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356 IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF SHELBY COUNTY, TENNESSEE FOR THE THIRTIETH JUDICIAL DISTRICT AT MEMPHIS _______________________________________________ CORETTA SCOTT KING, et al, Plaintiffs, Vs. Case No. 97242 LOYD JOWERS, et al, Defendants. _______________________________________________ PROCEEDINGS November 18th, 1999 VOLUME IV _______________________________________________ Before the Honorable James E. Swearengen, Division 4, judge presiding. _______________________________________________ DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD COURT REPORTERS Suite 2200, One Commerce Square Memphis, Tennessee 38103 (901) 529-1999 DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 357 - APPEARANCES - For the Plaintiff: DR. WILLIAM PEPPER Attorney at Law New York City, New York For the Defendant: MR. LEWIS GARRISON Attorney at Law Memphis, Tennessee Court Reported by: MR. BRIAN F. DOMINSKI Certificate of Merit Registered Professional Reporter Daniel, Dillinger, Dominski, Richberger & Weatherford 22nd Floor One Commerce Square Memphis, Tennessee 38103 DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 358 - INDEX -
WITNESS: PAGE/LINE NUMBER
JAMES LAWSON
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. PEPPER........................ 360 20
CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. GARRISON...................... 442 8
MAYNARD STILES
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. PEPPER:....................... 445 5
CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. GARRISON:..................... 451 5
REDIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. PEPPER:....................... 452 1
OLIVIA CATLIN
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. PEPPER:....................... 453 4
CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. GARRISON:..................... 467 3
REDIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. PEPPER:....................... 477 7
RECROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. GARRISON:..................... 479 12
ED ATKINSON
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. PEPPER:....................... 487 16
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 359
HASEL HUCKABY
PREVIOUS TESTIMONY READ............... 480 14
JAMES LESAR
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. PEPPER:....................... 496 7
CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. GARRISON:..................... 503 19
ANDREW YOUNG
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. PEPPER:....................... 507 21
CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. GARRISON:..................... 531 18
REDIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. PEPPER:....................... 535 3
EXHIBIT PAGE/LINE
Exhibits 2 and 3 respectively........ 502 7 Exhibit 4............................ 536 17
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 360
PROCEEDINGS
(November 18th, 10:20 a.m.)
THE COURT: All right. Bring
the jury out, Mr. James.
(Jury in.)
THE COURT: Before we begin, let
me explain that Mr. Jowers has my permission
to be absent this morning. We're going to
continue with the proof.
All right. You may proceed.
MR. PEPPER: Good morning, Your
Honor.
THE COURT: Good morning.
MR. PEPPER: Plaintiffs call as
their first witness Reverend James Lawson.
JAMES LAWSON
Having been first duly sworn, was examined
and testified as follows:
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:
Q. Good morning, Reverend Lawson.
A. Good morning.
Q. Thank you very much for coming here
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 361
this morning.
A. You are welcome.
Q. In fairness to you, I know you've
just gotten off a plane from Los Angeles and
come directly into the courtroom.
A. Right.
Q. If at any time you feel a bit woozy
or you want a break, perhaps we could ask and
his Honor will indulge. It has been awhile
since you slept.
A. Thank you. Yeah.
Q. Would you please state your full name
and address for the record.
A. James M. Lawson, Jr., 4521 Don
Timatayo Drive, Los Angeles, 90008.
Q. What is your profession?
A. I've been a pastor for forty-five
years.
Q. And what was your most recent
pastorship?
A. I just retired as pastor from Holeman
United Methodist Church in Los Angeles.
Q. And prior to that charge where were
you, sir?
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 362
A. I was for twelve years pastor at
Centenary United Methodist Church here in
Memphis, Tennessee.
Q. Would you tell the jury where you
were trained and what your background has
been.
A. Well, I'm a third-generation clergy
person, and I did my college work at Bolden
Wallace College in Moorea, Ohio, my
theological work at Olin Graduate School of
Theology at Vanderbilt University of
Nashville and Boston University.
Q. When did you first meet Martin Luther
King?
A. About February the 6th or 7th of
1957. I was a graduate student in theology
at Olin College in Ohio. Martin King came
there to spend a day of talking to the
university and to the community. I was in a
small luncheon at noon time with him. We had
a chance to be alone. So we visited and
talked and found ourselves to be very much in
sync with one another as people.
Q. What was it that made you feel
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 363
compatible in terms of viewing the world and
the problems and the issues of the day with
Martin King?
A. Well, he had just completed the
Montgomery bus boycott, which had begun
December 1st, 1955. And it had just finished
in January of 1957, and it was successful.
It was the first almost -- I think it could
be said it was the first major non-violent
direct action movement in at least the 1950's
in the United States and one of the largest
and most powerful. The ripples went all
across the world.
At the time I was serving as a coach
and campus minister in Nog Por, India, and I
first saw the story on the front pages of the
newspapers. It was on the BBC. It was on
all the radio stations then in India. So it
was a world-wide story.
I had been a non-violent
practitioner since about age ten or eleven.
I had studied it and had worked on issues
against racism in the United States as a
college student and as a graduate student.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 364
So I had a background of both practical
experience and the theory.
Of course, being in India I followed
the work of Mahatma Gandi at length, and I
told Martin King of this experience, and that
was one of the things that linked us very
closely. While in college, at the end of the
1940's, I had wanted to -- I had decided I
should work in the South, that there was a
clear call for me to work in the South to try
to apply creative non-violence to the
eradication of racism and segregation.
So I mentioned this to him. Dr.
King said, well, don't wait, come now, we
need you. So, consequently, I changed any
plans and sped up my calendar to finish up my
schooling and go south.
Q. We've called you as a background
witness in terms of the whole aspect of
Martin King's work that led you here to
Memphis. So you are a bit out of sync, but
because of scheduling, we brought you in here
at this point in time to have you talk about
these things. You knew Dr. King from 1957 to
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 365
the time he died. Is that correct?
A. Yes, right.
Q. How did you see him change as a
preacher and as a leader during that period
of time?
A. Well, there are lots of ways. In the
first instance he had planned basically
probably with his life to become a preacher
and then the president of a college or
university. That's why he had done a Ph.D.
in theology at Boston University.
So he expected to follow in the
pathway of two or three people who were
friends of his father, Benjamin Mayes of
Moorehouse College being one of these and
Howard Thurman of Howard University. Those
were his models.
The Montgomery bus boycott during
his first pastorate in Montgomery in a sense
shook his vocational understanding of where
he was going and what he was to do. He did a
lot of wrestling with all of that, what this
meant for his life.
As a consequence, that in itself
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 366
kept him in the journey and making some
changes. He had not anticipated that he
would become overnight a spokesperson for
liberty and justice, for the gospel in a
particular way, which meant, therefore, he
did a lot of maturing very quickly.
He had an excellent mind, and he --
as he got into the struggle, he began to
recognize more and more what this would
entail. Among those things was his
recognition that the issue of racism and
segregation in the United States was not kind
of a limited affair, it affected economics,
it affected not only human relations itself,
it affected the politics of the nation.
That's obviously the case. It was a
very violent institution, as it still is in
the United States. So this broadened his
whole childhood and then young adulthood
estimation of what racism was about and what
this was going to involve.
Then he also saw this as a life's
vocation, not as kind of a limited kind of
career but was a high calling of God. And
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 367
this matured him in many ways. He was a deep
reader and thinker.
So one saw the way in which his
knowledge of the United States, his knowledge
of the struggle, increased rather rapidly.
His exposure to all kinds of platforms and
radio interviews and television interviews
sharpened up his intellectual ability to not
only analyze the situation but to respond to
a great variety of challenges.
The threats on his life that began
almost immediately in Montgomery made him
very aware of how fragile his life was, but
it also made him profoundly aware of how
dangerous the struggle was and also how he
had to have the spiritual and moral fortitude
to work through it and live through it.
Q. Did you have much conversation with
him or discussion with him in the early and
mid-1960's as he moved to become concerned of
international issues, particularly the war in
Vietnam?
A. Oh, yes. In our workshops and staff
meetings and personal conversations he was
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 368
always -- he always had a broad sense of the
whole world. His understanding and
commitment to non-violence was broad also.
In my workshops on non-violence,
which I did with him and around the South
especially for SCLC and for the Fellowship of
Reconciliation, we always included what was
going on especially 1960 in Angola and
Mozambique as an illustration.
I had colleagues in the Methodist
Church who were pastors from those countries,
and they were being thrown in jail by the
Portuguese government with the good wishes of
the CIA in the United States and the
connivance of the State Department and so
forth.
So I brought these things into it.
Mondo Mondo Laney was a Ph.D. from
Northwestern University and a Methodist and
one of the organizers of the
self-determination movement in Mozambique.
In my work shops I brought these movements
into the picture so people could understand
what was going on.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 369
Vietnam, we watched it escalate in
1960. We had any number of staff conferences
in our -- staff meetings, rather, and
retreats. We talked about these matters
steadily. I don't think there was hardly
anyone in SCLC who thought that the Vietnam
escalation was justified or that the
historical situation was one that was
acceptable, either from the point of view of
Christian faith or from the point of view of
Christian non-violence.
In 1965 an international team of
religious leaders decided that they would go
to Southeast Asia to see the situation for
themselves. This included people like Martin
Meamolar (Phonetic), a German war hero of
World War I and then one who resisted Hitler
and was thrown in jail during Hitler's
regime. He was a submarine commander and
Lutheran pastor after World War I. Martin
Meamolar was one of these people who was
concerned about what was going on.
So this international team was
formed and the Fellowship of Reconciliation
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 370
decided they would sponsor it, and they
invited Dr. King to be a part of that team.
He could not go, so he called me and asked me
if I would take his place and then have
conversations with him about this and make my
report, because we were to go as pastors and
religious leaders and then we would make a
report to the nation, to especially the
churches.
So I agreed to go, and Centenary
Church here in Memphis gave me extra vacation
time so that I could do it. They thoroughly
supported it. So I went to -- went with this
team instead of Dr. King.
When I returned, I wrote a report
and I sent him a copy of the report, and then
he and I had two or three conversations about
it.
Q. Who was the year of that visit?
A. That was 1965. It was June and July
and then into August of 1965. It was
supposed to be about a month's long, but
because of some of the other things, it took
longer.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 371
For example, when we finished the
tour of Cambodia and Vietnam and Laos and
Thailand, we gathered back in Hong Kong and
then we had an urgent request from the
Council of Churches, the United Methodist
Church, the Anglican Church of Australia,
asking for someone from the team to come and
talk to some of their churches across that
country. And I agreed to be that person.
So this meant I spent an extra seven
days in August every day in a different city
in Australia visiting with churches, usually
a large meeting at night, and then during
their morning and afternoon gatherings of
clergy of all denominations.
Q. Do you remember the evening when he
came formally out against the war in Vietnam?
A. Well, Bill -- Mr. Pepper -- I have
different opinions of this. I do because he
did speak about it in a number of settings.
But the one that caught the attention of the
nation was April the 4th, 1967, where he
agreed to speak at the Riverside Church in
New York with -- under the auspices of clergy
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 372
and laity concerned for the Vietnam War in
Southeast Asia, with people like William M.
Sloancoff and Rabbi Abraham Heschel and a
whole range of some of the best known
Protestant, Jewish, Catholic Jewish people in
the country. That was April 4th, 1967.
Q. That was one year to the day before
he was assassinated. Is that right?
A. Yes, that's correct. One year to a
day.
Q. What was the reaction to that
Riverside Church speech?
A. Well, from the point of view of many
of us, and I read the speech later on, of
course -- in fact, I think it is his most
important and creative speech from the point
of view of spiritual understanding. It is
his most prophetic speech.
The reaction in the press and the
reaction in Washington was intense
hostility. I have since that time read
accounts of some of that hostility, since I
was not in those circles at all, but there
was intense reaction.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 373
Of course, that reaction was
intensified both in the White House and in
the FBI, I think probably also in the
military.
He was called a traitor. There were
other black leaders in the movement who
castigated him. There was great reaction
against him. There were people who did not
have the broad theological and spiritual
vision that he had. So they felt that he was
getting out of his field.
Q. But he wasn't the a civil rights
person in that sense?
A. He was a pastor, he was a prophet, he
was a preacher, he was a teacher. So he
wasn't out of his field.
Q. It was a much broader field?
A. Yes, sure, but they said, no, you are
confined to civil rights. Well, even that
civil rights question has to be expanded
because Martin King spoke always on much more
than civil rights.
After all, in the Bible, the notion
of justice is an important question, an
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 374
important concept. That was one of his big
words. The word "liberty" is a big word in
the Bible. That was one of his big words in
the movement. I often in my own teaching and
preaching and lecturing insist that our
movement was far more than, quote, a civil
rights movement. We were a movement
concerned for helping this nation purge
itself of a nightmareish part of its history.
Q. Did he express concern to you during
that year of time, the last year of his
life -- now we're in 1967 -- did he express
concern to you during that period of time
about the enemies that he was developing, the
forces of opposition that he was building up
against him, that they were growing and they
were perhaps more lethal than before?
A. Yes. We had a fairly large movement
retreat. I think it was in August of 1967.
It was in our -- as I recall, it was at the
Penn Center, which is a camp and retreat
center owned by the American Friends Service
Committee in South Carolina. We had a
several-day-long retreat there in August.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 375
The very first day he said, Jim,
let's take some time off and go off by
ourselves and do some talking. So I said,
whatever you say. So we went off one
afternoon. It is a large camp, and you could
walk through the forest and meadows and what
not.
So we went off for along walk. He
talked at length about the way in which he
was getting the full heat of the FBI, he was
getting the full animosity of President
Johnson.
Up to that time president Johnson
and he were in conversations by phone and he
had been in the White House on a number of
occasions, but all of this was stopped. None
of his phone calls to the President were
being responded to for just normal
conversations about issues in relationship to
the movement.
Q. After April 4th, 1967, that
communication between Dr. King and the
President stopped?
A. Yes, that's right, stopped, yeah,
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 376
where formally he had been there, where
formally his phone calls were answered and
responded to by senior staff and by the
president himself, this all ended. He
suddenly became a non-person in the White
House, according to him.
Q. To the best of your personal
recollection, Reverend Lawson, was there an
economic impact upon his organization as
well?
A. Yes, there was. I think that behind
the scenes there was a deliberate effort to
get people not to give financial gifts. A
lot of times a lot of gifts were
spontaneous. SCLC had a direct-mail program,
and Dr. King and others called upon people
individually to give, but oftentimes in the
midst of the struggle there would be a
spontaneous outpouring. That's one of the
ways in which our movement was able to
sustain itself financially, because it didn't
cost.
For example, in the sanitation
strike on one occasion we must have received,
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 377
because of Bayind Rustin, who was on the
television show about the sanitation strike,
we must have received, I don't know, dozens
and dozens of mail bags from just around New
England and New York. These bags would
contain note after note, and in almost every
note there was a check that ranged in size
from five dollars to a hundred dollars or two
hundred dollars. These were all for the
sanitation strike.
Of course, it went into the relief
fund, but it took volunteers days to get
through just that one television program
where Bayind Rustin talked about what was
going on. We had to keep the thirteen
hundred workers and their families alive.
They had no money. They were poverty
workers.
Q. During this period can you recall
specific acts of harassment or intimidation
or surveillance which you became aware that
were visited upon Dr. King?
A. Well, he told me the death threats at
home and in the office multiplied. That's
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 378
the one I remember the most. I knew at one
time how many such calls about death were
coming to him, but I don't remember that
figure now.
Q. After the declaration of opposition
formally against the war in Vietnam at
Riverside on April 4 of 1967, this country
was on fire during that year, wasn't it?
A. Yes. 1967.
Q. Numbers of cities burned?
A. Yes. I'm trying to remember all the
places, and I don't, but the huge one was
Detroit, Michigan, as I recall, 1967.
Q. That was August?
A. That was August of 1967. But there
were a number of others as well.
Q. What did he view as underlying that
type of unrest and disruption? What did he
see as the cause of that?
A. Well, he knew that -- he felt that a
lot of it was being promoted not simply in
opposition to him and in opposition to
non-violence, but also it was being promoted
by various provocateurs in the country,
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 379
though he did not really name who they might
be, although he suspected that the FBI was
often provoking enmity against him.
Q. When he turned his attention to
economic issues, what was the focus of that
work and what was the analysis that he saw of
the distribution of wealth as it related to
the war in Vietnam?
A. On April the 4th, 1967, one of the
things he said was that the war against
poverty was being struck down in the rice
patties of Southeast Asia. That may be
almost the exact way he put it, as I
remember. But it was in these months, then,
that he was pulling -- tying to pull together
a major effort to call the nation's attention
to the question of poverty.
In 1967 we were talking about how
materialism, militarism, greed, poverty.
Those were in a sense the twin enemies of the
whole movement and that you could not deal
with racism if you did not deal with the
issue of poverty, that you could not deal
with the issue of poverty if you did not deal
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 380
with the issue of militarism.
So these were conversations that
were going on in the movement itself in 1967,
1966 and 1967, because they began much
further than that. I, as one of the teachers
of the movement, made these links clear all
along in various workshops on non-violence
rather persistently. But more and more staff
people were discussing it. I recall
conversations in 1967-- in 1966, rather,
during the Chicago movement, around that vein
of thought.
So it is out of all of that I would
say that goes back to at least 1966 that
began the notion of the Poor People's
Campaign and the notion there was the
possibility of bringing a movement to the
nation's capitol, a non-violent movement,
that would indicate the extent to which the
economic issues, the issues of the violence
of racism and the violence of the society
could be pulled together.
That took greater form, then, in the
fall of 1967, in talking about the Poor
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 381
People's Campaign. That became his
preoccupation. This was really out of his
mind I would say more than anyone else,
because there were lots of folk within SCLC,
within the movement, who said this can't be
done, that you can't have a movement in the
spring and the summer in Washington, D.C.,
that would not become a major catastrophe.
Bayind Rustin and other major folk
in the movement said it was time to take a
moratorium.
Q. Why did they think it would become a
major catastrophe?
A. Because the movement had so much
division within it by this time. You had the
development of the black power group, you had
the development of the Panthers and in places
like Oakland and Kansas City and Chicago and
elsewhere, you had the forces that were
critical of King's denunciation of the
Vietnam War and its escalation.
You always had folk who did not
think direct action was important, that we
should leave it to the lawyers. This was
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 382
certainly the point of view of those in the
NAACP Legal Defense Fund who were never sure
that direct action in terms of a sit-in
movement or the voter's rights movement or
the Birmingham movement, they never -- they
never were persuaded that kind of non-violent
action was possible.
So you had these many different
voices that in my judgment were a part of how
a movement, a social movement, evolves, that
it goes through an evolutionary process where
a lot of conversation and discussion and
struggle is necessary. But this was now more
evident in all of 1967 than at any other
time.
I feel now, looking back, that that
was oftentimes provoked by some of the actual
people who were enemies of Martin King and
enemies of the struggle.
Q. Martin King came to believe that the
Poor People's gathering --
A. Campaign.
Q. -- was a critical undertaking from
what you are saying?
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 383
A. Yes.
Q. When did he decide in 1967 to go
forward with those plans to bring the masses
of poor people to the nation's capitol?
A. I think it was talked about earlier,
but I think that the confirmation came in
December of 1967 when we had a retreat of the
executive staff and of the board of SCLC. I
think that is where the final arguments and
long conversation and intense conversations
took place, and I think it was from there
that King was convinced that he would move
forward to organize and plan the Poor
People's Campaign.
Q. Was there opposition on the board of
his own organization of SCLC to this project?
A. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. There were --
but, you see, some of that opposition, you
have to recognize, was natural opposition
that was -- that would stretch way back. The
idea of non-violent direct action, though it
is not new to America now, it was a major
secret in America then. There have been
other such struggles, but most Americans are
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 384
unaware of them.
So you had clergy on the board who
had no knowledge of this in a sense what can
now be called a people's struggle for
justice, for liberty, for human rights, for
the Bill of Rights, for freedom of religion,
freedom of speech. You had people who had no
awareness of that.
So you always had a certain amount
of opposition to different campaigns. But
then in 1967 you had members of the board who
thought King should leave Vietnam absolutely
alone and should have nothing to say about
it, that it should not be in the
consideration at all for the struggle. So
they felt very strongly about that and made
their opposition very clear. There was
intense verbal struggle, lots of emotion in
those months in the SCLC circles and board
circles and staff circles.
Q. Wasn't the Poor People's Campaign
even more significant in that it went to the
heart of wealth and power in the United
States? He was talking, was he not, about
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 385
the redistribution of wealth in this country?
A. Well, I want to say about that two
things: One is that you have to recognize
that the sociology of the movement up to this
time was mostly in the southeastern states.
I think it is correct to say that you had had
up to this time in the end of 1967 no major
non-violent movement outside of that
southeastern part of the country.
Then you have to recognize that we
had the Chicago movement in 1966, early
1967. There was intense opposition to SCLC
going to Chicago. Some advisors, some of the
people on the board, some of the members of
the staff, felt we had no business doing this
because they said our strength is in the
southeast. But King recognized that we had
to become a national movement.
There was a ardent group of people,
activists of different kinds, in Chicago that
kept urging Dr. King and SCLC to come there.
So the decision was made to go there.
Another part of this was that King recognized
that each movement had to provide a kind of
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 386
confrontation that helped the nation
recognize and see the problem. So in his
mind that confrontation should take place in
the nation's capitol in Washington.
And he, among other things, said
that we will go to Washington and stay until
Congress and the President decide that they
will eradicate poverty in the United States.
I mean, that was one of the statements he
made.
Another kind of statement he made
was that we will pull together the peace
movement and we will shut down the Pentagon
in the summer of 1967. You know, these are
rather phenomenal statements. But these are
some of the things that you can find in his
speeches, in his talks, in his -- as he was
organizing this movement.
So he was going there believing that
it would be possible to basically paralyze
Washington and to paralyze the government
until it faced up to the issue of poverty and
dealt with it.
Q. Don't you believe that that posture
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 387
and those statements could only have
heightened, enormously heightened, the
anxiety of all those in power?
A. I have no doubt. I have no doubt
whatsoever in my own mind, though I do not
know the behind-scenes work of Washington at
all. But I have no doubt that these kinds of
statements raised the anxiety levels in the
White House and elsewhere across Washington.
Q. Do you believe he could have --
A. Remember it is during this period
that J. Edgar Hoover was saying that King was
the number one enemy of the nation. That was
being said.
Q. Jim, do you believe that he could
have brought half a million people into that
setting in Washington with all of the
disparit parts of that movement, all poor,
all stressed and anxious people, that he
could have put that group together without
that gathering turning violent eventually?
A. No, no, I think that with King's
leadership and strength, I think that we
could have had a movement in Washington,
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 388
D.C., that would have been a non-violent
movement fundamentally. After his death, in
fact, it was basically a non-violent
movement. But it was without his presence
and without his leadership at that time. The
Resurrection City did not turn violent.
Q. But it was without the masses?
A. It was without the numbers and
without the power and strength that Martin
King represented. We have to recognize that
in such movement as these, persons become
symbolic leaders, and they are larger than
life in many ways. If you study, for
example, the movement in India with Gandi,
this was the case.
Now King had fundamentally replaced
for the world the Gandi figure, because his
name was known everywhere. I travelled in
India and Africa and Latin America in those
days, Southeast Asia, and Martin King was the
best-known American. I travelled in Europe
for the World Council of Churches. I
represented my denomination in all kinds of
work camps, workshops. I did non-violent
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 389
training in Europe in the 1970's. King was
the best-known name.
Q. With over thirty years of reflection,
though, now, looking at the context of events
then and the violence in the cities
throughout America during 1967, do you
believe that those in power could have so
dreaded this event taking place that they
might have resorted to any means to make sure
that he didn't lead it?
A. Well, I have no doubt about that at
this moment. We've learned more since then.
Here in Memphis, rather, I think in
1993 I think this city was startled when on
the front pages of the Commercial Appeal an
article that I got a copy of, and I have it
still in my files at home, where it was shown
in this investigative peace that Martin King
had been trailed and under the surveillance
of military intelligence night and day
throughout his entire life.
Not just Martin King but that his
father and his grandfather had been under
military intelligence, surveillance, since
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 390
1917, seventy-five years, military
intelligence. Now, this country has never
been informed what that military intelligence
was doing, but they started looking at his
father and his father, A. D. King, during
World War I, because they thought that black
people would be on the side of Kaiser
Wilhelm. How anyone could have that notion
is beyond the realm of my understanding.
Then in World War II they said black
folk would go with the Nazi's. That is such
craziness that racism develops in some white
power structure people. So his family was
under surveillance of the military
intelligence for seventy-five years. This is
now documented.
THE COURT: Mr. Pepper, we're
going to stop here and give the jury a coffee
break. We're coming back in about ten
minutes.
(Jury out.)
(Short recess.)
(Jury in.)
THE COURT: All right,
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 391
Mr. Pepper. We're ready.
MR. PEPPER: Thank you, Your
Honor.
Q. (BY MR. PEPPER) Reverend Lawson, you
have very patiently taken us from the
beginning of your association with Martin
King and even your own work prior to that up
through his transformation and his maturing
in the 1960's and his declaration of
opposition to the war to his commitment to
the Poor People's Campaign in Washington at a
time when the nation was on fire, anxiety
everywhere.
I'd like us now to move through your
eyes to Memphis, Tennessee, and the
relationship as you see it between the
sanitation workers' strike in this city at
that time in early 1967 and the wider
movement heading toward a massive invasion,
an encampment in Washington, of poor people
from all over the country.
If you would just address the
relationship between the two activities.
Tell us how you see that they related to each
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 392
other.
A. Well, Martin King is the one who said
it, because on his first visit here during
the sanitation strike, March 17th or 18th,
when I picked him up at the airport that
night to take him to the mass meeting, one of
the things he said to me is, Jim, you are
doing in Memphis what I hope to do in the
Poor People's Campaign. Then he went on to
talk about linking the economic question to
the question of the racism, poverty issues
and transforming that.
Now, that's a continuation of
conversations out of staff meetings and board
meetings in the 1966, 1967, at least, but he,
in other words, decided that he could come to
Memphis to speak because he recognized that
these thirteen hundred workers were working
for poverty wages and that that was the heart
of the question of racism in many ways.
Slavery was working for nothing,
substainance, food at best, an economic
system which constantly does not want to pay
ordinary people their due for their good and
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 393
essential labor for the society.
So I -- he made that connection for
me in very clear fashion. He saw the Poor
People's Campaign as a way by which we could
bring to the nation's attention to the
necessity of America finally making a
decision that we didn't have to have the kind
of poverty we had because we had more than
enough wealth and we had more than enough
work, and that the work should allow people
to gain the wherewithal to take care of their
own basic necessities.
Q. Before he entered the fray here in
Memphis in support of the sanitation workers'
strike, that dispute became very evident and
indeed disruptive of civic life?
A. You mean the sanitation strike
itself?
Q. The sanitation workers strike.
A. Yes.
Q. Can you give us the background,
because you were in the middle of that at the
time?
A. Well, the sanitation workers, of
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 394
course, were all city employees, but they
never received any kind of just remuneration
or opportunity for advancement, and the
segregation in the department was rampant.
Oftentimes these men were humiliated
in their workplace, harassed in their
workplace. T. O. Jones and a handful of
people had for about six years been trying to
organize this group of thirteen hundred
people into an effective union and working
people's organization whereby they could
collectively improve their situation, their
work situation. That had always -- that had
for the most part was a hard uphill struggle
all the time, but it proved to be successful
on February 12th, I think it was in 1968,
when all thirteen hundred workers walked off
the job, fed up with what they had to put up
with for so many years.
One of the things that had provoked
them at that time was the death of two of
their colleagues who during a storm sat in
one of the huge trucks, and the mechanism had
a failure, and they were crushed. Part of
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 395
their complaint was the fact that when it
rained or snowed, they either had to work in
the snow or go home without pay. They needed
every hour of work they could obtain.
White supervisors in the department
could go back to the barns and drink coffee
and play cards and would get paid for the
entire day, but these ordinary people on the
trucks lifting the cans and all did not, and
there were no health benefits. Safety was an
issue for them, the hazard of the job
itself.
So when these two men were killed,
that stirred a great deal of anger and
courage. So they almost unanimously walked
off the job together without any plan of any
kind.
In February you don't have a
sanitation strike. You do it in July. They
hadn't talked to the international union or
anybody. I mean, they made the decision
themselves. Their anger in fact motivated
them to have the courage to do it, so they
did it.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 396
Well, that created consternation in
the community, in the city as a whole. Mayor
Henry Loeb immediately said it was illegal
and they had to go back to work. They asked
for negotiations and conversations which he
for the most part declined.
When the strike began, I immediately
supported them and began to raise offerings
in my congregation because I knew they would
need food and would have to be helped. Other
clergy did that rather spontaneously also.
So a sizable group of us supported their
demands for change from the very beginning.
But the mood of the city was that the strike
is illegal and they had no business doing
it. So what happened was that you therefore
had a stalemate and a confrontation.
Q. How did Martin King become involved
in that dispute?
A. Well, a variety of us went to the
meetings with the workers and we had been to
help them in various ways. The international
union did not abandon them in spite of the
fact that there was no foresight in this.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 397
They came in and worked with them and tried
to work with the rest of us as well.
We tried to work very hard to get
the city council and the mayor to make an
agreement and settle the strike. In a series
of meetings with various people of the city
council and in a series of meetings in the
community with some businessmen behind the
scenes working on it as well and a variety of
clergy working on it behind the scenes, we
thought we had an agreement where -- I can't
remember the exact name of the committee, but
Councilman Davis chaired perhaps a labor
committee or something like that. They had a
big hearing in city hall. They agreed that
they would propose an easy settlement of the
strike.
We agreed that we would then come
back the next two or three days or the next
councilmanic meeting for this settlement to
be announced. It was to be at city hall
after a few days. Then we got word that the
meeting would not be at city hall because of
the size, with many of us coming to the
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 398
meeting, and it was announced in the civic
auditorium.
When we arrived that morning at the
civic auditorium there were perhaps eleven,
twelve hundred people in all. Some of the
city council people had come onto the
platform. The lights were on, a microphone
was available. They made the announcement
that the council had decided that they would
leave the matter in the hands of Mayor Loeb.
So the agreement the previous days
was faulted by the city council. After this
announcement was made, the lights in the
civic auditorium were all turned off, and
they as much said the meeting is over.
Well, that created a storm in this
crowd, angry cries and all. A few of the
clergy and a couple of the union --
international union leaders, Jerry Worth in
particular, we rushed to the platform and
tried to get people to sit down and be calm
and cool. There was no microphone, so we had
to shout. But we managed to bring some
calm.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 399
We requested the civic auditorium to
turn the lights back on and give us a mic so
we could sit there and have a meeting and try
to manage this. In the process of that
effort, we did manage to get people directed
and get their energy directed, and we decided
that we would walk in mass in the street from
the civic auditorium down I guess it is Main
Street past City Hall and to Mason Temple.
A couple of the leaders, I don't
remember who specifically, quickly got
Commissioner of Fire & Police Holloman on the
phone and got his permission that we could
walk in a non-violent fashion down the
street.
So we announced this and directed
the people go onto Main Street out the front
doors and to gather and then we would proceed
down the street and we said we have the
permission of the city to do it. The
commissioner of the fire and police issues
permits for such a thing, such events in
Memphis.
So we got it started and organized.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 400
Many of the stewards, many of the leaders and
the clergy, in an orderly fashion we started
on what would be Main, south on that street,
I guess. Yes, it would be south on Main
Street. Well, after we had gone about two
blocks away from Poplar, out of nowhere
appeared police cars, a whole line of police
cars.
We were walking on the right side of
the street going south, and these cars came
from the side streets onto Main Street and
rolled up all along side of us so that there
was a long line of police cars perhaps the
length of the walk. We were a peaceful
march. Then I noticed some of the cars
coming over the yellow line and trying to
intimidate some of us walking. I was towards
the front of the March.
As I always do in a demonstration, I
try to keep my eyes on whatever is going on
as far as the whole business to the best of
my ability. So I turned around and went to a
couple of the police cars and said, now,
look, we have Holloman's permission to walk,
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 401
you guys are just trying to provoke an
incident, so stay where you are, stay on that
side of the line.
Then a second time they moved over,
and some of the sanitation workers put their
hands on the car, the police car, as though
to push it back, and I saw this from the side
of my eyes, and I rushed back again a few
steps and again told the sanitation workers
to leave it alone and to go ahead and walk.
They said, well, they are
deliberately doing it. I said, I know, they
are trying to make us break up, they are
trying to find an excuse to stop us. Then it
happened again and they moved over on the
marchers. This time the sanitation workers
put their hands on the car, and like that the
police cars all up and down that line
stopped. They were all filled with
officers.
These officers poured out of the
cars with cans of mace and proceeded to mace
everybody they could mace. They had some
targets. They dragged off two or three
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 402
people, I don't remember how many. People
like Jerry Worth were given a full dose of
it. I had glasses on, and so they are macing
me in the face.
I stayed on my feet and kept
blinking my eyes rapidly. I got it into the
eyes and I tried to cry so that my eyes would
keep washing it out. The march was broken up
in that fashion. I realized that they had
planned to do it.
I don't think Holloman had planned
that to happen. I don't believe he did at
all. But the officers in the field decided
we were not going to march down to Mason
Temple.
So most people scattered. A few
people were arrested. But some of us
remained on the scene. So I suggested to
those of us who were around, let's continue,
we will walk on the sidewalk and we'll go on
to Mason Temple.
So as a consequence, we went --
probably fifty, sixty of us we managed to
stay together and we walked on the sidewalks
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 403
and went on to Mason Temple.
By the time we got there, people
were coming from all directions, and lots and
lots of clergy were descending on it. At
that point we had a major community meeting
that said that this was deliberate and we
must organize ourselves to resist in every
way we can and to see to it that this strike
was successful.
At that meeting, then, a strategy
committee was appointed made up of
representative people in the community and
folk from the union. I had to leave because
I had some hospital calls that were urgent,
because this was about six o'clock, seven
o'clock, now at night. So I left the meeting
before it concluded. But I was asked to be a
member of the committee.
After I made my hospital calls and
all and got back home probably nine, ten
o'clock that night, I had a call, a phone
call, as I recall, from Harold Middlebrook,
one of the ministers in the city, who said,
Jim, the committee was formed and you, of
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 404
course, know you are on the committee, but
the meeting asked that you become chair of
the strategy committee and call the
meetings. I said, okay.
I started organizing things. We had
a meeting that Monday. This might have been
a Friday. I called an immediately a meeting
that Monday. We called at the meeting the
members of the committee as Harold
Middlebrook gave me their names during the
weekend, and at that meeting we had our first
strategy meeting about how do we mobilize our
community to really now stay behind this,
because this is a serious struggle, what the
police did was unwarranted.
In that meeting we decided let's
begin mass meetings. So we began planning
and called mass meetings that very week, that
is, a mass meeting being a gathering
usually -- not usually, but gathering in a
church. This was a common model that we used
throughout the 1960's in the South.
Then we said we will bring in some
national spokespeople. We mentioned Roy
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 405
Wilkins, Bayind Rustin, a number of names,
Martin King. So we made assignments to
different people that worked with different
names to get them there immediately for mass
meetings.
Of course, because of my ongoing
connection with Dr. King, I was asked to
contact Dr. King. I did almost immediately
and asked him to come to Memphis.
In our first conversation I briefed
him on the march. He knew about it already,
of course, because it was in the news. He
agreed immediately that he would come, but,
of course, he also said, you know my
schedule, I have to negotiate with it. I
understood that readily and easily and told
him, well, you name the date and we'll be
ready for you when you name the date.
So we left off that phone call with
his telling me that you keep in touch with
me, if I'm not available, talk to Ralph
Abernathy. I talked to Ralph, and we left it
with that. He and I pretty much stayed in
touch until he gave me the date of March 17th
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 406
or 18th, I don't remember exactly. I didn't
look it up. That is when he was coming.
So that's how he got involved. And
he was invited as a spokesperson, he was
invited as who he was, as a symbol, and he
was invited also because from my perspective
the sanitation strike was a part of the
movement up to that time.
Q. How did he see this in relation to
the Poor People's Campaign that was to
descend upon Washington later that spring?
A. Well, the executive staff of SCLC was
very much opposed to him changing his
schedule to come, but he insisted that the
sanitation strike was an economic struggle in
part and that he would nevertheless do it.
The way he compromised with them was
that in some of our planning meetings, we'll
just have one of our planning meetings in
Memphis, which means that we can do it there
just as easily as in Atlanta or in Jackson,
Mississippi, so we'll have an executive
committee meeting.
When they arranged that executive
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 407
committee meeting, I suppose that King made
the decision that he decided it would be in
Memphis and brought the executive committee
meeting to meet in Memphis I think on that
Tuesday. It was the Monday that we had the
mass meeting when they came to town. Then I
think they met the next day as the executive
committee planning the Poor People's
Campaign.
Q. So some of the planning took place
here in Memphis?
A. A lot of the planning took place here
in Memphis then because not only did they
have those meetings here, but then also they
decided that Memphis would become the
starting point for the caravan of poor people
that would go -- that would caravan to
Washington. It was decided that Memphis
would become the launching point for the Poor
People's Campaign.
Q. When he arrived on March 17th to
Memphis, do you recall where he stayed, what
hotel he went to?
A. He stayed at the Rivermont. Now, I
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 408
want to add to that that this was not the
first time Martin King had been in Memphis.
He had been in Memphis for a number of
different things, for the National Baptist
Convention, for SCLC board meetings. So
Memphis was not a strange place for his
coming here.
I can say something more than that.
In 1966 in June James Meredith started his
march against fear into Mississippi. James
Meredith was the first black man to be
enrolled in the school of -- in the law
school at the university, in Ole Miss. So he
decided to try to help break the fear that
was in Mississippi among many, many black
people registering to vote or any kind of
participation in trying to change their
situation, that he would do this one-man
march. But he was shot just outside of
Memphis in Hernando, Mississippi.
I was in my office in the church I
think it was the Monday that he was shot and
immediately had a call from Martin King who
said, have you heard about Jim Meredith being
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 409
shot? I said, yes. He asked me if I knew
how he was. I said I didn't know but I knew
the hospital he went to.
So he asked me if I would go make a
call on him immediately on his behalf and my
behalf, a pastoral call, and then say to him
that he felt that we should not permit his
shooting to stop his march, his injury to
stop his march, and that some of us would
come on the next day and pick up where he was
shot and continue walking down the highway in
Mississippi.
So I agreed with that and said that
was -- felt that was absolutely right for our
strategy. Then I immediately made
connections with the hospital and with Jim
Meredith's lawyer, attorney, who was a member
of my church and a trustee in my church, A.
W. Willis. So A. W. Willis immediately
called his client and paved the way for me to
go on to the hospital and see him.
So that afternoon I went to the
hospital, had prayer with him and talked and
visited with him and told him about King's
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 410
call and that King would come to see him the
next day. And he agreed to all of that and
so forth.
So the next morning I picked Martin
King up at the airport. As I drove up to the
airport -- we had a Dodge station wagon. By
this time we had three young children. My
wife and our sons were visiting in East
Tennessee with her parents, so I was alone
that week, and so I had the station wagon,
and I drove it up to the airport. As I got
to the departure concourse at the airport,
the departure lane, I noticed two
well-dressed black men on that patio, and as
they saw me pull up, they walked towards the
car and said, Reverend Lawson, you can park
there and just leave it there, we talked to
the police, airport police, and it is okay.
That is the first time that had ever
happened to me. They then came up to the car
and introduced themselves. Then they said,
the Commissioner of Fire & Police Claude
Armour has detailed some of us who are
homicide detectives and robbery detectives
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 411
and we have been instructed that any time
Martin King, Dr. King, comes to this city, we
will see to it that he is secure.
Then he went on to say that if you,
Reverend Lawson, will cooperate with us when
he comes into town, if Dr. King will
cooperate with us, he said, we can assure you
that nothing will ever happen to Dr. King
when Dr. King is in this city.
So from that time on, whenever he
came to Memphis, that group of homocide
detectives and other detectives were relieved
of all other duty. They gave him
twenty-four-hour surveillance. They talked
to his office and him about where you will be
safest, where are the places he could be most
secure.
So he mostly stayed at the Admiral
Benbow I think on Poplar and at the Rivermont
at their suggestion most of the time.
Q. One of those officers has testified
before this court --
A. Okay.
Q. -- about the removal of security in
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 412
the local conspiracy side of this case
previously.
Are you aware of other instances
where that team was formed to protect Martin
King when he came to Memphis?
A. Well, don't recall them all, but I'm
well aware that this happened more than once,
because I know specifically Memphis became
the organizing place for this March, then,
through Mississippi, and my congregation, my
church, became the center of it. We set up
headquarters there, which meant, therefore,
that I had to put into operation expanded
phone lines and all of that, office space, so
that we could do it.
It also meant that Dr. King made
frequent calls when he came into Memphis to
join the march, because this was the best
airport site, and, therefore, I do recollect
that any number of times that detail was
assigned to his care.
Q. Are you aware of your own personal
knowledge and recollection whether or not
that detail was formed on his last fatal
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 413
visit to Memphis?
A. No. I happen to know afterwards that
that detail was not organized on his April
3rd visit to -- April 3rd, 1968, visit to
Memphis. They were not assigned.
Q. His second visit, next visit to
Memphis, after March 17th and 18th, was to
lead a march on the 28th --
A. Of March.
Q. -- of March?
A. Yes.
Q. Would you just briefly describe what
you recall about that visit and that march
which took place about a week before he was
assassinated.
A. Yes. When he spoke the Monday night
of the 17th or the 18th, you should remember
that this was the largest such mass meeting
that had occurred in the movement up to that
time in the southeast. Because in the
Southern states we had no public places to
meet. We couldn't meet in a high school
auditorium. We couldn't meet in a high
school stadium.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 414
So when we had mass meetings, these
were exclusively in black churches, and we
did not have sizable church sanctuaries for
huge meetings. In Birmingham in 1963, in
order to try to accommodate the need for mass
meetings, we would have meetings, mass
meetings, the same evening in five, six,
seven churches all around the city. And Dr.
King and Dr. Abernathy would have to go to
all five of those places and speak. They
would end up one or two o'clock in the
morning finishing those mass meetings. This
was in Birmingham. We had no Mason Temple.
I told Dr. King from the beginning
that in Memphis we have sizable church
sanctuaries, but we have the Church of God in
Christ Mason Temple which will seat eight
thousand people and another five thousand
people can stand in the huge aisles easily
and then with a big parking lot.
The night he spoke, we probably had
twenty-five thousand people jam-packed in the
building and in the parking lot. It was a
magnificent experience. But that was the
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 415
largest mass meeting in the movement in the
Southeastern states that Martin King had
spoken in. It was an extraordinary
experience, and after he finished speaking,
members of the executive committee of SCLC
went to him and said we should come back and
march with them.
He called me over and said, what
would it be like, Jim, if I decided to come
back for a march? I said, wonderful, as far
as we're concerned. Then he said, well,
let's do it. He went back, then, and I
suggested to him he go back to the podium and
announce this. Of course, it was met with
thunderous approval.
Q. What happened, Jim, on that March on
the 28th?
A. All right. So on that march Dr. King
and the folk who came with him were late in
arriving. As I remember, we were supposed to
start the march at ten. They did not get
there for varied reasons until eleven. And
against my better judgment, I went ahead and
started. I won't go into all that because
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 416
that is another whole story.
We went ahead and started, but as we
proceeded down Hernando Street to Beale
Street, I saw that already there was no
differentiation between those of us in the
street and those on the sidewalks. It was
not very orderly, from my perspective. But
at the urging of others, we went ahead and
did it. So we hit Beale Street and then
turned on Beale Street towards Main Street.
The block just before Main Street, I
heard what I thought to be maybe windows
shattering behind me. I was the marshal for
the march, so I was up in front. But a group
of other marshals, all clergy, were about a
block in front of me. But the crowd was
everywhere. When I heard that, I grabbed
another marshal and asked him to go back and
see what was going on and see if he could
stop whatever it was and urged the marshals
to become stronger in pushing the march into
the street.
Then I asked Assistant Chief of
Police Lux, who had joined me in the street
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 417
for a few moments, for a bullhorn, which he
quickly procured for me. As I turned the
corner at Main Street and looked ahead, I
heard again what I thought to be some windows
shattering behind me, but as I looked ahead
on Main Street, in the next block and the
next block, I was struck by, one, that in the
second block ahead there were people on the
street busting windows, but, more importantly
there was a phalanx of police officers, I do
not know how deep, in battle gear, helmets,
shields, face shields, all across Main
Street.
When I turned that corner, they were
there two blocks ahead. They were doing
nothing to stop whoever it was busting
windows right next to them. I said to
myself, well, they are there in order to
break up the march again. I said, their
target will be Dr. King, Martin King.
So I ran up to our group of
marshals, which was about a block ahead of
me, and said to them, I want you to stop at
an intersection, I think I said, which was
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 418
about a half a block away from the phalanx of
police. I said, I'm going to stop the march,
I'm going to ask Dr. King to leave the area,
and I want you to stand and turn to face us.
I'm going to turn the march around. I want
you to be the last group coming back down the
street and we'll go back to the church and
we'll disburse.
So I rushed back, then, to the first
line of the marchers, which Dr. King was in
the center, and I said to him, Martin, the
police are up ahead, they plan to break us up
and you are going to be their target and I
don't want you to be here. He protested.
Ralph Abernathy was on one side of him and
Bishop Smith, a CME bishop, was on the other
side of him, and Henry Starks, an AME
minister, was in the group there, and they
all agreed with my analysis immediately.
So I said, I know that you don't
want to do this, I said, but I want you to
leave, because I don't want them to get to
you. I asked them then to go down McCall. I
asked Henry to take Bishop Smith and Dr. King
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 419
to McCall Street and go back to the Rivermont
Hotel. I used the bullhorn to tell the rest
of the marchers to turn around and go back to
the church where we're going to disburse. I
added that the police are planning to use
their nightsticks and mace and what not on
us, they are going to break us up, so let's
go back.
So in that spirit they turned around
in the street and we proceeded to make our
way back. I moved through the march with the
bullhorn making this same announcement until
I reached Beale Street. Then I went back up
Beale Street again to continue making that
announcement. We had an orderly return to
the church. Some people stayed at the
church, but others went on to their cars and
went home per what we suggested people do.
By this time I could see on Beale
Street and Main Street havoc going on, mayhem
going on, people busting up windows and what
not, and the police very energetic in beating
people up and dragging them through the
streets. That police activity went on all
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 420
afternoon. There are lots and lots of
witnesses to that.
They used it as a pretense. They
beat up Vietnam veterans who were having
breakfast five blocks away. They beat up
Harold Whalum, who was an insurance
businessman well-known in the city. He was
some blocks away. They broke his skull and
so forth. He was not doing anything but
walking to his car.
Q. To your recollection, was that the
first march or non-violent demonstration
which Dr. King participated in which you were
associated with certainly that turned
violent?
A. Well, let me say it another way. We
had demonstrations where other people were
violent toward us. The marches in
Mississippi, the marches in St. Augustine,
Florida, for an example, where we had
deputized posse sometimes on horses throwing
stones, beating up on us and what not. So
the violence came then.
At this time what I want to say is
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 421
very clear, and I'll write this in my memoirs
one day, that it was the police violence that
provoked this. There were probably
provocateurs who did the looting.
We learned later from our pictures
and community photographers that many of the
looters were Beale Street professionals who
told our people that you dried up downtown,
so you stopped us from working, that is,
pickpockets who had no crowds on Main Street,
for an example. I was astonished at this.
We had many pictures, we had many leaders,
many block workers, who went through all
those pictures the next several days,
pictures of looters and what not, trying to
identify them for ourselves so that we could
see what happened, what went on.
Q. Were you aware of the presence of
out-of-state people at that time?
A. At that time I was not aware, but
I'll never forget -- I don't know if I would
recognize him today, but I'll never forget
one young man who I had never seen before, I
tried to appeal to him. He was rabblerousing
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 422
about this isn't the way you can get anything
done. Well, I spotted that immediately. One
of the marshals told me before the march
began. So I went to him.
I went to the corner where he was
rabblerousing and pulled his shirttail and
asked him please to stop, that if he had a
different theory, then he ought to take it
someplace else, but if he was going to be on
the march, he should try to carry out the
leadership of the community and not go his
own way.
Q. Why did Martin King come back to
Memphis after this march, this disruption,
why did he come back to Memphis for the last
time?
A. Well, because we had a principle in
the non-violent movement. It went like
this: We will not injure you, but we will
absorb your injury of us because the cycle of
violence must be broken. And if we respond
to your violence with violence, then all you
do is escalate the violence. We want the
cycle of violence in America and racism
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 423
stopped. So we will take it on ourselves, we
will not dish it out in kind.
The second issue that was important
to us, we said, was that when the enemies
proceed to do violence against us, we must
not let their violence stop our movement.
That had become kind of a cardinal notion in
the movement all across the South.
So as an example, when the freedom
rides in 1961 hit bus burnings and vigorous
assaults, the KKK and even the police in
places like Montgomery, Alabama, all across
the movement, we said, well, the freedom ride
will continue. I myself went to Montgomery
and was in the first bus from Montgomery to
Jackson, Mississippi, where we were
arrested. We said we cannot permit violence
to stop us.
Dr. King said I know that the
non-violent movement can have a non-violent
march in Memphis. So we will do it. He was
quite determined to show himself and us and
the nation that the movement could have a
non-violent movement.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 424
Q. So he returned to Memphis on the 3rd
of April to have that follow-up March, a
successful non-violent March?
A. A non-violent March, right, to better
organize it and everything else.
Q. What can you tell us about that last
visit to Memphis and what took place, your
personal recollection, up to the time of his
assassination?
A. Let's see. Martin King came in I
think the 2nd or the 3rd. I don't recall
precisely. But one of the major issues when
he came into the city was the fact that city
government had taken a -- had gotten a city
court injunction against our marching.
Very much in the movement, in the
leadership of the movement, we had made the
determination that when a city took an
injunction against us, we would initially
take it to federal court and try to get it
overturned. If we could not get it
overturned, we would march anyway.
So when that injunction was taken
out that early part of that week, I called
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 425
him and let him know about it and told him I
was putting together lawyers to go to the
federal court and challenge it and see if we
could get it reversed.
So when he came in, first on our
minds was that injunction that named the
movement in Memphis, Dr. King, Jim Lawson and
others. As I recall, that's the way the
injunction was written. So that meant, among
other things, being on the strategy
committee, that I had to be the witness in
court for Memphis, in the federal court. And
Dr. King named Andrew Young to be his witness
and spokesperson for SCLC.
So we organized lawyers to challenge
the injunction. We had meetings with them
that week. And then when Martin came in, one
of the first meetings we had was with the
lawyers and Dr. King.
Bill, I hope you'll understand --
Mr. Pepper, I hope you'll understand that I
use "Dr. King" and "Martin," but, remember,
we had an eleven-year or so friendship and it
was always "Jim" and "Martin" --
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 426
Q. Sure. No, that's fine. Of course.
A. -- on every situation. So that was
the day. So on April the 3rd we had a
meeting at Centenary United Methodist Church
where he spoke to clergy. We had a mass
meeting planned that night at Mason Temple
April the 3rd. In mid-day or mid-afternoon
on that April the 3rd, it began to storm in a
typically Memphis rainstorm. I have
experienced no such storms like that in Los
Angeles. But it began raining maybe three or
four o'clock. This was not off-and-on
raining. It was a steady downpouring the
rest of that day.
Of course, Martin and Ralph
Abernathy were to speak in Mason Temple, but
with that rain, when I went to pick them up,
and I agreed I was going to pick them up, it
was still pouring rain, and Dr. King was
convinced no one would show up at that Mason
Temple with all that rain. Ralph and I could
not dissuade him.
Finally, the three of us agreed that
Ralph and I would go on to the meeting, and
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 427
if we felt that Martin had to come to the
meeting, then one of us would get him on the
phone and call him back, that he would stay
in the motel for the time being, but when he
got his call from us, that he would come on
over. So that's the way we left it. We went
to the meeting. Of course, in the downpour,
probably by this time four thousand, five
thousand people, had gathered.
They were, of course, obviously
there to listen to Dr. King, not to me or not
to Abernathy or to anybody else. And so
shortly after we got there and sensed the
meeting, I think Ralph was the one that went
to the phone and called Martin and asked him
to come on. And he came.
Q. And delivered his last speech?
A. And delivered that last speech in
Mason Temple. That was an extraordinary
experience, too. I've never been in a
meeting like that before.
Q. Did you see him at all the next day,
which was the last day of his life?
A. I saw him on my way to the federal
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 428
court. March the 4th was when we were having
the hearing against the injunction. I went
by the motel to visit with him briefly to go
to court. And that was actually the last
time I saw him.
Q. So you didn't see him after that.
What time of day was that?
A. This was about nine o'clock. I think
court was to open at nine or something like
that.
Q. Where were you when he was
assassinated?
A. I was in court until about -- I got
the judge to excuse me around two o'clock
after I testified. I went back to our
movement office in order to check phone calls
and check the strategy of the march and do
any other kind of business that needed to be
done.
Then by about five-thirty probably I
started making my way home, because Dorothy
and I had a solemn sort of covenant that no
matter what was going on in our lives, that
we would gather for supper around six with
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 429
the boys and eat as leisurely as we could.
Then if I had to go back out, I went back
out.
So I moved on to home. Shortly
after I got home, close to six o'clock, there
was a television set on in an alcove off the
dining room, and I heard something about
someone being shot, and I was in the kitchen
greeting Dorothy when I heard that over the
television. I went to the alcove to see if I
could find out what that was, and as I did
so, then they flashed a kyrin on the bottom,
writing on the television set, saying Dr.
King has been shot at the Lorraine Motel,
then another kyrin that said he was being
rushed to St. Joseph Hospital.
I immediately turned and told
Dorothy what that was and had said, look, you
will need to -- I will rush to the radio
stations to make comments to keep the
community moving in the right direction. You
should get ahold of Holloman and tell him
that I'm breaking the curfew, because I'll be
moving from place to place -- and that is
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 430
Frank Holloman, commissioner of fire and
police -- and tell him that he is to be sure
that I had access to move about the city
while this is happening.
THE COURT: Give me five
seconds.
(Brief interruption.)
Q. (BY MR. PEPPER) Jim, from that day to
this have you been concerned about how Martin
King was assassinated?
A. Yes. Almost immediately there were
things that troubled me about the
assassination. I learned within the next
day, next twenty-four hours, that his normal
security group from the police department had
not been assigned.
I learned that one or two firemen,
and I've not tried to check on these details,
but one or two fire then who were in the fire
station across the street katty-cornered from
the motel, black firemen, were transferred
from that station in ways that at least those
firemen thought was unusual. They contacted
me and Ralph Jackson and one or two others
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 431
about their removal. They were not what they
considered to be normal removals. The fire
station let's say was over here and the motel
here. It had clear vision.
I learned that Ed Redditt, who was
on surveillance from the fire station, was
moved an hour before. I learned that patrol
cars that were in the region when he was
there patrolling on Mulberry and Main and
what not suddenly disappeared, were nowhere
to be found.
I discovered that on April the 4th,
the night of that day, that there was on the
police band the notice of a white Mustang
fleeing the city in the north who got away.
There was never any explanation of how that
call got on the police band. Ostensibly it
was accessible only to the police.
Well, now I know that there were two
white Mustangs. I've met the drivers of both
of them quite some time ago. The one driver
was James Earl Ray. I visited him in
prison. I can't remember the name of the
other driver, but I sat in an airport in
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 432
Nashville two or three years ago with the
second driver of the second white Mustang,
and he told me who he was, why he was in
Memphis and whose car this belonged to. We
know now that there were two white Mustangs
in Memphis on the April the 4th evening.
These questions were never answered
to my satisfaction. I pondered them. I
wondered why when Martin King had stayed more
often in the Admiral Benbow and in the
Rivermont, I wondered where this letter came
from or where this report in the newspaper
came from about why is this civil rights
leader not staying in the perfectly good
negro motel, why is he staying at that white
motel. I wondered about that.
I wondered how they had two or three
different names for whoever they were
seeking, how did that go on? What was that
about? Then when they captured James Earl
Ray and they came to the prison, they fixed
up -- they had him in the county jail, and
they fixed up a special cell with
twenty-four-hour surveillance, no privacy,
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 433
twenty-four-hour lights. He had no privacy
whatsoever. He complained.
I kick myself now that I did not go
down to the county jail and talk to William
Morris about why this was going on. It
reminded me of something quite specific. It
reminded me of the brainwashing that our GI's
had in the Korean War.
I'm a heavy reader, and I have
followed much of public life for over fifty
years in all kinds of newspapers, magazines
in the nation, news magazines, magazines of
all kinds. I've read Newsweek, for example,
for over fifty years. I started in junior
high school. So I've observed these things.
When I saw this, I was astonished.
I said to myself, what is going on here?
This is the man, why are they torturing him.
That was brainwashing from Korean experience
according to the things I read from our
GI's. If they've got the evidence about him,
why not just simply go to trial.
Then when they had the
plea-bargaining business, I said to myself,
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 434
here is this justice system, the most
important American perhaps other than the
President of the United States has been
killed, and they are going to have a
plea-bargaining instead of a full-scale trial
so that a court of law can tell us, can give
us a full transcript of what that murder is
about.
So these things bewildered me and
made me upset. As I said, I fault myself
that I did not take up the cudgels in
especially 1968, the end of 1968, 1969, when
James Earl Ray was petitioning the court for
relief from this treatment that was making
him sick, keeping him from being able to
sleep, therefore keeping him from being able
to deal with what was going on and what he
needed to do for his own defense.
Q. Have you maintained your interest
down to the present day --
A. Oh, yes.
Q. -- in respect of this case and
efforts, your efforts?
A. Yes. I followed the Congressional
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 435
hearings in the late 1970's or whenever that
was. I talked with Congressman Walter
Fountroy, who was the chairperson of the King
investigation, visited him in his office.
I talked with him, I talked to some
of their -- I guess their investigators by
phone. I was called before that
Congressional committee. But when they were
putting my session in executive session, I
declined, because I felt that if you are
going to have hearings on this important
matter, they should be public.
Q. Will you explain to the jury and the
court what "executive session" means?
A. An executive session meant there with
be no public there, no newspaper, just the
committee asking the questions and just the
witness. They wanted to question me under
executive conditions.
I frankly told the committee -- I
went in and told the committee that I
wouldn't testify under those circumstances.
I think this was too important a matter for
them to hold execute sessions.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 436
Q. Did you form any personal opinions
yourself with all of your concerns and your
consideration of this case?
A. Well, especially in the 1970's when I
went and visited James Earl Ray in prison,
which I did do. I had read all along the FBI
scenarios that James Earl Ray was a racist.
Well, when I visited with him the first
couple of visits I could not discern that he
was racist any more than any of the rest of
us are racists.
As a black man, I think in my
relationships with all kinds of people I can
discern and have been able to discern when
people are in trouble from their prejudices
and bigotries. It is not only in their eyes
but it is in their face, it is in their
language. I did not catch any of that from
James Earl Ray.
In comparing notes with people like
Ralph Abernathy and Jessie Jackson and Dick
Gregory, they all said that in their visits
with him, they could not discern that he was
a racist. I think that group of men would be
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 437
a better judge of who is a racist from close
up than anyone else, certainly better than
the FBI.
So that gave me some grief, because
it just seemed to me the motivation they were
putting up was absolutely wrong. Of course,
I continued to have relationships with James
Earl Ray and was at his funeral, I married
him in jail, I visited him within the last
couple of weeks of his death, had about an
hour and a half long visit with him. It was
a pastoral visit. I prayed with him. I read
scripture to him. I was just convinced that
the man was not a racist.
Q. Finally, Jim, this action in civil
court, this civil court proceeding here, is a
conspiracy and a wrongful death action. It
concerns a family who have lost a husband and
a father.
A. Right.
Q. But because of who that husband and
father was, it is not -- it doesn't stop
there in terms of a loss to the nation.
Could you just finally summarize for us what
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 438
you think is the loss to this Republic of
Martin Luther King.
A. Well, from my point of view in the
1960's Dr. King was the Moses of this
generation and for America. He was a prophet
for the nation. He was the centerpiece of a
movement that was emerging. And the work --
the movement had not yet matured in spite of
the controversy within the struggle, which
was natural.
King was the central voice for the
black people of America with no one close to
representing what he represented for us. You
can go back and search the national studies
of that matter. Ninety-eight percent of
black people in America said that King
represents us. No one was close to ten
percent to that.
So in spite of all the
controversies, then and since, he was the
architect of the movement. And the movement
was at a critical place. We knew that we had
to redirect our energies.
In 1967 he and I had several
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 439
conversations about the need for a
moratorium. We had agreed after one of our
conversations in December that after the Poor
People's Campaign we're going to call off all
demonstrations among ourselves and we're
going to take six or eight months to
restructure and reorganize.
He and I had agreed in that meeting
at the staff and the board in December where
we talked at length about this that we would
continue our conversations in 1968 through
the Poor People's Campaign and then
afterwards SCLC was going to take a major
leap forward for the purpose of
reorganizing.
We didn't have a national movement
yet. We had had cosmetic changes that were
important, the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, the
Voters' Rights Bill of 1965, the anti-poverty
program. There were a whole slough of things
that were happening. But the structures of
the injustice and cruelty had not yet been
challenged and had not yet really begun to
change. These still have not changed.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 440
So we were at a critical point. In
my judgment the assassination of Martin King
and the assassinations of the 1960's,
including the assassination of Malcom X,
meant that the movement did not have the
chance to go to the next stage. And young
men like King and Malcom X and some others
represented emerging leadership that would
have been able to help the movement and the
nation do some major reform.
Q. Has that leadership ever been
replaced?
A. No, of course not. The
assassinations of the 1960's changed the
nation forever. We are worse off in many
ways than ever before.
Right now we have nearly forty
million impoverished people in our country.
Two hundred babies die every day in America
before they are one year old because they do
not have the access to the nourishment they
need in order to live. These are white
babies, these are black babies, these are
Latino babies. These are babies from many
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 441
different walks of life, and they are babies
of every state of the union. That is
disgraceful.
Q. And of every color and complexion?
A. Of every color and complexion.
Q. So was he not in fact the leading
spokesman and advocate for the wretched of
the earth?
A. Yes, exactly. Exactly. America has
never been able to deal with the issue of
slavery, never been able to deal with the
issue of the oppression of women, never been
able to deal with the issue of the notion
that even today many huge business people
have mainly that a lot of people ought to
work and not make living wages.
These are three major issues that
this nation has been unable to face. They've
not been able to deal with the violence with
which we maintain this status quo that hurts
and maims many souls.
The movement was aimed at reversing
that. King's motto was, the SCLC motto, it
was not civil rights, it was redeem the soul
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 442
of America. That was our motto.
So you see right away that that is
much larger than getting a hamburger at a
lunch counter.
MR. PEPPER: Nothing further.
Thank you, Jim.
THE COURT: Mr. Garrison.
CROSS-EXAMINATION
BY MR. GARRISON:
Q. Reverend Lawson, you and I have
talked previously. I have just a few
questions to ask you. You had mentioned
earlier, I believe, that Dr. King had several
threats on his life. Was this within close
proximity of the time of the assassination
that you are aware of?
A. The threats upon his life were
daily. The rumors in Memphis were rampant
about death threats to him. Afterwards I had
calls from people who told me, for example --
I won't name the businessman who had a woman
who was his housekeeper who said that while
she was serving him supper, they were talking
about the imminent assassination of Martin
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 443
Luther King in Memphis. This was just maybe
the week before the assassination.
Q. You weren't there the day of the
assassination -- I mean, you were not at the
location?
A. I was not at the motel at the time.
Q. Have you ever had any investigation
or that you have conducted that would
indicate as to where the shot may have come
from?
A. Oh, yes. I can't name them all, but
there were at least -- there were five or six
people on the grounds at the time that the
FBI and the local police never interrogated.
Jessie Jackson was on the ground floor. He
has never been interrogated.
Jim Orange was one of our field
directors. He claims that he saw a figure
and smoke in the brush outside -- this side
of Main Street. He has never been
interrogated.
There is a New York Times reporter
who was on the same floor of the balcony. He
has written this in his book now, that he has
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 444
never been interrogated. He saw smoke or a
figure in the brush above the motel (sic).
So there were a number of people who
were on the scene who are not to be found in
the Congressional record or in the official
police reports, but they were there.
MR. GARRISON: I believe that's
all I have. Thank you.
MR. PEPPER: Nothing further.
THE COURT: All right. You can
stand down, Reverend Lawson. We're going to
lunch. I know you don't want to remain this
the courtroom at this time.
(Jury out.)
(Lunch recess.)
THE COURT: All right. Bring
the jury in, please.
(Jury in.)
(Bench conference outside the
presence of the court reporter.)
THE COURT: All right. You may
call your next witness, Mr. Pepper.
MR. PEPPER: Thank you, Your
Honor.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 445
Plaintiffs call Maynard Stiles.
MAYNARD STILES
Having been first duly sworn, was examined
and testified as follows:
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:
Q. Good afternoon, Mr. Stiles.
A. Good afternoon, sir.
Q. Thank you very much for coming here
this afternoon.
A. You are welcome.
Q. Would you state your full name and
address for the record, please.
A. My name Maynard Stiles. I reside on
Highway 57 in Fayette County, Tennessee.
Q. And you are presently employed?
A. No. I'm retired.
Q. And how long have you been retired?
A. I retired in January of 1989.
Q. What did you do prior to your
retirement?
A. I served in various capacities of the
City of Memphis, including the director of
fire services, director of public works,
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 446
director of sanitation services, purchasing
agent for the city.
Q. You've been a long term public
servant in Memphis and Shelby County?
A. I was there for a few years, yes,
sir.
Q. Were you at one time an official with
the Department of Public works?
A. Well, I was director of public
works. Prior to that I had been
administrative assistant to the director of
public works, and sanitation at one time came
under public works, and I was in the
Sanitation Department at that time.
Q. I see. Did the Sanitation Department
come under public works in 1968?
A. Yes, it did.
Q. And what was your capacity in 1968?
A. You know, I'm not sure I can tell
what you the exact title was. It was either
a division superintendent or a district
superintendent, whichever was higher, within
Sanitation.
Q. So you were a senior official in the
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 447
Sanitation Department at that time?
A. I was over approximately one-third of
the city.
Q. What did your duties encompass in
that position?
A. Well, the collection of garbage was
primary, but there were various and sundry
other things, such as street cleaning, the
collection of trash, the operation of
landfills and various administrative duties.
Q. Right. Were there any sort of
cleanup duties connected with your office at
that time? Were you overlooking any of that
activity?
A. Well, we did cleanup on a continuing
basis. After the strike, everything was
combined -- or when the strike began
everything was combined and we worked out of
one operation, and one of my duties at that
time was liaison with the Memphis Police
Department, and it could encompass anything.
Q. Right. So you were a liaison officer
from the Sanitation Department to the Memphis
Police Department at that point in time?
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 448
A. At that point in time.
Q. All right. Who was the Memphis
police department officer or inspector who
was your counterpart or with whom you
liaised?
A. I believe that was Sam Evans.
Q. Inspector Sam Evans. Now, on the
morning of April 5th, 1968, the morning after
the assassination of Martin Luther King, did
Sam Evans call you early in the morning?
A. I received a call from Inspector
Evans on or about seven a.m. requesting
assistance in clearing brush and debris from
a vacant lot in the vicinity of the
assassination.
Q. If you would just cast your eyes over
here, Mr. Stiles, for a moment, this drawing
shows Mulberry Street and South Main Street,
and in between the two of course the fire
station, parking area and a rooming house,
and behind this rooming house a grassy or
brushy, woodsy kind of area. Was that --
would that be the area that Inspector Evans
requested that you clean up?
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 449
A. That appears to be the area that he
requested we send crews to assist in the
clean-up, yes.
Q. Right. And what did you do in
response to to that request?
A. I called another of the
superintendents in sanitation, Dutch Goodwin,
and he assembled a crew working under a
foreman, Willie Crawford. They went to that
site and under the direction of the police
department, whoever was in charge there,
proceeded with the cleanup in a slow,
methodical, meticulous manner.
Q. And about what time of day would they
have started that clean-up? Do you know?
A. Well, I can't tell you exactly. But
if I didn't get the call until after seven
and I called them immediately afterwards, by
the time they got crews together and got
there, it probably was no earlier than ten
a.m.
Q. Okay. So they started that morning,
as you call it, with a meticulous cleanup of
this entire area that was over grown, heavily
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 450
over grown with brush and bushes?
A. Correct.
Q. Did you yourself go by that scene to
see how it that cleanup was progressing at
any time?
A. I didn't go by to see how it was
progressing. I went by to see if I could
give them any assistance in any other way.
Because it wasn't up to any of us as to how
it was progressing. That was up to the
police department.
Q. Do you know how many men were
actually -- did you notice how many men were
actually involved in the cleanup over there
of the brushy area?
A. I'm afraid my thirty-five year old
memory is not quite that good.
Q. Would it have been more than two?
A. Yes, it would have been more than
two.
Q. Right. Okay. So there is no
question in your mind that that area, that
brushy area, was carefully, meticulously,
cleaned up on April 5th, starting on April
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 451
5th, the morning after the assassination?
A. That's correct.
MR. PEPPER: Thank you,
Mr. Stiles. No further questions.
CROSS-EXAMINATION
BY MR. GARRISON:
Q. Mr. Stiles, let me ask you
something. When you were there -- you were
there the day it was being cleaned up. Am I
correct, sir?
A. That's correct.
Q. Did you see anyone in that area other
than the Memphis public works personnel that
you noticed?
A. Well, representatives of the police
department.
Q. But most all city employees that you
see in that area that you recall?
A. If I'm not mistaken, I saw someone
taking pictures. Now, whether that
individual was a representative of the police
department or a civilian photographer, I
can't say.
MR. GARRISON: That's all.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 452
REDIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:
Q. Mr. Stiles, has any researcher or
book writer, particularly in recent times who
has written about this case, attempted to
interview you and take your story with
respect to this cleanup?
A. No.
Q. No one has?
A. No book writer. I've had contacts
from the Justice Department.
Q. Yes, of course. But no book writer
has tried to take your story and research it?
A. No.
MR. PEPPER: Nothing further,
Your Honor.
THE COURT: All right,
Mr. Stiles. You may stand down. You can
remain in the courtroom or you are free to
leave.
(Witness excused.)
THE COURT: Your next witness.
MR. PEPPER: Plaintiff's call
Olivia Catling to the stand, Your Honor.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 453
OLIVIA CATLING
Having been first duly sworn, was examined
and testified as follows:
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:
Q. Good afternoon, Ms. Catling. Thank
you very much for joining us this afternoon
and coming down.
Could you state your full name and
address for the record, please.
A. Olivia J. Catling, 375 Mulberry.
THE COURT: Spell your last
name, ma'am.
THE WITNESS: C A T L I N G.
THE COURT: Catling. Thank
you.
Q. (BY MR. PEPPER) Ms. Catling, I
believe you have carried some burdensome
information with you for over thirty-one
years. Is that right?
A. I do.
Q. You've come here this afternoon to
share it with us. Is that right?
A. I will.
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 454
Q. And have you ever told this
information to anyone else?
A. No, I haven't.
Q. Either inside or outside a court of
law?
A. Outside -- outside the court there
have been times I have.
Q. You have?
A. With the kids or whatever, husband,
whatever.
Q. Members of your family?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. Ms. Catling, could you tell us where
your house is on Mulberry Street?
A. My house is between Huling and Talbot
just off of Main.
Q. Just off Main?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. Where were you living in 1968, on
April 4th, 1968?
A. At 375 Mulberry.
Q. All right. Now --
MR. PEPPER: May I approach,
Your Honor?
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 455
THE COURT: Yes.
(Mr. Pepper approaches diagram on
easel.)
Q. (BY MR. PEPPER) Now, where is 375
Mulberry from here? This graph is cut off
right at Huling.
A. That's Huling.
Q. The other side of Huling?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. On which side of Huling?
A. Where I was standing or what?
Q. Which side of Mulberry was your
house?
A. That side.
Q. That side?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. The west side?
A. That's right.
Q. And where were you on the 4th of
April, 1968, at around six o'clock in the
afternoon?
A. It was just before six o'clock.
Q. Just before six o'clock. Where were
you at that time?
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 456
A. I was at home.
Q. You were at home. What did you hear
around that time?
A. The shot.
Q. You heard a shot?
A. I sure did.
Q. You heard it clearly?
A. Clearly.
Q. What did you do after you heard that
shot?
A. I broke and ran out of the house. I
ran to the corner of Huling and Mulberry.
Q. But did you do something at home
before you ran out?
A. I was cooking some chicken.
Q. That's all right. What did you do?
A. I turned it off.
Q. So you turned off the stove?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. Did you have any children about?
A. The kids was out front.
Q. They were out in front of the house?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. All right. What did you do with
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD (901) 529-1999 457
respect to the children?
A. We all ran down there.
Q. You all ran down there?
A. We ran. We didn't walk.
Q. You ran?
A. Because I said, oh my God, Dr. King
is at that hotel.
Q. Right.
MR. PEPPER: Your Honor --
Mr. Garrison, would you like to come around
and see the front of this?
MR. GARRISON: That's okay.
I've already seen it. I'll come around, if
necessary.
Q. (BY MR. PEPPER) So you ran down to
the corner of Huling --
A. Uh-huh.
Q. -- and Mulberry, which is right here?
A. Right.
Q. Did you cross the street or did you
stay on the north corner?
A. I stood there on the corner.
Q. You stood there on that corner. Why
did you stay on that corner? |