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J. Edgar Hoover hated Martin Luther King Jr. It was a deep, visceral, personal hate, which seems to have started in 1962 when King openly criticized the FBI for having no black agents and for showing partiality to southern law enforcement (chapter 21). King also challenged Hoover’s belief that communists were involved in the civil rights movement, eventually calling on Hoover to resign. When Hoover tried to schedule a meeting with King and talk their differences over, his calls went unanswered. Not intentionally, but only because King was terrible at returning calls (chapter 46). No matter, the rebuff was perceived as deliberate and Hoover set out to destroy King.
In January 1964 the FBI secretly recorded a party at the Willard Hotel where they first learned of King’s private dalliances (chapter 26). In December 1964 a package of tapes were sent anonymously to King’s home, along with the note quoted in chapter 26. The tapes revealed King’s extramarital affairs and his use of raunchy language in private. Coretta King listened to the recordings, but refused to give Hoover the satisfaction of winning, and did not end her marriage. The description of Hoover’s home (chapter 51) is accurate, but the presence of Juan Lopez Valdez is my invention.
The city of St. Augustine, Florida, played a central role in the civil rights struggle. King did in fact call it the most lawless community he’d ever visited (chapter 34). A huge KKK rally happened in the city’s central plaza, and violence directed against three local black activists eventually motivated King to come to the city. In the summer of 1964 St. Augustine became the epicenter of the racial struggle. The Monson Motor Lodge became famous for its owner pouring acid into a pool filled with protestors (chapter 31). King was arrested, as were many others, including three young people who spent six months in jail for ordering a Coke and a hamburger (chapter 34). But their efforts were not in vain, as the ongoing filibuster in the U.S. Senate was broken on June 10, 1964, allowing for the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
In 2011 a memorial was finally erected to that great struggle, which now stands in the Plaza de la Constitución. As related in the novel (chapter 34), it took a change to the St. Augustine city code for that to happen, as no memorials to events after 1826 were allowed. The Woolworths that was once there is gone. But its lunch counter remains on public display inside the building, now occupied by a bank.
As to the other St. Augustine locales in the novel: The Columbia restaurant is one of my and Elizabeth’s favorites (chapter 36). St. George Street (chapter 35) reeks of history. The green tourist trollies that look like trains run all through the city. The so-called slave market stands in the main plaza. And the Café Alcazar occupies the deep end of what was once the largest indoor pool in America (chapter 37).
The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba is historical fact (chapter 33), as is Operation Northwoods, which was proposed (chapter 37) but ultimately rejected by President Kennedy. Of course, Valdez had nothing to do with either.
I’ve been wanting for many years to include Disney World in a novel.
Finally, I have the chance.
The Pirates of the Caribbean, Disney’s statue, the covered porch at the end of Main Street outside the train station, Main Street itself, and the Jungle Cruise are all real. Purists might notice differences between what stood twenty years ago and what I have described. I decided to stick with what’s there now, unless I knew better. The bowels of the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction are my invention, though surely some variation on those exist. All of the other aspects of the attraction are accurate. The construction area in chapter 52 is my creation, though I recall a lot of changes constantly being made to that section of the Magic Kingdom. Today that area houses Fantasyland.
This novel focuses heavily on the last year of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life. On April 4, 1967, when King publicly came out against the Vietnam War, he began a steady downward spiral that included deep bouts of depression. A terrific account of that fall is contained in Death of a King, by Tavis Smiley. By April 4, 1968 (the date of his death) King’s public status had changed significantly. Certainly, he remained one of the premier voices for equality in America, his words still important, but other more militant voices had begun to rise in volume. The movement itself became severely fractured over violence versus nonviolence. The hostile SCLC meeting of March 30, 1968, described at several points throughout the story, where King walked out in anger, happened and is illustrative of that conflict. Without question, King was not what he had been only two years before.
The “mountaintop speech” quoted in chapter 60 is an abridgement of King’s actual words delivered the night of April 3. I eliminated only the aspects of it that did not address mortality. What remains in chapter 60 are King’s words, not mine. He spoke without notes, from the heart. If you have never read or listened to the entire speech, I urge you to do so. Every word sounds like a man who knew he was about to die.
Consider this: Why would King stand out in the open, on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, for several minutes? There’d been numerous death threats, and violence had already happened a few days earlier at the first march he led through Memphis. He’d been warned not to make himself a target, yet there he stood.
It’s an interesting question.
To which we will never have the answer.
In the 1930s, the poet Langston Hughes wrote “Lenox Avenue Mural,” where he asked, What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up? Or just explode?
Hard to say.
What will become of King’s dream remains to be seen.
We are now fifty years beyond his death and his work still feels unfinished. By the time he died King had concluded that racism, poverty, and the Vietnam War were intricately linked. Together they were sapping the country of its core strength. His hope was that his Poor People’s March, set for Washington, DC, in the summer of 1969, would raise awareness of all three. In the “mountaintop speech,” delivered the night before he died, he framed his legacy. He told that final audience he was proud to have been a part of the fight. Then he ended his remarks with some prophetic words.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life.
Longevity has its place.
But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain.
And I’ve looked over.
I’ve seen the promised land.
I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.
And so I’m happy tonight.
I’m not worried about anything.
I’m not fearing any man.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
