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Archival news narrator: Memo. To: S.A.C. Boston. From: the director, FBI. Subject: Counterintelligence program.

Goals: One, prevent the coalition of militant Black-nationalist groups. An effective coalition of Black-nationalist groups might be the first step toward a real Mau Mau in America. Two, prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify and electrify the militant Black-nationalist movement. Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, and Elijah Muhammad all aspire to this position. King could be a very real contender for this position.

Vann R. Newkirk II: Starting in 1956, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI ran a secret program to spy on so-called subversive movements in the U.S. It was named the Counter Intelligence Program, or COINTELPRO. Its true extent wasn’t known until years later, when a group of activists broke into an FBI office and mailed over 1,000 classified documents to journalists. Through all the major moments of the Black freedom struggle, the FBI listened. They watched. They sabotaged.

The program expanded during the mid-’60s, with the rise of Black militant groups, and the beginnings of uprisings in America’s ghettos.

Reporter: While ghetto problems deepen, the Black militants gather and the crowds at their meetings get bigger. Many of them will not speak to whites at all. They have given up on the white man’s world and are desperately determined to make a Black world totally separate, totally and proudly black.

Newkirk: To J. Edgar Hoover, the danger was in the potential for any Black leader to help spark a Black insurgency.

Reporter: The FBI had trouble distinguishing between nonviolent Blacks and militant revolutionaries. To the FBI, the whole movement appeared dangerous, particularly if one man could unify millions of American Blacks.

Newkirk: Hoover wasn’t alone in his belief. In fact, Black radical leaders also thought that major riots in 1967 in the Black ghettos in Newark and Detroit had revolutionary potential. Folks like Stokely Carmichael and the Panthers out West built their philosophies on the hope that a riot in a Black ghetto could become something more—that they could start a chain reaction to topple white supremacy in America. In 1968, SNCC Chairman H. Rap Brown said that this revolution was imminent.

H. Rap Brown: We stand on the eve of a Black revolution, brothers. Masses of our people are in the streets. They’re fighting tit for tat, tooth for tooth, an eye for an eye, and a life for a life. The rebellions that we see are merely dress rehearsals for the revolution that’s to come.

Newkirk: The FBI and COINTELPRO’s methods grew more and more extreme. In the late ’60s they moved to outright blackmail and disruption schemes. Even after King was killed, COINTELPRO continued to watch his friends and family and sow discord in their ranks.

The FBI was probably also watching Stokely Carmichael on the first night of riots. That night, April 4, Stokely and his watchers had been caught off guard by the fury of the streets.

The next day, April 5, would be different. Everybody assumed the riots were coming back. But just how they came back was the question. Could Black rage and grief be channeled and directed into revolution? Would they fizzle out on its own? Or would they be crushed by the state?

***

Newkirk: Part 3: “Black Messiah.”

***

Newkirk: By the morning of April 5, less than 24 hours after Dr. King was killed, the riots had already made their mark on D.C. Fires had consumed much of 14th Street, along with some other areas. People left behind burned buildings, abandoned cars, and debris, all still smoking.

That morning, tourists were supposed to come in by the thousands for the Cherry Blossom Festival. But they stayed away.

Most people who worked downtown stayed away too. What was left was an eerie quiet. The breath before the next plunge into chaos. Still, Frank Smith was trying his hardest to get back home from Mississippi.

Frank Smith: I flew back to Washington. I got to the National Airport, and I couldn’t—taxicab driver didn’t want to take me. He said, “I’m not going to Washington. That place is on fire.”

Newkirk: When he finally found a cab, the driver would only go as far as Connecticut Avenue. Frank had to walk a ways to his home in Adams Morgan. But he had to get there. His wife was there. She had been there during the first night of riots, and she was terrified.

Frank Smith: She was scared to go out the house, you know. And we talkin’ about people—she had been in Mississippi with me. She was in Philadelphia, Mississippi, when the kids were killed down there. And we had seen violence. But this was very different. This was, it was like chaos.

Newkirk: Frank had led protests and demonstrations across the country. He had been with SNCC since the beginning, and his work in Mississippi was regularly dangerous. He’d helped name the organization the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and dedicated himself to movement tactics. Even when things got rowdy, he was trained. He was used to each demonstration having a concrete set of objectives. But he just couldn’t get his arms around what had happened in D.C. It was emotional. There was no organization.

Frank Smith: There was no set of demands. There was no goals that we could see. There was no—it was just people just reacting. And, you know, any time you’re leading a demonstration, there’s always a chance it’ll get out of hand. There’s always a chance. And in this case, just what it looked like to me, was that it was out of hand.

Newkirk: But around the city, some people were trying to give shape to Black rage.

At Howard University, most students hadn’t gone out on the night of April 4. But the next morning, activists on campus tried to galvanize students who still didn’t really know what to do.

Tony Gittens: People were very, very surprised. They weren’t ready to do what they were doing over on 14th Street, start tearing the place up.

Newkirk: I visited Howard with Tony Gittens to see his old stomping grounds. We checked out the dorm where he and his friends were playing cards on the night King was killed. We walked past the green where his friends had tried to organize a rally the morning after. He says, that morning, the tension was building.

Gittens: You know, every place I went people were angry. It was unbelievable. Some women, the young ladies, were crying. That was the sentiment. Nobody was passive about it.

Newkirk: That morning, The Hilltop, the campus newspaper, released an essay saying basically that nonviolence was dead.

“Much of the argument that through nonviolent marching and civil disobedience the Black will be liberated has no doubt been totally erased from the minds of the Black people in this country. There is a sense of outrage that another Black man has been murdered, and he a spokesman for nonviolence.”

They pushed even further. The writers of the op-ed said that one of the lessons of King’s death might be that:

“Liberation calls for more than we have heretofore been willing to pay.”

It was a provocative statement to make just after an assassination. But it was aimed at their fellow students and faculty. People who they thought were happy to sit in the ivory tower while the world burned. Tony was ready for a fight.

Gittens: Nobody was going to mess with us that day. [Laughs.] No security guard, none of that. They weren’t going to mess with us. They knew better.

Newkirk: That same morning, the leaders of SNCC, also tried their best to provoke people into action. They had recently dropped the whole nonviolent thing, and changed their name to the Student National Coordinating Committee. They invited journalists to their headquarters.

Floyd McKissick: This press conference will be for only five minutes. As soon as the press conference is over, you gentlemen will not leave anything in here that you didn’t bring in here. Your pens, your cigarette butts—you take them with you. If you wasting the water, you have to clean it up.

Newkirk: The press conference had actually been planned before the assassination to speak out against the incarceration of the current chairman of SNCC, H. Rap Brown. Brown was accused of inciting a riot in Maryland the summer before.

McKissick: Right, here, immediately right, is Stokely Carmichael, who is staff here in Washington, D.C.

Stokely Carmichael: We were very upset that Reverend Brown had been in jail for 41 days. And Governor Agnew of Maryland still seems to persist with his nonsensical charges. Now, we want the brother out of jail next week when he comes to trial.

Newkirk: In the footage of the press conference, all the SNCC leaders are standing together behind a table full of microphones. The other SNCC guys are wearing all black. Stokely stands out. He’s tall. He’s commanding. He’s got sunglasses on, and a long jacket. Behind him there are two posters, one of Malcolm X and another of H. Rap Brown. But he starts talking about Martin Luther King.

Carmichael: When white America killed Dr. King last night, she opened the eyes for every Black man in this country. When white America got rid of Marcus Garvey, she did it and she said he was an extremist; he was crazy. When they got rid of Brother Malcolm X, they said he was preaching hate; he deserved what he got. But when they got rid of brother Martin Luther King, they had absolutely no reason to do so. He was the one man in our race who was trying to teach our people to have love, compassion, and mercy for what white people had done. When white America killed Dr. King last night, she declared war on us.

Newkirk: As far as the FBI’s potential Black messiahs went, Stokely was on the list right behind King. It was Stokely who had been out on the scene the previous night, when riots started. The media was already blaming him for fanning the flames. He gave voice to all the people who felt like this was more than just the assassination of a single person. King was supposed to be the last best hope for a reckoning without blood. Stokely promised retribution.

Carmichael: The rebellions that have been occurring around the cities of this country is just light stuff to what is about to happen. We have to retaliate for the death of our leaders. The execution of those deaths will not be in the courtrooms; they’re going to be in the streets of the United States of America.

Newkirk: Stokely was talking about the thing white people had been afraid of for generations: a race war.

Then he opened up for questions.

Reporter: Mr Carmichael, when you say the execution of those deaths will be not in a courtroom but the streets, are you going to be a little more specific about the course of action you expect?

Carmichael: I think that is quite explicit.

Reporter: You expect an organized rebellion?

Carmichael: I think it is quite explicit. We die every day. We die in Vietnam for the honkies. Why don’t we die at home for our people? Black people are not afraid to die. We die all the time. We die in your jails. We die in your ghettos. We die in your rat-infested homes. We die a thousand deaths every day. So we’re not afraid to die; today we’re going to die for our people.

Newkirk: The night before, on 14th and U, Stokely had been conflicted. He was there when the riots started, but he also tried to clear out businesses to avoid casualties. He warned young Black folks to stay away from police and tried to temper their fantasies about fighting the military with rocks and bricks. Now there were no more calls for caution. Like everything he did, some of this was for show, to shock people. But he was also speaking from the heart. It sure did seem like he thought this could be the revolution.

Reporter 2: Stokely, what do you think is ultimately leading to? A bloodbath in which nobody wins?

Carmichael: First, my name is Mr. Carmichael. And secondly, Black people will survive America.

Reporter 2: What accomplishments or objectives do you visualize from the retaliation? What do you think you’ll accomplish?

Carmichael: If a Black man can’t do nothing in this country, then we will stand up on our feet and die like men. If that’s our only act of manhood, then God damn it, we’re going to die. Tired of living on our stomachs.

Reporter 3: Do you fear for your life?

Carmichael: The hell with my life! You should fear for yours. I know I’m going to die. I know I’m gonna die. [Applause.]

***

Newkirk: Stokely’s speech immediately made the rounds on radio and television. White politicians and no small number of Black leaders condemned him. Even Sammy Davis Jr. came out to tell militants to try and keep the peace.

Sammy Davis Jr.: Now is the time for the militant leaders to say, “All right, baby; let’s hold ourselves. You’re angry; you’re mad, man—let’s hold it now and see if whitey’s going to come up with it.”

Newkirk: Stokely Carmichael had been waiting for years. He had been waiting since he crossed the bridge in Selma, since he inspired people in Mississippi with Black Power. He was tired of waiting. He was trying to reach others who he thought might be impatient too: young folks who gravitated to Black Power—kids like Theophus Brooks.

Theophus Brooks: We looked at it this way: Martin Luther King, we respected him but he was soft. We look at Malcolm X, Black Panthers, H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael—we looked at them like that was our heroes. Man we loved them. Martin Luther King, we looked at him as being a good person, a nice person, but he weak and he soft. You know, turn the other cheek and all that.

Newkirk: Theophus Brooks was a student at Cardozo High School, just a few blocks away from the epicenter of the riots in D.C. Before the assassination, he didn’t follow news about Jim Crow or voting rights or integration. He was too busy with running the streets, and chasing girls.

Brooks: First time I ever saw a gun, a girl put a derringer on me in the cafeteria because I was messing with another girl. And she found out and pulled a derringer on me. I was scared to death.

Newkirk: Also, football. He was a star safety for Cardozo High School.

Brooks: All of a sudden, in 11th grade—something clicked in my head. And not only did I go football crazy, but I turned into a vicious-type ballplayer. I don’t know what happened.

Newkirk: On the first night of riots, Theophus stayed home. A lot of his friends did. He still had to go to class in the morning. City officials hoped keeping schools open would keep kids off the streets. But it didn’t work.

Brooks: I was in the classroom at about 10, 11 o’clock in the day, and people ran in to say, “They rioting on 14th Street. Man, they stealin’ everything!”

Newkirk: By late morning, the students in Cardozo were out in the streets. Theophus was with them.

Brooks: It seemed like everybody broke out like it was recess. We broke out and went up to 14th Street.

Newkirk: What did you see when you got there?

Brooks: Maybe about 2,000 or 3,000 people. When I got up there, they had burned most everything down.

Dixon: Somebody hollered, “Get the white people; get the white people.” People started grabbing things, throwing at cars, trucks, at anybody that was driving was white.

Newkirk: Across town, on the east side of D.C., Vanessa Lawson Dixon was in the streets too. And she was angry. Her teacher used to go on and on about just how important King was. Her mother and grandmother loved King. And Vanessa was fed up with having to move to the projects and with how things were going in her life. So she chose to join the crowd.

Vanessa Dixon: And we participated. You know, I’m sorry to say I participated in that riot. I mean, I played a part in it.

Newkirk: In the Cardozo neighborhood, Theophus Brooks returned to the blocks that had burned just the night before. Many of the stores had already been cleaned out. But the students still wanted to do something.

Brooks: But when I got up there, a lot of stuff was gone. But then after that—it was maybe about 3:30, 4 o’clock—maybe 200 of us went to Cardozo. Now, if you know 13th Street at Cardozo, it’s a real hill going up.

Newkirk: Oh, yeah I know that hill.

Brooks: Okay, we were standing on each side of the hill throwing bricks at cars that looked like they had white people in it.

Newkirk: By the afternoon, Black neighborhoods in D.C. were back in full rebellion. The night before had all been unpredictable. It could’ve been a one-off thing. But the second night, April 5, was even more intense than the first. This would not be over soon.

Reporter: Tossing tear gas into the crowd. But that didn’t deter the Negroes … [shouting]

Reporter: … to see whether they could get a big radio–TV–record-player combination into a small, foreign-built car. It just wouldn’t fit.

Newkirk: Even in all the chaos, even as disturbances erupted in neighborhoods all across D.C., it was hard to imagine that this was the revolution that Stokely had promised. Theophus and his friends never got political. They were not being galvanized by a Black messiah—living or dead—to go to the White House or overthrow anybody. Theophus says they didn’t even really think much about King. Their response was more visceral. They stood on the street for hours, just throwing bricks. Because they could.

Brooks: And from 3:30 to about six, they must have broke about 100, 200 car windows.

Newkirk: He doesn’t think any of the drivers were seriously hurt, but still. The basic reality of the kids’ situation had been reversed. Police had always been untouchable. Across D.C., they were known for harassing and beating Black kids. But now the kids were throwing bricks at white folks’ cars and the police couldn’t do anything about it. It was exhilarating.

Brooks: They weren’t shooting anybody. It was like, Don’t do this; don’t do that. Stop, stop, stop this. You know, they wasn’t pulling out guns. And they arrested a few people, but it was just like a mob takeover. They took over and there weren’t nothing you could do about it.

Reporter 1: Aside from responding with tear gas, the officers generally ignored the bricks and bottles thrown at them. They knew that they were seriously understrength for any major outbreak of violence, and many of them were hoping for a call up of the National Guard or—what happened—the eventual deployment of Army troops.

Reporter 2: One policeman took off his gas mask, looked around, and asked if the National Guard had been called. “We need them,” he said. “We can’t hold this tonight. We’re losing.”

Newkirk: Frank Smith went out too. He thought that his duty as a SNCC veteran was to help keep people safe, or to organize them if he could. But he was skeptical that what he was seeing could turn into anything more.

Frank Smith: I don’t think that I ever thought this might be the revolution.

Newkirk: He was worried. The police were one thing, but he was afraid that people were going to get themselves hurt or killed when the military came.

Frank Smith: They got themselves in a position that no revolutionary army ever wants to be in, which is that it’s now facing down with an enemy with much more resources and much more gun power.

***

Scott Peters (journalist): Mayor Walter Washington has clamped a 5:30 p.m. curfew on the city. The presidential executive order has brought four companies of soldiers into the city. One is deployed around the downtown area; that includes the White House. Another is centered around the Capitol Hill. The other two are in the northwest section of the city. Additional soldiers are standing by for duty if needed. The president signed the order at the request of city officials.

Newkirk: As night fell and the hours went on, more and more students like Theophus Brooks poured into the streets. Protestors reignited the fires from the previous night and set new buildings ablaze.

Peters: Scott Peters, United Press International, the White House. President Johnson has ordered about 500 federal troops into Washington, D.C., in order to restore law to the city wracked by fires and looting.

Newkirk: The flames radiated out from the ghettos. They spread to just a few blocks away from the White House.

Peters: Two companies of soldiers are deployed in the worst-troubled area. One is near Capitol Hill, the fourth in the downtown area, which includes the White House.

Smoke from fires in downtown Washington is visible here at the White House. Police cars and ambulances are moving up and down the streets, the streets themselves jammed with traffic, the sidewalks crawling with people, some waiting for buses or trying to find taxis to go home. Some are spectators; some are looters. The White House gates are closed and White House policemen stand behind them. Normal routine has come to a halt in this part of the city. A group of Negro youths passed the White House gates a few minutes ago, carrying what looked to be transistor radios and other small appliances. They taunted White House police at the gates, one yelling “Shoot me! Shoot me!” while his companions laughed.

Newkirk: The police were outnumbered. Across the United States, fires burned in most big cities. A lot of the people on the streets were like Theophus Brooks and Vanessa Lawson Dixon: young folks who were just out there, because they could be. But politicians worried that Stokely’s vision might be coming true, that riots might be sustained, organized, even revolutionary. Governors mobilized state National Guards and started calling the White House for military assistance.

John Dennis (journalist): This is John Dennis in Boston for United Press International. Several thousand Massachusetts National Guardsmen are on the alert here in the Boston area tonight …

Dean Bailey (journalist): Dean Baily, United Press International, Chicago. Mayor Daley, in conjunction with his superintendent of police, was asking that the National Guard be put on standby alert …

Dennis: … Lieutenant Governor Francis Sargent, says the move “is a precautionary measure.”

Bailey: … Acting Illinois Governor Sam Shapiro acceded to the request, and 6,000 Guardsmen are assembling at armories. They may be needed on the streets. Fires have broken out. There has been shooting; there has been looting. Most of the trouble is concentrated on the West Side, a predominantly Negro area. All Chicago firemen are on duty.

***

Newkirk: By the time Vanessa Lawson Dixon got back inside, it was dark. She heard her mother talking on the phone to her brother Vincent. He went to high school out by his grandmother’s house off H Street. They were rioting there too. People were breaking into the stores in the business district, including the department store where Vanessa’s family shopped.

Vanessa Dixon: He left and went looting. Him and his friends went out. Morton’s was one of the places he went. He had other stuff too, so he called my mom and told her, “I got you three boxes, the right size and the right color.”

Newkirk: He was proud. He and Vanessa had seen their mother struggling. They’d tried to give her their own money to buy stockings when she could only afford a pair or two. And now Vincent had three boxes, the right size and color. Their mom couldn’t even be that mad.

Dixon: And she’s laughing and crying at the same time and telling him, “Do not leave back out that house, you hear me? Do not leave back out that house.”

Newkirk: But then, a little while later, Vanessa’s grandma called to say that Vincent had left again. That he was back out on the streets.

Dixon: My grandmother called and said he wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the house. And the kids are running around like crazy.

Newkirk: Vanessa’s mother was worried. She lashed out. She put the responsibility on Vincent’s older brother Glen to find him.

Dixon: She told him, “Go get your brother.” And he left; he left back out.

Newkirk: In darkness, as chaos was spreading, Glen tried to make it six miles—over to 8th and H Streets, the neighborhood where their grandmother lived. He was trying to do what his mother told him: Don’t come home without Vincent.

Dixon: And he’s looking everywhere for him. And, you know, and the National Guard’s coming out now and they want everybody off the streets.

Newkirk: By the end of the night, nobody had heard from Vincent.

Dixon: And I just remember, you know, it’s just like hours and hours and hours. He didn’t ever come home.

Newkirk: Vanessa often talks about how she and Vincent had this, like, spiritual or metaphysical connection. She says she could feel how he was feeling, even when they weren’t together. And on that night, she felt … dread.

Dixon: Let me tell you, his heart was beating so fast. His heart was beating so fast. My brother’s heart was beating so fast. I’m sitting at home calm, and I’m feeling my heart is racing. I said, you know, something is wrong. Something is wrong. I kept telling my mother, something is wrong.

Newkirk: They all wanted to go back out and look. To keep searching until they found Vincent or could find out what had happened to him. But by then, troops from the Army’s 82nd Airborne division had been fully mobilized. That evening, their boots marched and their trucks rolled down D.C. streets—the streets where Vincent and Vanessa raked leaves, where Theophus played football, where Tony reported for his college paper. Army units, held back in reserve from Vietnam, swept across the district using tear gas, isolating all those Black neighborhoods from one another. The occupation of the city was beginning.

Stokely Carmichael demands “Black Power”

At a speech during the “March Against Fear” in Mississippi, on June 16, 1966, Carmichael uses the phrase Black Power.

The FBI sets counterintelligence goals

A month before King’s assassination, on March 4, 1968, the FBI, led by J. Edgar Hoover, issues a memo cautioning against allowing King to become a “messiah.”

Howard University students react to King’s assassination

The morning after King’s assassination, D.C. students walk out of class en masse. Howard University’s newspaper, The Hilltop, publishes an editorial criticizing nonviolence as a path to liberation.

Child 1: Mmm, yes.

Journalist: What did you do?

Child 1: I did a little looting, but I gave it back.

Journalist: You gave it back?

Child 1: Yes, but I think it’s all right to loot some people if they’re gonna stay open. But to burn it down, no. I caught a man in a Hahn’s shoe store trying to burn that down, and I put it out.

Journalist: You put out the fire?

Child 1: Yes, sir.

Journalist: What do you think? Were you involved in any of this looting?

Child 2: Yes, sir.

Journalist: What did you take?

Child 2: Oh, a safe and a couple—

Journalist: You took a safe?

Child 2: As a little safe that you put money in, and a couple more stuff. And I think they should have had the riot, but they shouldn’t have—

Journalist: Why should they have had the riot, young fella?

Child 2: Since Martin Luther King got shot, everybody seemed like they wanted to riot. I say that. I’m not saying that they should have had it, but if they did have the riot, they shouldn’t have burned.

Vann R. Newkirk II: The burning of Washington city, in 1814, by the British felt to many like the end of an era, the beginning of a new one. That sense of unease motivated our national anthem, the “Star Spangled Banner.” After fleeing Washington and seeing American troops then beat back the British in Baltimore, Francis Scott Key felt the triumph of the dawn’s early light.

One hundred and fifty-four years later, D.C. burned again. In the middle of it all, people tried to step back and think about what it meant for this country, this democracy. They tried to find meaning in the chaos of those spring nights. There were big, serious news specials and lofty speeches in the halls of the Capitol. But the recollections that interest me most come from a group of children at the heart of the riots. In the Cardozo district, primary and junior-high-school teachers started asking their students what they thought and documenting their replies.

Teacher: Here’s an interesting comment from another fifth grader, who is talking about Martin Luther King: “His dream wasn’t like most dreams. It wasn’t just him in the dream. He wanted everybody in his dreams. He wanted to take us to the promised land with him. Now he has left for the promised land, and we have to follow.”

Newkirk: Kids as young as 6 and 7 responded to prompts from their teachers about what they had witnessed in the streets, through drawings, poetry, through essays. Reporters from ABC were so captivated by this experiment that they came to see it.

Teacher: When we ask children the saddest thing that they saw, one child in the first grade responded that he was very sad when he saw three Negro boys beat up a white man and stab him. And then we asked also, “What was the happiest thing that you saw?” And children said, “People helping each other, giving them food and things of this type.”

Newkirk: The drawings are vivid and incredibly raw. There’s one drawing of a grocery store, a Safeway, where people are lined up outside, carrying food away. One woman has a speech bubble that says, “I got a lot of meat.” A guy answers her and says, “Let’s get more meat.” Across the street there’s a police car with its own speech bubble: “I will shoot tear gas.”

Teacher: I really think the children did a better job with the drawing of pictures. Because of the area where these children lived, many of them could see the flames coming from their houses, or they lived nearby where things were burning.

Newkirk: There are drawings of the first rocks being thrown at the Peoples Drug Store, images of soldiers, crayon pictures of fires. There are sketches of the soul brother signs people put in their windows, like lamb’s blood marking homes during Passover. One of the most haunting pictures is a pen drawing of the G. C. Murphy’s store on 14th and Irving. It shows the store burned and collapsing. There’s a body inside, trapped under the rubble. The newspapers say that two teenage Black boys died there in the fire. One was never identified. There’s a Bed Bath & Beyond there now.

Some teachers asked their kids a simple question: How did they feel? A few said they just wanted to be in clean, safe neighborhoods. Some said they were still sad, or still angry, or just trying to hold on to King’s message of nonviolence. Some hated the looting; some defended it. The answer that sticks with me is from one student who didn’t care about any of that. They wrote, “Right now I would like to forget about Black Power, soul, and all the burning of stores. I would like to forget about 14th Street.”

***

Journalist: Late last night, Washington’s deputy mayor, Thomas Fletcher, said that the city was so quiet that it's eerie, like a science-fiction movie. This morning, too, is quiet, sunny, cool. The jonquils blooming, a fresh breeze scattering the blossoms of cherry and mock orange and dogwood. But unlike other crisp spring mornings, soldiers are walking post up and down the avenues and streets, walking in pairs along F. One walks alone at the intersection of 14th and Pennsylvania Avenue. But there are 24 soldiers to the block …

Newkirk: In Black D.C., April 7 felt like a time for forgetting, if just for a moment. People were cleaning up shops and homes, sweeping glass and bricks and charred wood from the streets. Church bells rang as people walked to services to lay down their branches for Palm Sunday.

Journalist: Normally, this would be a special day for churchgoing, Palm Sunday. Today, there was another reason: a national day of mourning for Martin Luther King.

Newkirk: Some of the shoes that crunched on sidewalks were nicer than usual. There were brand-new stockings with no runs, dresses and sweaters that fit, with no patches. If you squinted and ignored the soldiers, maybe you could believe this was just like any other holiday. But in pretty much every church in America that Sunday, the sermons were a little different.

Preacher 1: Oh, Heavenly Father, be mindful of the soul of Dr. Martin Luther King, who sacrificed his life for the sanctification of thy holy name.

Preacher 2: Martin Luther King’s death deprives America of one of its outstanding spiritual leaders.

Preacher 3: Are we satisfied to pass along the poverty as we go along our palm march? Or do we want to march down the road of prosperity for all men?

Ralph David Abernathy: They thought that they could kill our movement by killing you, Martin. But, Martin, I want you to know that Black people love you.

Newkirk: In Atlanta, at West Hunter Street Baptist Church, Reverend Ralph David Abernathy gave a sermon directly addressed to his old friend. But it was also aimed at what was going on in places like D.C. He tried to reconcile what had happened on the streets with the nonviolent philosophy he still believed in.

Abernathy: It may seem that they are denying our nonviolence. But they are acting out their frustration. Poor people have had a hard time during these difficult days.

Newkirk: Palm Sunday in the church is supposed to symbolize the ultimate victory of Jesus over the material world, and to foreshadow his role as the spiritual conqueror of sin. In his sermon, Abernathy recast King as redeemer—conqueror of the sin of racism.

Abernathy: What we know, Martin, because we love people, is that after the bidding of frustration, there will be the need for reconciliation.

Crowd: Mm, hmm.

Abernathy: There you will be invisible, but real. Black and white will need you to take them from their shame and reconcile them into you and onto our master, Jesus Christ.

Newkirk: If there would be any reconciliation in D.C., its time was due. It wouldn’t just be a reconciliation between Black and white, but between two visions of what the city was. D.C. was supposed to be a model city for its thriving Black middle class. It was a city that was geographically in the South but seemed to rise above Jim Crow. There were Black doctors and Black lawyers and even a Black mayor (even though he wasn’t elected). For many Black people, life in D.C. had seemed like a safe haven, a bubble. But now, just like the kids in Cardozo schools, people in D.C. were forced to wake up from their dreams.

***

Newkirk: Part 6: “Kingdom.”

***

Roland Smith: My father, my grandfather, and my great-grandfather were born in the district. Actually, I’m a fourth-generation Washingtonian.

Newkirk: Wow. Fourth generation. I don’t meet a whole lot of those.

Smith: Yeah. It’s rare.

Newkirk: What neighborhood?

Smith: Well, we started off in northeast—far northeast—and then northwest. I went to Calvin Coolidge High School.

Newkirk: When I talk to old-school Washingtonians, they have a way of talking about “old D.C.,” before the riots, about what was lost in the fires. Roland Smith was born in D.C., and his family roots there go way back. Family legend has it that they moved to the city from a plantation in northern Virginia, but nobody really knows. The point is, Roland is D.C.

Smith: I think about D.C. back then as a sleepy southern town.

Newkirk: He’s got classic memories of just riding around D.C. on his bike as a kid. It’s never been a really big city, but it felt smaller then. There were no blocks dedicated to lobbyist offices, fewer condos, less traffic. Outside of government buildings, most of the town was residential. Roland was born in one of the first public-housing developments for Black people in all of Washington.

Smith: And that was at a public-housing unit, Langston Terrace Dwellings in northeast D.C., right on Benning Road.

Newkirk: Roland’s family was built on a foundation of civil service that was really only possible in D.C. His grandfather was a messenger on Capitol Hill who also tended bar sometimes for Hill staff. Roland’s mother was a government secretary. His father served in World War II, and as a disabled veteran, worked three jobs to save up enough money to buy a house.

Smith: It was a big deal in our family because not very—most of our family rented their houses or rented their apartments. They didn’t own.

Newkirk: For the family, it was a step up into a life they’d always dreamed of. The house became a way station for family members from all different sorts of situations. It was the kind of pathway that lots of Black families with deep roots wanted to follow. Taquiena Boston’s family was one of those.

Taquiena Boston: My mother grew up in southwest, which they refer to as “Old Southwest.” That was a neighborhood where people were in and out of each other’s houses. Your door was kept unlocked.

Newkirk: Like Roland, Taquiena also grew up in northeast, in apartments in Brentwood. Her family didn’t really have money. Her dad drove trash trucks. But still, her parents had plans for their kids. Taquiena’s mom took her and her younger sister to go get library cards as soon as they could read. They learned nursery rhymes. They read The Wizard of Oz.

Boston: My dad brought home some Encyclopedia Britannicas that were going to be discarded. They all had the front covers taken off, but he brought them home for me to have a set of encyclopedias.

Newkirk: Taquiena’s family didn’t live too far from the H Street Corridor, where Vanessa Lawson and her brother Vincent were born, the area where they started their first hustles raking leaves and carrying groceries.

Vanessa Dixon: Oh, my God. It was wonderful. I wish I could have raised my kids or my grandkids—they could have been raised in a neighborhood like I was. Everybody knew everybody’s name. Everybody knew everybody’s business. Everybody watched each other’s kids.

Newkirk: Vanessa can remember the details like it was yesterday. Before her parents split, they lived off H Street. They were behind the strip of Black businesses and shops. There were neat rows of breadbox houses with green lawns. Everybody went and worshiped together on Sundays, in a church right on the block.

Dixon: They had a basket full of musical instruments and you could grab what you wanted when you came in the church. And you knew, though, when you went in there, what was expected of you. Okay? So no horseplaying and none of that kind of stuff. And I got to say, everybody respected that little church.

Newkirk: You are painting such an amazing picture of life. I feel like I can put it all in my head right now. I feel like I’m there.

Dixon: I get chills talking to you every time I do. It’s just so surreal, you know? It was a good place, a good time in my life.

Newkirk: Vanessa’s parents came up from rural Virginia before she was born. They left behind a state where poll taxes were still used to keep Black folks from voting. They were drawn towards a city where Black theaters played Black movies on U Street; where families like Roland Smith’s could own houses in neighborhoods full of other Black homeowners; where maybe, just maybe, they could have the lives America promised its citizens. They were part of a wave of Black people that also included the parents of Theophus Brooks. His folks arrived in D.C. from North Carolina, before he was born.

Theophus Brooks: My mother’s from Goldsboro.

Newkirk: Goldsboro!

Brooks: My father’s from Hertford.

Newkirk: Oh yeah. I’m from North Carolina.

Brooks: Yeah, yeah. I got a lot of my cousins down there. Matter of fact, my uncle, my father’s brother, had 10 girls, no boys—10!

Newkirk: For Theophus, North Carolina might as well have been a world away. He lived in Cardozo, the Black enclave within the Black metropolis.

Newkirk: What was the city like back then?

Brooks: Oh, man, it was great. They had respectful families. You can almost leave your doors open because your neighbors could knock on the door and come on in. You know, a lot of kids ate breakfast and dinner at my house. I went over to their house. We respect everybody’s parents.

The ’60s to me, it was the best time because, in D.C., we didn’t have no racial problems. Never heard anybody call me a [N-word] because you didn’t have that in D.C.

Newkirk: It was all Black folks.

Brooks: Yeah, it was mostly Black.

Newkirk: With Theophus, it’s the same story as Roland and Taquiena and Vanessa. It’s like they’re describing a Black fairy tale. And in all of those tales, you don’t hear much about the bogeyman of Jim Crow.

Brooks: We livin’ in D.C.; we had all the rights. I mean, we didn’t think about being treated nasty because, you know, when you in this environment, you don’t think about that. I’m 73 and I’ve been in D.C. all my life. I never experienced racism in D.C.

Boston: My mother said she’d never, never have grown up feeling bad about being Black. She felt worse about being what she called “low-class.” Of course, they didn’t live around white people, right. So maybe that was why.

Roland Smith: I think that we were kind of insulated to some extent from some of that, early on.

Newkirk: For Theophus Brooks, Roland Smith, Taquiena Boston, and Vanessa Lawson, this was D.C., Black D.C. It’s what so many parents and grandparents had come to the city for, what people were still taking trains and buses to the city for: a safe haven.

Still, when the March on Washington came to town in 1963, a lot of Black Washingtonians were interested in what the speakers had to say about integration, jobs, and freedom. Roland Smith was a teenager then. He wanted to go, but his mother was afraid there would be violence. He snuck out anyways.

Roland Smith: I went to the March on Washington. So I was there. I was there listening to the stories of the marchers and what they had sacrificed to get there.

It was surreal. There were a lot of people, but there wasn’t a lot of noise. There was a reverence about the whole process. It seems to me there was some singing, and I just remember that this was something special. But I didn’t fully understand the implications.

Newkirk: You didn’t have a sense of sort of being in this historical moment?

Smith: Yeah, I think I did. I felt that more as we saw the news, you know, kind of post-march and how it was treated. And I was thinking I was just glad I was there. It was hot, though. It was. [Laughs.] It was a very hot Washington summer day. [Laughs.]

Newkirk II: When did your mother find out you were gone?

Smith: When I got home [Laughs.] later that evening. [Laughs.]

Newkirk: About 10 percent of the marchers in ’63 were native Washingtonians like Roland. It was a moment of pride for them—hosting, supporting, and marching. But for many residents, especially younger people, the march also helped highlight the truth about the D.C. fairy tale—the apparent freedom and prosperity they had, had limits.

March on Washington speaker: Brother John Lewis. [Applause.]

Newkirk: At the march, civil-rights hero John Lewis stepped up to the podium and started talking about voter disenfranchisement.

John Lewis: One man, one vote. It is the democratic cry. It is ours too. It must be ours. [Applause.]

Newkirk: One man, one vote. He was talking about the Deep South. But he was also speaking in a majority-Black city that didn’t even elect its own leaders and had no representation in Congress. There was no home rule. D.C. was controlled by a committee in the House that was full of segregationists. Washingtonians had just barely gotten the right to vote for president. For Roland and some others like him, the contradiction was glaring. How could D.C. be the Black metropolis if Black people couldn’t even govern themselves?

Roland Smith: You know, you think about things like the March on Washington and the role that that played with all the people descending upon the district. And I think, one of the issues for the district was not being able to vote. So, that was, home rule, was a big issue. And so I think that fomented some of the discontent.

Newkirk: As they grew into adolescence, Roland, Taquiena, Vanessa, and Theophus saw these contradictions more clearly. They were born in a city that had once been tightly segregated, but while they were all still kids, white folks started leaving by the thousands. They took their tax dollars and resources with them. The money moved to suburbs in Virginia and Maryland, where Black kids from D.C. were most definitely not welcome.

Taquiena Boston saw her mother’s old neighborhood paved over, by “urban renewal.”

Theophus Brooks learned to stay away from certain parts of Maryland.

For Black families like Vanessa’s, it became easier to fall down the ladder than to climb. When her parents got divorced and the kids had to move with their mother to the projects, her brother Vincent was angry about the changes.

Vanessa Dixon: My uncles and stuff came, and they packed us up and we moved. And when we got to where it was, my brother said, “All these places look alike. How are we going to know which house is ours?” kind of thing, you know. And he was the smart one. And the thing is, when we got over there and moved in, once he started learning the reality of this move, and that our new residence is in the projects—you know, the family decline—it’s like, he blamed it on my dad. So he was mad at him for most of the time after that.

Newkirk: The Lawson family found out that the paradise of Black D.C. was more of a limbo. The Black middle class was still thriving and glamorous but grew more distant from working-class spaces. The rise of television made it impossible to miss what was happening in the Deep South, and for some young Black Washingtonians, it started to shine a light on continued segregation in their own city. But the intense poverty of the ghettos was more like what was happening up north. Roland Smith says watching the riots there, in ’66 and ’67, was like holding up a mirror.

Roland Smith: Hearing about the unrest and the riots and the things going on in the South, and even in Detroit, I mean, you think about all those things that were going on back in the ’60s—early ’60s—and those were all kind of swirling in the mindset of folks.

Newkirk: What’s your family think about those? I had a big argument over the last weekend with some people who were more “don’t rock the boat” versus people who were behind it.

Smith: Oh, yeah. We had that. I mean, there was a lot of that. And I think that the divide actually started to break along generational lines.

Newkirk: D.C.’s ghettoes never did join northern cities in riots in the mid-’60s. It’s possible that the old mystique of the Black middle class and the magic of the fairy tale kept the city in place, kept hope in place, even in the teeth of poverty. That’s why King chose the city when he announced his Poor People’s Campaign. It had been planned to kick off in late April of 1968.

Reporter: There are large Negro neighborhoods here in Washington, like any major city. In fact, this is the only major city in the nation with a Negro majority, and it has a Negro mayor. There are four sections, and there are Negro middle-class sections. Washington, in many senses, is the middle-class Negro capital of the world.

Newkirk: The idea was to use the vibrant, Black-middle-class institutions as an organizing base for highlighting poverty on the doorstep of the nation’s capital. To do that nonviolently, King and the SCLC had wanted to harness whatever spirit of reconciliation had kept the city together.

But as the church bells rang after Palm Sunday services, the world began to spin again. Parishioners went back to ghettos, business districts, middle-class neighborhoods that had been burned. The fairy tale was over.

***

Newkirk: Just after the assassination, John Burl Smith had been crushed. He and other leaders of the Memphis Invaders had tried to bring Black Power organizing to the sanitation workers’ strike. They clashed with the establishment civil-rights leaders, but after he and his co-leader, Charles Cabbage, met with King in his motel room, they walked away thinking that Martin Luther King had taken them seriously. John believed it was the beginning of something special.

John Burl Smith: When we left the room, Charles and I was feeling really great, man. We had just become a part of the coalition of the No. 1 Black leader in the country, you know? That to me was as good as it gets. And when we get home, and the announcement that he’s been assassinated, it’s like everything’s fallen apart.

Newkirk: The Invaders’ last interaction with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference had been back at the demonstration on March 28, which turned into a riot. King had called the meeting partly to get the Invaders under his chain of command. And he let the media know that he would be working with them.

Reporter: One of the ironies that Dr. King was killed here, is that his last few days were spent trying to negotiate with the militants in Memphis and elsewhere, hoping to find some agreement, some way that they could all work together …

Newkirk: But other people in the SCLC had not endorsed that plan. They didn’t like or trust the Invaders. John says that he had gone into hiding because he thought SCLC members believed he might have been working to set King up.

Burl Smith: There were actually people in SCLC—I’m not going to give any names, but they spent, oh, the next month or some saying that we were a part of the assassination, that we had set Dr. King up to getting him down to the Lorraine.

Newkirk: John didn’t trust the SCLC, either. He thought for sure that they would just hang the sanitation workers out to dry, or would force them to settle with Memphis Mayor Henry Loeb.

Burl Smith: Oh, I figured that Loeb would probably win and that the strike was probably over, because the people left in charge were not people committed to the workers.

Newkirk: In his final address, the “Mountaintop” speech, King had promised to come back to lead another march in Memphis. It was a firm commitment that his involvement in the strike wouldn’t just be a cameo or a detour, but a central piece of his growing Poor People’s Campaign. John didn’t believe the new SCLC leader, Ralph David Abernathy, or King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, would keep that promise. But then he heard the SCLC announce that they were coming back to Memphis.

Ralph David Abernathy: We will conduct our march in support of the sanitation workers here in Memphis as scheduled on Monday, April the 8th. It will be a silent march in his memory. We will resume work on his Poor People’s Campaign in Washington in the hopes that this nation and its Congress will legislate the necessary economic reforms to put an end to poverty in this nation.

Newkirk: Like always, the organizers relied on local groups and volunteers to be marshals for the march, to move people along and keep order. The marshals would be especially important this go-around, after the disaster of the last march. John says, the SCLC didn’t reach out to the Invaders for this role, but he and his friends showed up anyways.

Burl Smith: Nobody ever reached out to us and said, We would like you to do this. Be there. But because of our promise to Dr. King, we did what we promised, which was to be marshals.

Newkirk: The hope was that the shock of King’s death would push the Memphis mayor to give in quickly. But that morning, the marchers got bad news.

Art McAloon (journalist): At the center of today’s parade and last week’s tragic events: the garbage workers’ strike. They broke off negotiations at 6 o’clock this morning with no settlement in sight. The demonstration was quiet …

Newkirk: Still, even though the sanitation workers were no closer to getting a deal, the march was important. Civil-rights organizations could keep public pressure on Mayor Loeb and could use the national spotlight on Memphis after the assassination to really bring the heat. And now, the people marching weren’t just Memphians and civil-rights activists. Thousands of people flew in from around the country to take part.

Percy Sutton (public figure): I’m absolutely fascinated by the size of the crowd. I didn’t expect a crowd this large in Memphis. Are most of these people from Memphis, or have many of them come from other parts of the country?

Robert Richards (journalist): I understand, sir, that about 6,000 have come from out of town.

Sutton: I think that’s beautiful. I think it shows the feeling throughout the country of the need for unity and accomplishment. I’m very happy to see this.

Newkirk: The marchers set out. Ralph David Abernathy and Coretta Scott King led, with three of her children walking alongside her and Harry Belafonte.

Art McAloon: It’s a gray, overcast day here in Memphis, as thousands of the city’s Negroes gather to march in the interrupted sanitation men’s demonstration. At the head of the line, with Mrs. Martin Luther King, will be Reverend Ralph Abernathy, Dr. King’s successor. Between the two, there will be an empty space, symbolizing the absence of Dr. King. March officials estimate as many as 40,000 …

Newkirk: They wore sharp suits and hats and overcoats in the cold rain. They moved quietly down the street, no chants or slogans or singing. The march was supposed to be a rejection of the riots gripping over 100 cities. It was also supposed to be a repudiation of the last march in Memphis, where John’s group had played a role in the chaos. But here he was, serving as a marshal, guiding the march and keeping it together.

John Burl Smith: We did what we could to keep the march moving and orderly and that kind of thing. But—

Newkirk: So you felt like you were upholding the promise?

Burl Smith: Yes.

Newkirk: Did anybody look at you sideways for showing up?

Burl Smith: No, no. I think most people understood. And they were—I mean, the Invaders were supported very well in Memphis. Young people were, felt, very heroic in terms of the invaders.

Newkirk: Journalists followed the entire march, pulling aside people and asking them questions with somewhat obvious answers.

Reporter: Did it have any personal meaning to you?

Man: Did it have a personal feeling to me? Sure. I always have a personal feeling, because I am a Negro. It is something maybe you don’t understand by being white.

Newkirk: Watching the footage of the march, there aren’t really a whole lot of white participants. But the Black people who showed up didn’t care. This march was for them, by them.

Reporter: Were you disappointed at the fact that the turnout of the white community was relatively small? I didn’t see too many whites marching.

Woman: Today, no, not really. I wasn’t disappointed at all. Because that’s something, here in Memphis that is not a disappointment to us.

Reporter: You didn’t expect it?

Woman: I guess not.

Newkirk: The march stopped in front of the pavilion by city hall. Then the leaders got up to speak. Ralph David Abernathy was the new leader and face of the SCLC, but he wasn’t the main draw this Monday morning.

Corretta Scott King: I was impelled to come.

Newkirk: Coretta Scott King had actually been criticized for deciding to come to the march. For deciding to be in the movement, instead of publicly grieving and caring for her children.

Scott King: Three of our four children are here today, and they came because they wanted to come too. [Applause.] And I want you to know that in spite of the times that he had to be away, his family, his children knew their daddy loved them, and the time that he spent with them was well spent.

Newkirk: Coretta Scott King came to clearly repeat King’s demands. They weren’t just the civil-rights laws that had already been passed or the new housing bill that President Johnson was rushing to pass. King was calling for transformation, for real economic change for workers and the poor.

Scott King: Every man deserves a right to a job or an income so that he can pursue liberty, life, and happiness. [Applause.] Our great nation, as he often said, has the resources. But his question was: Do we have the will? [Applause.]

Newkirk: Just like Abernathy did on Palm Sunday, Coretta Scott King tied her husband’s life, death, and legacy to the celebration of Holy Week. He might not be resurrected in flesh, but her hope was that she could call on America to revive the policy he’d fought for.

Scott King: Somehow I hope in this resurrection experience, the will will be created within the hearts and minds, and the souls and spirits, of those who have the power to make these changes come about. [Applause.]

Newkirk: The march ended without any drama. Marshals like John Burl Smith guided people off the streets, and Abernathy and the King family traveled back to Atlanta to prepare for the funeral. Riots in many cities still blazed. But it all felt like one phase of grief had transitioned to another. It was time to reckon with how the assassination and the riots had changed Black America, how they had changed all of America. John was left wondering what might have been.

John Burl Smith: Had he been able to do what he was planning to do, we would be looking at a different America.

Newkirk: To John, that new America would have been achieved by bridging the gap between nonviolence and self-defense, between the old guard and the militants. Perhaps in the silent march, as Invaders walked in their military jackets beside the SCLC in their suits, he saw a glimmer of it.

Burl Smith: Black Power would have been able to show that we could work with Dr. King, we could work with nonviolence, and we could actually be nonviolent, but we were definitely not going to be submissive and passive.

Newkirk: John never got to see that America. Nobody did. The next day, the nation would lay King to rest. All the talk in the movement and in Washington was of how they would keep his dream alive, how they could still overcome. But John worried that the dream might be buried with the man.

Taquiena Boston

a 13-year-old from Washington, D.C., receives a diary from her mother for Christmas in 1967. She begins journaling about her life, and includes her observations about King’s assassination and the days that followed.

Roland Smith

a 22-year-old student at Bowie State, in Maryland, is arrested the day of King’s assassination while leading student protesters at the Maryland capitol.

John Burl Smith

One day before King’s funeral, on April 8, John Burl Smith serves as a marshal for a silent march held in King’s memory in Memphis, Tennessee.