When Harlem Nearly Killed King Read Online Free PDF Page A

flooded with even more speaking invitations and requests to meet with him in Montgomery from important people around the world. He received a delegation of prominent Indians visiting Montgomery, who echoed what he had written at the end of his book, but in more personal terms:King would have to be prepared to make physical sacrifices if he was to lead the budding movement as Gandhi had led his. He received correspondence indicating that the editor-in-chief of a major Swedish daily was about to travel to America and that, as part of his study of race relations, Montgomery would be one of his stops and he would like to see King while in the city. Two distinguished Japanese writers were traveling to America, too, intent on making Montgomery one of their stops, eager to meet with King.
    Locally, King’s right-hand man, Ralph Abernathy, was charged with laying the groundwork for future civil rights protests in Montgomery under the auspices of the MIA. The organization continued to consider suggested new municipal targets of Jim Crow in Montgomery. The most popular idea was to launch a campaign to desegregate the public parks and playgrounds. MIA was preparing the Negro citizens of the city to go to jail for this cause, when, suddenly, it was stymied by the city of Montgomery’s response that if it tried to integrate the parks and playgrounds, the facilities would simply be closed.
    Like King, Abernathy was pastor of his own church in the city (in fact, the largest Negro church in America). But running MIA and his local church wasn’t the only thing the married Abernathy was alleged to be up to. He was also accused of having affairs with his parishioners (years later Abernathy would admit to such infidelities, and accuse King of the same thing, including participating in some of the sexual escapades with him). In that, they were not unlike plenty of prominent married men, such as Harriman’sgubernatorial opponent, the married Nelson Rockefeller, and possibly Harriman too, though they were not men of the cloth. And by the end of August (Friday the 29 th , to be exact), the husband of one of the women Abernathy was said to be having an affair with appeared at his church brandishing a hatchet and a revolver, warning Abernathy he intended to kill him.
    What ensued next was the huge embarrassment that ultimately and inadvertently turned into an asset as King made his way to New York City just a week and a half later. Fleeing his office with blood streaming down his head, Abernathy ran down the street with the husband chasing him in broad daylight still brandishing the gun and hatchet. Soon the police stopped and arrested the man. His wife came down to the station and grew so hysterical that she, too, was arrested under the charge of disorderly conduct. The chastened Abernathy refused to file a complaint. One of the police officers who witnessed the chase filed one instead. Five days later (September 3) along with many of the other Negroes in Montgomery, Martin Luther King, Jr., decided to go to court for the preliminary hearing of the case, in order to show support for his top local assistant. He and his wife, Coretta, accompanied Abernathy and his wife. Upon arriving, they found the courtroom jammed with lines of people waiting to get in. Only Abernathy was allowed inside. King waited outside with his wife and Mrs. Abernathy, hoping Abernathy’s lawyer could get him a seat. But the police sergeant who admitted Abernathy commanded King to leave. King peered into the courtroom to see if Abernathy’s lawyer was coming to help. At that the sergeant lost his temper, no doubt thinking that justbecause King had turned into a world-renowned celebrity for forcing the city to give into what was, in the sergeant’s opinion, a “preposterous” demand, didn’t mean King should be accorded special treatment. In the sergeant’s eyes, he was just another nigger. So he beaconed two officers, who then very roughly seized King as the Negro