnecessarily so.

Thus Martin Luther King, as much as the next one, likes good clothes, a suite at the Waldorf, dinner at Sardi’s, plane trips, long-distance telephone calls, and money in the bank. But all of these things must come to him by way of a straight and narrow path. His father before him always believed that the Church should give its pastor the best living that it could afford but that the pastor was not to help himself to one penny from the collection plate.

When relaxing among close friends, King is full of fun. He has a great zest for life. You feel it when you are with him. Oh yes! is a favorite expression of his enthusiasm. And he can tease, with a dry, erupting humor that reminds his mother of her father. King characterizes statements that have little intellectual content as pretty light and a person who makes them as a light sister or a light brother.

Never given to clowning in public, King will regale his friends at private parties with his imitations of religious entertainers and fellow preachers. At a birthday celebration that his wife gave for him and about a dozen guests, King and his close friend, the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, carried on. Pretending to be two semiliterate gospel singers doing a TV program, they began by dericating the number to Miss Coretta King, a dear sister over there in Montgomery, Alabama. Then followed off-key, off-beat singing, slurring, grimacing, and prancing that kept the party howling for half an hour.

King’s voice is possibly his most magnetic power. It is a rich, natural baritone with a wide range. His brother says that he can sing bass in a chorus and then double with a second tenor solo. Art Carter of the Afro-American once wrote that King has a soft musical voice which he uses without oratorical tricks. Mrs. Almena Lomax of the Los Angeles Tribune is more lyrical when she writes: His voice has great power, passion, great depths of tenderness and an overlay of gentleness to charm your heart out of your body.

Perhaps it was this overlay of gentleness that caused a long-distance operator to let her enthusiasm override her company’s regulations. While King was holding on, waiting for the other party to come to the telephone, she gushed out: Oh, Reverend King, I’ve just got to tell you how wonderful you are! It was his voice over the telephone that first fascinated Miss Coretta Scott, even before she laid eyes on him.

Thus, Martin Luther King is healthy, winsome, quite normal, and enlightened in most of his tastes and in his family life. He is easy to meet and good company.

II.

The Ideology

Martin Luther King Jr.’s home address in Montgomery is 309 South Jackson Street, a large, white frame house. About four blocks toward the southwest is the office of the Montgomery Improvement Association at 530 South Union Street, a two-story, red, new-brick building. About seven blocks northwest, at the corner of Decatur Street, stands Dexter Avenue Baptist Church—high steps, steep roof, and old, red brick.

Home-office-church, this is the regular beat of the Reverend Dr. King. But during the year-long boycott of buses all of Montgomery was more or less his route. He was covering the whole city, so to speak—in and out of conferences, mass meetings, courthouses, the city hall and the state capitol. Since the boycott, the outside world has called on him more and more; thus his speaking and conferring have taken him into many parts of the nation and as far away as Ghana, West Africa, and India. Nevertheless, the round of home-office-church describes his working orbit.

At home King has a den to which he can retreat from household activities and the stream of casual callers. It is a room about twelve by eighteen feet, lined with bookshelves, outfitted with a desk, several chairs, an air conditioner and a gas-jet heater. It has the scholarly disorder that one would expect to find in the study of a man who likes to read but receives books, magazines, and pamphlets much faster than he can consume them.

Here in this den the Reverend Dr. King often begins his day at 6 or 7 A.M. by meditation. He usually ends it here also, doing his after-hours reading and dictating to a portable transcriber that he will take along with him to the office the next morning. Like many other people, King does some of his thinking in bed, just before dozing off to sleep or upon awakening in the morning. He believes that he is at his best, mentally, before ten o’clock in the morning.

The Montgomery Improvement Association, in the course of its history, had several office locations but finally landed at the Bricklayers’ Hall on Union Street. Here the MIA rented a suite of four rooms, including a couple of closets and a lavatory. One of the small, eight-by-eight back rooms was reserved for the president. Like the other offices, this one had yellow walls, a black and gray tile floor, a steel gray desk, and green filing cabinets. There was just space enough left in it for several chairs.

But it was here that President King read most of his mail, kept his confidential correspondence, and dictated answers either to his transcriber or directly to his secretary, Mrs. Maude L. Ballou. A great many of King’s public statements were composed or reworked in this little office; also it could accommodate interviews and small conferences. But the large meetings of the MIA board (some thirty-odd members) took place in the assembly hall on the second floor of the building.

MIA headquarters during and just after the boycott were bursting with activity—often both telephones ringing at once, some committee or subcommittee always in session or officers putting their heads together in a huddle, telegram and special delivery messengers darting in and out, and the secretary and her assistants pounding away at the typewriters, answering the phones, and receiving visitors, all at the same time.

Normally King would get to the office about ten o’clock in the morning, greeting everyone upon arrival, and work through until his lunch hour at one-thirty. He often remained at home for an hour or so, returning to the office and remaining there until five or six.

This routine, of course, was often interrupted by callers and out-of-the-office conferences. Moreover, Saturday (and sometimes Friday) was spent in the church office, deciding upon and arranging the schedule of religious events for the week and preparing for sermons and other ministerial duties. The church had a secretary who cared for most of its clerical details. As pastor, King himself preached at Dexter about three Sundays out of each month.

The office staff agreed that Reverend King is a very busy man, a hard worker, but pleasant to work with. King’s secretaries all testify that he dictates easily, without much hesitation or impatience. They say he works them long and hard, frequently extra hours, but not nearly so hard as he works himself. Many a time during the boycott crisis he became so fatigued that he had to stop dictating for a while, excuse his secretary, and lay his head down on his desk for a few minutes of rest or curl up on two large chairs pulled together.

Despite his oral mastery of words, King is the first to admit his weakness in the technical aspects of composition. I can’t spell a lick, he says. All the way through public school and college, his sister had to help him out, looking over his essays before he passed them in to his teachers. One of the chief qualities that he looks for in a secretary is the ability to spell twice as well as I can. King says that somewhere I missed learning all the elements of grammar. My punctuation as well as my spelling is horrible. I always need somebody to go over my work for that. Obviously, King can handle ideas much better than the written word. Yet his PhD dissertation in theology is well-written for its specialized readers. Currently he is developing a more popular style for the general public.

Perhaps it is a general characteristic that King is more at home with a conception than he is with the details of its application. For example, though he made excellent grades in mathematics, he is not much interested in business administration—or administration in general.

THE ORATOR

His great delight is in speaking and preaching. Essentially Martin Luther King is an orator. He himself admits that the eloquent statement of ideas is his greatest talent, strongest tradition, and most constant interest. It is his first love. King has been rated among the top public speakers of the nation. As Louis Martin of the Chicago Defender has noted, King may come after a long series of addresses and addressers; yet his effect is fresh and moving. He’s a real charmer, says Martin.

King is methodical in the preparation of his sermons and lectures. He likes to read up on his topic for a couple of days; outline it, then write out what he wants to say. He will then lay his manuscript aside, going back to it a few hours before it is to be delivered. When he has gone through this process, he does not need either script or notes when he stands up to make his speech.

Unfortunately, the luxury of such orderly preparation could seldom be afforded during and after the boycott.

He delights in talking over or debating what he is going to say with somebody beforehand. His wife is often helpful in these preparations, and when the pressure is really on him, she knows his pattern of thought so well that she can suggest connecting ideas or construct transitional passages. But Mrs. King does not write her husband’s speeches. As a matter of fact, it is remarkable that King himself composed so many of the statements, press releases, and letters that have been issued under his name and through the Montgomery Improvement Association. Perhaps it would have been better if he had been helped a bit more. However, when it comes to magazine or book writing, King more readily accepts assistance and advice.

King feels a little nervous just before he is about to start speaking. But once he hears his own voice and senses the response of his listeners, he becomes completely at ease in a moment or two. Often the applause of the audience after he has been introduced and before he has uttered a single word is sufficiently assuring.

King uses his voice as an instrument, fitting its inflections to the tempo of his sentences and to the mood and thought that they are meant to convey. He enunciates clearly. He is probably at his best when he is just talking to an audience, saying what he has to say in a conversational tone. But he can rise to heights of emotion and climax, reminding us all that he is, after all, a Southern Baptist preacher, though a highly educated and cultivated one. Mrs. Almena Lomax has written that the impact of Martin Luther King is in his delivery, which is all of a piece, like a narrative poem . . . His elocution has the beauty and polish of Roland Hayes singing a spiritual . . .

As a speaker he gesticulates only moderately—using both arms and hands and a slight wave or bow of the head. His right hand, of course, is utilized more than his left. He does not move about on the platform very much—this would be fatal with microphones. Usually he stands up straight and, viewed from behind by his colleagues on the platform, is seen to place his short legs firmly apart, giving him a good stance. He shifts his weight from foot to foot easily and naturally. Now and then he will raise himself up on the balls of his feet for emphasis. Being a short man, he does not find it necessary to drape himself over the lectern. This gives the audience a direct, clear frontal view of him.

Art Carter of the Afro-American, after watching King intently, remarked that for emphasis he occasionally utilizes his fingers in little illustrative gestures, but mostly talks straight-wordly, unhesitatingly, and with a command of the English language.

King likes mouth-filling phrases and colorful figures of speech. While yet a youngster in the first grade, he told his mother that he would get himself some big words. Apparently, he made good on this promise, for many of his speeches and sermons are punctuated with expressions such as the iron feet of oppression, crippling passivity and stagnant complacency, incarcerated within the walls of inactivity, and clouds of sorrow floating in our mental skies.

King is particularly fond of contrasting images—of color, sound, temperature, space. He has a special attachment to the darkness-versus-light analogy, as from bass black to treble white, from the midnight of Egyptian captivity to the glittering light of Canaan freedom, from the black night of segregation to the bright daybreak of joy. The stone of separate-but-equal had been rolled away, and justice rose up from dark and gloomy graves, leaving the dark chambers of the subconscious and moving toward the bright parlor of conscious action.

These are, obviously, the metaphors of a public speaker, rather than of a writer. The requirement is immediate communication with an audience. All allusions and anecdotes must be understood when they are heard. A page in a book or magazine can be reread. The writer can be more subtle and his editor will help him catch and discard the inept and hurried phrase.

King’s great theme, of course, is race relations in the modern world. But in a larger sense, his main thesis is the power of brotherly love to redeem a world that will otherwise destroy itself. Only love can bring brotherhood on earth, he constantly repeats.

These grand conceptions allow for innumerable subthemes, variations, and counterpoint. Usually, King applies his broad approach to Negro-white relations in the American South and nonviolent resistance to social change. As he puts it: The strong man is the man who can stand up for his rights and not hit back.

Because of circumstances and history, since December 1955, King has been speaking mostly on what happened in Montgomery, the implications of this experience, and his philosophy for racial desegregation in general. This is, of course, what he himself symbolizes to everyone and is what audiences want to hear from him.

On the other hand, his church members may feel that they get rather frequent doses of the love your white enemies purgative. One of the more vocal Dexter Avenue Baptist Church matrons has said, "Oh yes, I know the words by heart now—though I need not like Engelhardt [a local segregationist], I must love him."

In time the preoccupation with racial integration will presumably ease and the Reverend Dr. King will be allowed to address himself to some of the other great problems in life.

HEROES AND IDEALS

King will tell you that Socrates is his hero above all men of ancient times. Socrates, he says, had the courage to live, standing up for truth, even if it meant death. To the old philosopher, truth was greater than life.

Naturally Martin Luther King would be curious about Martin Luther. He was delighted when, after extensive study, he was sure that he admired his historical name bearer. He liked Luther’s courage of his convictions, when he said, Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise. King feels that this is a grand statement. He was disappointed when he read of Luther’s small sympathy for the common