WHEN MARTIN LUTHER KING WAS KILLED

JAMES W. MOORMAN

The hatreds of early April 1968 have cast a long shadow

"The Marines have set up their machine guns on the Capitol grounds.”

A four-star general dressed in battle fatigues made this announcement on the night of April 5, 1968, scarcely 24 hours after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. The general was expecting action. We were in the Washington police station at New York Avenue and Sixth Street, Northwest, where I was on assignment from the Department of Justice to monitor the unfolding riots. The station house, filled with smoke from fires on Seventh Street, was in frantic confusion from efforts to deal with riot, arson, and looting. The general, who had been inspecting troop deployments, was very tall and held himself ramrod straight, much like General Westmoreland. I listened to his words with disquiet and wondered if a bad situation was about to get much worse.

I was a young staff attorney at the main offices of the Justice Department between Ninth and Tenth Streets on Constitution Avenue. I was proud of my job and gloried in its location among the symbols of our nation’s history and greatness. My wife and I lived on C Street, Southeast, and each morning I walked to work past the Library of Congress, across the Capitol grounds, down the steps of the Capitol’s western façade, and past the Grant Memorial. I especially liked the statue of Grant, slouched over on horseback in his field hat, which so movingly captures the essence of the citizen soldier who led a great people’s army. After paying my respects to Grant, I proceeded down the Mall toward the Washington Monument, passing by the National Art Gallery, where I often spent my lunch hour, then crossed Constitution Avenue at the Archives and entered the Department through the gateway on Ninth Street known as the Solicitor General’s Entrance.

I don’t recall when I first heard the terrible news that Martin Luther King had been killed in Memphis, but I do remember the sensation of loss and frustration, the same as when each of the Kennedy brothers was killed. I admired King and his efforts to end segregation, and especially appreciated his philosophy of nonviolence. I wondered how much of his achievement was put in jeopardy by this vicious act.

At the office the morning after King’s death, everyone was agitated and upset and it was difficult for any of us to concentrate on work. We all felt a common need to talk about what had happened. Then rumors began to circulate about riots underway in various cities, including Washington, and the talk turned to leaving work early. About one o’clock, I was summoned to the office of an assistant attorney general, where I was joined by a dozen other staff attorneys and was given disturbing information— and an unexpected assignment.

The assistant attorney general told us serious riots were in progress in Washington and were expected to worsen after dark. He speculated that much of Washington would likely go up in flames. The police would try to contain the rioting, but if the rioters threatened government buildings, embassies, or the main business areas, they would be blocked by the military. We were assigned to specific police stations to monitor the conduct of the police, and serve as not-too-subtle reminders to the police to conduct themselves lawfully in their treatment of rioters. I was assigned to the station at the junction of New York Avenue and Sixth and L Streets, Northwest, just off Mount Vernon Square, a station that proved to be in the thick of things.

One of the other staff attorneys dispatched as an observer that night offered to drive me to my station. He had brought his car to work that day and parked on the Mall. Before we left for our assigned police stations, we returned to our offices to make personal calls and tie up loose ends. As soon as I reached my desk, I called my wife and told her where I would be that night and asked her to leave the city and spend the night with friends of ours in Virginia. Looking back, it wasn’t necessary for her to leave, but at that moment, knowing that much of the city might be engulfed in riots and flames, and that she would be alone at home, it was the right decision.

A SLOW BURN

My colleague and I left the Justice Department building about three p.m. and walked to his car, located close to where the Hirshhorn Museum now stands. As we walked across the Mall, we saw something that disturbed me so much that I haven’t gotten over it to this day. A large plume of smoke was drifting in front of the Capitol building. Nothing like that had happened in Washington since the British burned the city in 1814. A flash of anger and resentment shot through me.

To make matters worse, something of a panic was underway. So many people were fleeing the city and overloading the bridges across the Potomac that traffic had come to a halt all the way to the core of the city. Our car sat in the traffic jam, occasionally inching forward, while we went into a “burn” of our own watching that damnable smoke of the burning city shroud the dome of the Capitol. We understood that people were upset and had a right to be upset, but we couldn’t understand how that could lead them to burn Washington, the capital of our nation...and their own homes. It was also incomprehensible to us that anyone would honor King with the kind of violence he would abhor, and which threatened to destroy his legacy. We simply didn’t understand the full meaning of what had happened in Memphis.

The police station at Sixth, L, and New York was in an unusual location on an island, in the form of a triangle completely surrounded by the three streets, and isolated from other buildings. This seemed to me to be an advantage because it meant the station house could not catch fire from the blazes engulfing the neighboring buildings. Also, the streets provided a buffer zone that could be used to keep rioters at a distance. The obvious disadvantage was that the station could be attacked from all 360 degrees of the compass.

I arrived at the station house, presented my credentials to the desk sergeant, and asked to see the captain, who did not appear happy to see me. He seemed distracted and not quite able to understand why I was there. Maybe the captain hadn’t been told to expect an outside observer, or had forgotten. Maybe someone with a mission such as mine was so far outside the captain’s experience that he couldn’t discern the protocol for our official interaction. To put him at his ease, I told him he should just do his job and I wouldn’t get in his way. He nodded slightly without smiling. Actually, I didn’t see him smile once that night; he wore at all times a look of concern and worry.

The captain told me I could sit in his office or the outer office area, and have free run of the station house as long as I didn’t interfere with the officers’ duties. I stayed mostly in the more spacious outer office area, which was the central location for situation reports and conversations among the policemen. From time to time, I would tour the front desk or the lock-up area where rioters were held, but I always returned to the outer office to keep abreast of the news.

The outer office also was the work place of various Army officers who joined us during the course of the night. One of these, a first lieutenant from a tank unit stationed at Fort Meade, Maryland, was excited about the evening’s events, almost as if he was preparing to participate in an important sporting contest. The lieutenant also had a “secret” he wasn’t supposed to talk about but, like a young boy, was eager to reveal. As we sat in the outer office, chatting about the night’s developments, he blurted out,

“They better not make a move toward the White House!”

“The White House?” I responded.

“The White House. They just better not make a move on the White House.”

“What do you mean? What will happen?”

“You are going to see something spectacular!”

“Something spectacular? I am?”

“You had better believe it.” The lieutenant smiled the smile of the cat that swallowed the canary.

“What’s going to happen?”

“I can’t tell you what is going to happen. I am just not permitted to do that because it’s classified, but you can trust me when I tell you it will be spectacular. It will be amazing. Amazing and spectacular!"

“Can you tell me just a little more?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you anything more, but you will be amazed.”

The lieutenant and I were together for several hours, and talked several times about the-amazing-thing-that-would- happen-if-they-moved-on-the-White-House, but he revealed nothing further. He talked on the telephone to someone every 20 minutes and then left the station house around 10:30 p.m.

While I never did learn what might have happened at the White House, it was chilling to hear the general announce that the Marines’ machine guns were ready for action on the Capitol grounds. Since that night, whenever I recall the general’s announcement, I wonder what he and the other generals could have been thinking. Mowing people down with machine guns would have so exacerbated America’s racial tensions that we might not yet have recovered.

An infantry major also spent several hours in the outer office that night. He seemed concerned not with the Capitol or the White House, but with our immediate precinct. Periodically, he would talk to the police captain, then call in a report to someone. After he had been with us about two hours, the smoke inside the station house from the fires in the neighborhood became so thick that the captain sent someone to make sure the station house itself was not on fire. The captain and the major then conferred in earnest. When they concluded, the major called in a request for troops. The rioters had set a nearby European automobile showroom on fire. The auto dealership was the most valuable commercial facility in the precinct, and when it went up in flames the captain told the major that he needed reinforcements.

In about 30 minutes, trucks carrying a company of soldiers pulled up to the front of the station house. I went outside to watch and was startled to see the newly arrived soldiers deployed in a ring around the station house, facing outward. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how worried the police captain and infantry major were that rioters might try to overrun the station house. The troops stood there, legs spread, bayonets fixed, for over an hour as a sign to the rioters that our police station was off limits. Eventually, some authority determined there was a better use for these men, and all but a half-dozen were loaded back into their trucks and driven away.

Periodically, as the night wore on and many arrests were made, I went to the front desk to observe the receiving and booking process. The arrested rioters were all black, largely male, and many were drunk. Many were shackled and some showed the marks of forcible arrest. A few were threatening, cursing, and boasting, and a few were hurt and wore bloody cloths or bandages. But I was struck by something quite unexpected— an air of jollity and good humor shared by a significant number of those arrested. They were in a good mood, and many joked and laughed. Few of them exhibited animosity toward the police or anger about being arrested. I did not understand this paradox then, and still do not.

For their part, the police were restrained, interacting with their detainees in a professional and unemotional fashion. Only once did I see a policeman in serious emotional difficulty. He entered the outer office babbling about the need for stronger measures, even gun-fire, to save the city. Two other officers talked calmly to him. The captain came out, chatted briefly, and took the troubled policeman into his office and had him lie down on the sofa to pull himself together. Later, the captain took him to the front desk and put him to work processing the paperwork that was piling up. Riots occurred in 130 cities across America that night, with many instances of violent confrontations between rioters and police. But whatever happened elsewhere, in Washington, despite the chaos and destruction, the police and the rioters both retained their humanity, averting widespread bloodshed.

At our station house, the police officers placed the confiscated loot on a table near the intake desk. It was a pathetic display, piled high with items of little value: loaves of bread, pairs of socks, tee shirts, crowbars, hammers, cartons of cigarettes, tubes of toothpaste, bottles of whiskey, and six-packs of beer. Except for the alcohol, I wondered why the rioters were stealing such things. Were they that poor? Was it what people did when they rioted? Were they drunks who turned a protest into a looting spree? Were they a fringe element taking advantage of the situation? What would Martin Luther King have thought of this demeaning looting? Did I know enough to recognize the answers to these questions?

On that night of agony and irony, comic relief was provided when a woman, dressed to the nines for obvious professional purposes, appeared at the front desk to inquire about her “agent.

” “I want to see Tommy Jefferson,” she demanded.

“Who?” The desk sergeant asked. “Tommy Jefferson!” she repeated in a loud voice.

“Not now,” the sergeant responded. “Come back tomorrow."

“I want to see Tommy Jefferson now!” She kept screaming until, finally, she was manhandled out the front door.

In the early morning, the rioting began to slow. Fewer and fewer people were arrested and by five a.m. the worst seemed over. At six o’clock, the police captain assigned an officer to drive me home. I complimented the captain on his professionalism and his men’s performance that night, but he didn’t appear to take any notice of what I said. Later, I wrote a letter to the assistant attorney general repeating my compliments and praising the precinct.

As we crossed town in the squad car, I saw soldiers posted at every street corner, many with roadblocks. There were no private cars at all on the streets, and there was no one out on foot other than soldiers and policemen. The air was still filled with smoke and a tense quietness.

Soldiers were posted along the entire route of my ride home, but once we drove two blocks south of the station, I saw little evidence of physical destruction. Clearly, the rioters hadn’t gone near the Capitol, the White House, or the downtown business district. The rioters had simply burned their own neighborhoods, another irony. On the way home, the policeman driving me stopped briefly at a firehouse. I could see from one look that the firemen were exhausted and in far worse shape than the policemen I had been observing during the night. They had just been through a nightmare: a city on fire, filled with looters, rioters, and injured citizens. The worst was behind them; the riots were easing off, but the scars would last a long time. Burned-out buildings, especially along Seventh Street, remained for years as a reminder of that awful night, and their rehabilitation was for some time a political football.

THE AFTERMATH

Some 30 years after these events, I found myself at a banquet table talking to an African-American couple about General Colin Powell and whether he should run for president. I was strongly of the view that Powell should run. I said he could win and, in winning, make an important contribution to the well-being of America. I mentioned that I believed Powell could create a broad-based, center-of-the-road Republican Party that could dominate politics in America for years to come. I offered that this revamped party could marginalize the extreme right, while taking a large number of votes from the Democrats. The man liked what I said and engaged me in the details of how Powell could get the nomination. The woman, unlike her husband, disagreed, and eventually broke in to say, “He can’t win. Look at what happened to Jesse Jackson. Jesse couldn’t get anywhere when he ran for president.”

The woman’s husband and I countered that Powell’s appeal was far broader than Jackson’s. Then, possibly with the encouragement of the evening’s wine, I offered another grand philosophical argument. I said the office of the presidency had been designed for George Washington and whenever a general gained visibility and conducted himself in such a way as to gain the people’s trust and confidence, the office was, as it had been for Washington, his for the asking. I pointed to Eisenhower and others and wound up by saying it was Powell’s destiny to become president. I was going strong, and the man loved it, but his wife would have none of it; the more eloquently I waxed, the more worried she appeared. Then, quite distressed, she looked at me and said in a soft voice,

“Martin Luther King.”

“Martin Luther King?” I responded. Her husband said nothing, but looked away.

“If he runs,” she said, “he will be shot just like Martin Luther King was. His wife knows it and she won’t let him run. She’s right. I would do the same in her place.”

I started to say something, but thought better of it. There was just such a look in this woman’s eyes of pain, fear, and, yes, shame, that I could not continue.

My mind flashed back to my night in the police station at New York Avenue and Sixth Street and I then saw just how deep James Earl Ray’s bullet had gone, how deep the wound he had made. Ray had created true fear and even now, 30 years later, may have deterred Colin Powell from running for the presidency and possibly becoming our first African-American president. The woman across the table and many others couldn’t bear the thought of living through the horror of another assassination. Even if it didn’t happen, they would have to worry about it every day for the rest of Powell’s life.

The decision to run for president must be a difficult one to make for anyone. Those on the outside can never know the true reasons candidates run for office or, as in Powell’s case, choose not to run. Nevertheless, it is my belief that Colin Powell understood fully the fears created in so many that fateful night in Memphis, and that his understanding of how deep and intense those fears are contributed to his decision not to run for the presidency when so many urged him to. Oh the pity of it.

James W. Moorman (CC ’89) is president of Taxpayers Against Fraud, a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of the False Claims Act. During his career, he spent seven years at the US Department of Justice, first as a staff attorney, and later as assistant attorney general for the Land and Natural Resources Division.

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