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And he switched the machine back on.
King: I entered this fight when I was twenty-six, and destroying Jim Crow has been a hard battle. I’ve known since the first day that my life of nonviolence would end violently. Everyone thinks about dying.
Foster: You more than others.
King: I agree. I’ve often spoke of it. Probably too much. But they killed Kennedy. They killed Malcolm X. They killed Medgar Evers. They’ve killed little black children and white reformists. I think about Selma and Jimmie Lee Jackson all the time.
Foster: I do too.
King: I want to say this to the people listening to this tape. In 1965 we went to Selma to march for voting rights. Jimmie Lee Jackson was twenty-six years old. A farm laborer and church deacon. He marched with us that day to the Perry County Courthouse when the state troopers attacked with clubs. Jimmie saw his mother and grandfather being assaulted and rushed to help them. An Alabama state trooper shot him in the stomach, then they dragged him away so he could be arrested for assault and battery. It took hours before he made it to the hospital. He lingered in terrible pain for nine days before dying. Nine days after that we marched from Selma to Montgomery. Thousands of people came, outraged at the clubs, whips, chains, tear gas, and bullets they’d seen on television being used against defenseless marchers. One of those marching there that day, a white minister and father of four, James Reeb, was beaten to death by an angry mob of whites. A few days later a forty-year-old white mother named Viola Liuzzo was shot dead by several Klansmen. So many have died for this cause. People forget that this movement is stained with blood. I don’t want them to forget. Not now. Not ever. How many times have we seen men with rifles, perched in trees, as we marched, just waiting for a chance to take a shot at us? How many bomb threats have there been? Immortality is not gained by how much money you make during your life, or how many houses you own, or how popular you may be. It’s gained by service to the poor and lost, the heartbroken and despairing, the hungry and naked. Jimmie Lee Jackson, James Reeb, and Viola Liuzzo knew that. They gave their lives. What they lacked was notoriety. I have that. So my life will now be offered so that none of them will ever be forgotten.
[PAUSE]
Foster: What do you want us to say at the funeral?
King: I want it short with only a brief eulogy. I don’t want any mentions of my Nobel Prize or any of the other awards I’ve been given. Just have them say that I served and loved others. That I tried to be right on the war. I tried to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the imprisoned. The more hate my enemies spat, the harder I pushed myself. The more they tried to stop me, the harder I worked. End it with I tried, with all my might, to love and serve humanity.
Foster switched off the machine for the last time.
He and I both were visibly wrestling with emotion.
“In the last year of his life Martin experienced a difficult erosion of faith. That halo of abundant confidence, which early success generates in the young and rash, had disappeared. He was approaching forty years old and viewed life with a frantic urgency. I heard Coretta talking to Ralph Abernathy, about a month before Memphis. Even she noticed a change, she said it was like fate was closing in on him.”
Hard to hide much from your wife.
Which I should know.
“He told me that people tended to memorialize the dead, and he was right. His death gave an extra meaning to all the others who’d died before him for the cause. None of them were ever forgotten.”
What I should do next was no longer clear. I’d come here intending to tell him that everything would have to be revealed. Coleen was gone. No reason existed to keep this secret, except perhaps to keep Foster from jail. But with this new revelation everything had changed. This wasn’t a murder. It had been an elaborate suicide, staged to look like a murder.
“King seemed to have thought it all through,” I said.
“That was his gift. He had a vision. He’d been the producer, director, and costar in many civil rights performances. Marches, demonstrations, rallies, freedom rides, protests, sit-ins, speeches, eulogies. He organized them with expert precision. Nothing happened by chance. His last production, his greatest production, was his own death.”
Foster reached beneath his jacket and brought out a .38 revolver, which he laid on the table.
I pointed at the weapon. “Is that for you or me?”
“Maybe me. I don’t know yet.”
He hadn’t asked me any of the details about what occurred with Jansen, Oliver, and Valdez. I doubted he knew much of what had happened with me and Coleen until we made it to St. Augustine and she surrendered herself.
“Coleen willingly went with Valdez to protect you,” I said. “She wanted you to be safe. Now you plan to shoot yourself?”
He shrugged. “I’m tired of living with other people’s deaths on my conscience. I’m tired of staying silent. I’m just plain tired all the way around.”
No question. This guy had turned the practice of playing both sides against the middle into an art form. And I suddenly realized that the roles had reversed. I was him, to him being King. One would die, the other would keep the secret.
Or would I?
He rewound the tape until one spool was empty, then removed the reel.
“Take this.”
He handed the tape over to me.
“You have everything else, you’ll need this, too. It’s your decision on what to do. I pass the duty on to you. Now get out of here, Lieutenant, and let me die in peace.”
PRESENT DAY
EPILOGUE
I stand inside the King family home and stare across the dim hallway at Benjamin Foster. I’ve finished talking about what happened eighteen years ago. I point to the gun at his waist. “Why didn’t you pull the trigger back then?”
“Why haven’t you told the world what you knew?”
“When I didn’t hear about your death, I drove back to Orlando. I was told you resigned as pastor and left town. Where did you go?”
“California, Arizona, Mexico. You haven’t answered me. Why didn’t you tell?”
“I decided to honor King’s wish and keep silent, until fifty years had passed.”
Foster motions to the side table. “I see the cassette and the tape reels. What’s on the flash drive?”
“The photos from Valdez’s files started to turn. Photography in the ’60s wasn’t what it is today. Before they completely disappeared, I transferred everything to digital. They’re on that flash drive.”
“It’s not the same.”
I shrug. “It’s all we’ve got. The originals faded away.”
“Like my life. I still miss Coleen every day.”
I, too, often think of her and Nate. Both died for the cause. Two more casualties in a social revolution that started in April 1865 and continues to this day.
“I eventually came back home to Florida,” Foster says. “My church was quite understanding. They hired me back. I’ve stayed with them ever since.”
“My life also changed. When you vanishe
d, Stephanie Nelle wanted me to find you. But I told her to let it go. I convinced her that the files were probably back in Cuba and you couldn’t add a thing. I don’t know if she really believed me, but she let it go.”
He says nothing.
The King house remains cemetery-quiet, the night outside equally tranquil. Tomorrow, the entire Martin Luther King Jr. Center will be alive with activity. Former presidents Barack Obama and Danny Daniels are coming to speak from the pulpit of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. Many visitors are expected at the epicenter of King’s memory. But now, in the wee hours of the morning, it is just me and Foster.
“Stephanie came to see me again about a month after I moved her off your trail,” I say. “All hell broke loose inside the FBI thanks to Oliver and Jansen’s antics. They cleaned house there and in the Justice Department. No more Hoover cronies anywhere. Finally, the stain was removed. They then started a new unit within Justice to deal with sensitive problems like that. It eventually became much more, expanding its reach around the world. I was its first recruit. The Magellan Billet.”
“I learned about that from a friend in government. That’s how I found you in Copenhagen.”
“If you hadn’t, I would have found you. Today is an important day.”
I glance at my watch.
12:30 A.M.
April 4 has begun.
“Martin promoted hope and curiosity,” Foster says. “History has proven that his memory is secure. So many people grieved when he died. His death became their death.”
“You were right with what you told Jansen. There were riots coast to coast.”
“For a time it seemed Martin’s death was the death of hope, progress, and justice. But as he told me would happen, we moved past that. We settled back down and resumed the fight, leaving the streets and entering politics. Black mayors were elected in New Jersey and Indiana. Andy Young became the first black man from Georgia, since Reconstruction, to serve in Congress. Many more election victories followed. Eventually, a black man became president. Martin would have loved all that.”
