In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens (18 page)

Coretta's voice in conversation is quite different from the way it sounds when she gives speeches. It is softer and not as flatly Southern. When she talks she seems very calm and sure, though not relaxed, and she is cautious and careful that her precise meaning is expressed and understood. I have the feeling that she is far more fragile than she seems and the oddly eerie suggestion enters my head that the Coretta I am speaking with is not at all the one her children and family know. It strikes me that perhaps the reaction to overwhelming publicity must be a vigilant guarding of the private person. I try hard not to stare while Coretta talks, but I find I can't help it. I would have stared at Mary McLeod Bethune the same way. Coretta has changed a lot since 1962 but she continues to believe in and carry on her husband's work along with her own. I am trying to see where so much strength is coming from.

She leans back in her camel-colored swivel chair underneath the large oil portrait of her husband and pauses briefly to touch one of the many piles of correspondence on her desk. She begins at a mutual point of reference: the day we first met, nearly ten years ago. “I was on my way then,” she recalls, “to the Seventeen-Nation Disarmament Conference in Geneva. Fifty American women had been invited and I was going as a delegate. I was also scheduled, the following Sunday, to give a recital in Cincinnati. Of course this presented something of a problem, because I would be away from the children for a week, but I thought it was important that I go. However, I wouldn't have gone had my husband not encouraged me to go.” She smiles, slightly, and explains. “Periodically Martin and I would have these discussions about my being so involved in my singing and speaking and being away from home so much. We always agreed that when both of us were under a lot of pressure to be away from home I would be the one to curtail my activities. I wasn't too unhappy about this. It was really a question of knowing what our priorities were. And since my top priority has always been my family there was never any conflict.

“Of course Martin had a problem throughout his career because he couldn't be with his family more. He never felt comfortable about being away so much. I don't think anybody who must be away from home a lot can really resolve this. But what you have to do is spend as much time with your family as you can and make the time that you spend meaningful. When Martin spent time with the children he gave himself so completely that they had a great feeling of love and security. I think this can best be done by individuals who feel secure within themselves and who are committed to what they are doing. People who have a sense of direction and who feel that what they're doing is the most important thing they
can
be doing. There was never a question in our minds that we were not doing the most important thing we could be doing for ourselves and for a better society for our children, all children, to grow up in.”

At this point something goes wrong with my tape recorder and I lean forward to fix it, explaining with some vexation that I am the world's worst manipulator of simple gadgetry. Coretta charitably admits she's no genius with mechanical things either.

While waiting for the tape to rewind I tell her that her husband often crops up in my work and is very often in my thoughts. I tell her that in my novel, a copy of which I just gave her, one of the characters mentions that although Dr. King was constantly harassed and oppressed by the white world he was always gentle with his wife and children. I tell her how important I feel this is: that black men not take out their anger and frustration on their wives and children. A temptation that is all too obvious.

Coretta's face is thoughtful as she says, “Maybe I shouldn't say this, because I don't
know
it, it's just a feeling I have . . but few black men seem to feel secure enough as men that they can make women feel like women. It was such a good feeling that Martin gave me, since the first time I met him. He was such a strong man that I felt like a woman, I could
be
a woman, and let him be a man. Yet he too was affected by the system, as a black man; but in spite of everything he always came through as a man, a person of dignity. … I miss this now, very much. Since my husband's death I've had to struggle on alone, and I can appreciate now, more than ever, how important it is to have somebody to share things with, to have someone who cares, someone who is concerned.”

A rather ardent feminist myself I would like to spend a lot of time on the subjects of black woman and women's liberation. But Coretta only states that she understands the black woman's reluctance to be involved in liberating herself when all black people are still not free. Of course, she says, and laughs with humor and exasperation, “it
is
annoying to have men constantly saying things like ‘I know that must be a woman driver!'” She also believes that if women become irrevocably involved in social issues they will find themselves powerful as activists
and
as women. She thinks that women will liberate themselves to the extent of their involvement in the struggle for change and social justice. To me this sounds very logical, but I am stuck with the suspicion that, as with black people, there must be for women a new and self-given definition. I fear that many people, including many women, do not know, in fact, what Woman is.

We do, however, share a vast appreciation for the black woman, liberated or not. I think we both realize that in the majority of black women in the South we have been seeing women whose souls have been liberated for generations. In fact, it is when Coretta mentions some words of gentle courage from some old woman she has met somewhere that her eyes fill with tears. “The black woman,” she says, “has a special role to play. Our heritage of suffering and our experience in having to struggle against all odds to raise our children gives us a greater capacity for understanding both suffering and the need and meaning of compassion. We have, I think, a kind of stamina, a determination, which makes us strong.” Then she says something that I feel is particularly true: “Women, in general, are not a part of the corruption of the past, so they can give a new kind of leadership, a new image for mankind. But if they are going to be bitter or vindictive they are not going to be able to do this. But they're capable of tremendous compassion, love, and forgiveness, which, if they use it, can make this a better world. When you think of what some black women have gone through, and then look at how beautiful they still are! It is incredible that they still believe in the values of the race, that they have retained a love of justice, that they can still feel the deepest compassion, not only for themselves but for anybody who is oppressed; this is a kind of miracle, something we have that we must preserve and must pass on.”

Coretta was born and raised in Marion, Alabama, a small town not far from the larger one of Selma, which her husband was later to make infamous. When she speaks of her upbringing in the “heart of Dixie” there is no bitterness in her voice. Like many blacks from the South she is able to dismiss or feel pity for white racists because she realizes they are sick. Instead, her voice warms with pride and respect for her father, who survived against fantastic odds. Not only did Obidiah Scott survive; he prevailed.

The Scotts owned a farm in Marion, and Coretta's father raised thousands of chickens. When his sawmill was mysteriously burned out only days after he purchased it he bought himself a truck and began a small pulpwood business. Recently, at seventy-one, Obie Scott ran for highway commissioner in his home town, something he wouldn't have dreamed of doing as short a time as six or seven years ago. He lost in the election, and Coretta thinks losing “got to him,” but the important thing, she says, is that he still has the courage to try to change things in the South so that all people can live there in harmony and peace.

“My father is a
most
industrious man,” says Coretta. “If he'd been white he'd be the mayor of Marion, Alabama.” From what she has told me about him I think she underestimates Obidiah Scott: if he had been white I doubt if he'd have stopped with the Alabama governorship.

Although active in several political campaigns, Coretta appears to have enjoyed her swing through her home state, in support of local black candidates, including her father, most. She explains that she gave a number of “Freedom Concerts” which her children helped her sing, and that they enjoyed campaigning as much as she. What emerges about Coretta is that the fabric of her life is finely knit. Each part is woven firmly into another part. Her office, which is in the basement of her house, is where she directs the business of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Center. When her children come home from school they troop downstairs to see her. She will usually stop whatever she is doing to talk to them. Her music is a skill that she uses for a variety of good causes: her Freedom Concerts bring out the crowds at local elections for black candidates; her other concerts are given to raise money for the memorial to her husband that she insists he must have. Her singing is also her means of reaching other peoples who can understand the beauty of her voice if not the words she sings.

The hour I was allotted for the interview has long since ended. But Coretta, much more relaxed now, is willing to discuss a few other topics that seemed to grow, organically, from answers she has given to my questions. About black people in power and the whites who work with them she says: “I don't believe that black people are going to misuse power in the way it has been misused. I think they've learned from their experiences. And we've seen instances where black and white work together very effectively. This is true even in places where you have a black majority, in Hancock County, Georgia, for example, or Fayette, Mississippi, where Charles Evers is mayor.” About nonviolence she says, “It is very difficult to get people beyond the point of seeing nonviolence as something you do on marches and in demonstrations. It is harder to get people to the point of organizing to bring pressure to bear on changing society. People who think nonviolence
is
easy don't realize that it's a spiritual discipline that requires a great deal of strength, growth, and purging of the self so that one can overcome almost any obstacle for the good of all without being concerned about one's own welfare.”

I am glad, while we're talking, to hear Coretta, the mother, talking to her oldest son, Marty, fourteen, who calls her on the phone. It seems he has been left at his school several miles away, it is pouring rain, and he wants somebody to come immediately to pick him up. Coretta is concerned but firm. She tells him that since he has missed the ride home that was arranged for him he will just have to wait until she can send someone for him. He protests. She restates her solution; he will have to wait. Period.

We spend a few minutes discussing her role in life as she sees it. I am not surprised that what she would like to do is inspire other women to take a more active role in the peace movement, in the election of acceptable candidates, and in being involved in making the decisions that will affect their lives and the lives of their children. She says that she and Martin used to talk a lot about trying to organize women and she regrets that he never had time to get around to addressing women as women. “We have never used,” she says, “the womanpower that we had.”

While I am gathering up my paraphernalia to leave, Coretta comes from behind her desk and we chat a few moments about the pictures of her family that line the walls of her office. There is one that is especially charming, of her and her husband and the children on an outing in the park. Coretta's face in the photograph is radiant, although she ruefully comments that it was a hassle that day getting everybody dressed up so they could have the picture made. Outside her office she introduces me to Dr. King's sister, Mrs. Farris, whom I had known slightly at Spelman. Mrs. Farris brings the presence of her brother strongly to mind; she has both his dignity and his calm. She is a woman of few words but they are pertinent ones. She assists Mrs. King with the bookkeeping.

When I leave the red-brick house on Sunset Avenue, the rain that had been beating down heavily all day has let up. And, though there is no promise of sun, there is a feeling that spring has already come to the winter-colored slopes of Atlanta. “You
Southern
black people,” someone had said to me several weeks before, “are very protective of Martin King and Coretta.” I think about this as I leave the place where Martin King no longer lives except in the hearts of all the people who work there in his name.

As my plane takes off, I think of all the ways Martin and Coretta King's lives have touched mine. I think of that spring day so few, so many, years ago, and of Coretta's willingness to encourage a group of young women who were about to become involved in an exciting but somewhat frightening experience. I think of the years when I and most black Georgians, including atheists and agnostics, went to bed praying for Martin King's safety, and how we awoke each morning stronger because he was still with us. It was Martin, more than anyone, who exposed the hidden beauty of black people in the South, and caused us to look again at the land our fathers and mothers knew. The North is not for us. We will not be forced away from what is ours. Martin King, with Coretta at his side, gave the South to black people, and reduced the North to an option. And, though I realize the South belonged to me all the time, it has a newness in my eyes. I gaze down from the plane on the blood-red hills of Georgia and Alabama and finally, home, Mississippi, knowing that when I arrive the very ground may tremble and convulse but I will walk upright, forever.

1971

O
UR BUS LEFT
B
OSTON
before dawn on the day of the March. We were a jolly, boisterous crowd who managed to shout the words to “We Shall Overcome” without a trace of sadness or doubt. At least on the surface. Underneath our bravado there was anxiety: Would Washington be ready for us? Would there be violence? Would we
be
Overcome? Could
we
Overcome? At any rate, we felt confident enough to try.