Jan. 15, 2018
By Jeff Shearer
AuburnTigers.com
AUBURN, Ala. - At the airport in Washington D.C., Dr. Bernard Lafayette Jr. held a payphone in each hand, the Associated Press desk in one ear, United Press International in the other.
It was the evening of April 4, 1968.
"Each of those reporters were reading from the ticker tape right from Memphis what was happening," Lafayette said, recalling the events of a half-century ago with the clarity of something that occurred last night.
Hours earlier in Memphis, he had met at the Lorraine Motel with Dr. Martin Luther King, who dispatched Lafayette to D.C. for a press conference to promote the Poor People's Campaign, an effort to gain economic justice.
"I frankly didn't think this would be fatal for Martin Luther King," Lafayette said. "I knew he had been shot, and I was disturbed by that, but I was not grief-stricken, because he had survived being stabbed in New York when he was autographing his book [10 years earlier].
"It was when the reporter from the UPI broke down in tears, I could hear him sniffling, he stopped reading the ticker tape and started crying on the phone. That was the signal to me that Martin Luther King had not survived the gunshot wound."
"I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land. So I'm happy tonight, I'm not worried about anything, I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. -- April 3, 1968
In Memphis to support striking sanitation workers, King summoned LaFayette, a veteran of sit-ins and freedom rides, to his room on April 3 to work on the press statement for the Poor People's Campaign.
"He was exhausted," Lafayette recalled. "Both physically, and also his spirt was down."
King was disappointed because of media coverage of violence that had occurred during a Memphis protest march five weeks earlier, Lafayette says.
"Martin Luther King was more determined to do that march over again, and make it a nonviolent march."
Lafayette sat in a chair while King lay in bed. Ralph David Abernathy called from the Mason Temple, where King had been scheduled to give a speech to the striking workers and supporters.
"'We need you to come,'" Lafayette remembers Abernathy saying. "'Because when we arrived, the people were so excited and jubilant because they thought that you were in the group with us. But no sooner they found out that you were not there, their feathers fell.'
"Martin Luther King said, 'Are you telling me I should get out of my bed, get dressed and come out in the pouring down rain to come to this meeting?'" Lafayette remembered. "Abernathy said, 'Yes.'"
Lafayette stayed at the hotel to work on the press statement. King went to the Temple and delivered the "Mountaintop" speech, his last.
"When he got back, he was really jubilant," Lafayette said. "He was so excited."
'A better way'
The following day, April 4, King and Lafayette, whom King had appointed to coordinate the Poor People's Campaign, made final tweaks to their press release.
"The last words he said to me, 'Lafayette, the next movement we're going to have is to internationalize and institutionalize nonviolence,'" said Lafayette, who has spent the next five decades carrying out King's vision.
"He felt strongly that if people learned the skills then they would be able to employ in a different way," he said. "Those skills would bring about changes in the movement but also deal with any kind of conflict situation. You could manage that without exploding into violence. There was a better way to do it, more effective."
While celebrating the victories of the civil rights movement, Lafayette says there is still more to do.
"We have accomplished a great deal," he said. "In addition to changing the laws and the policies, what's more important is changing the attitudes of people.
"For example, you have an integrated football team and people are cheering the entire team, but also they're cheering individual players who make spectacular plays and become the stars. Many times, they're a different ethnic group, but they still really embrace and appreciate that.
"At the same time, people make a distinction in other areas. Why do people make selected areas to discriminate and oppress people? We have to continue to not take it for granted."
'They've got to be involved'
Auburn University's 2018 Breeden Scholar in Residence at the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities, Lafayette teaches a course called "Leadership for a Global Society: International Nonviolent Movements."
"I want the students to be exposed No.1 to the concepts of nonviolence and also be able to distinguish the nonviolence that Martin Luther King advocated," Lafayette said. "And look at that on a global level of how it has been used to effectively stop massive violence.
"We want each of the students to focus on another country. My theory is you can't know one country unless you at least know two. By the time they get to college, I think that should be one of the things they have an interest in, knowing another country and culture and something about the evolution of the particular form of government, economy and the contributions that other countries have made to the world."
Fifty years after he was one of the last people to speak to Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Bernard Lafayette still possesses a reminder of King's charge to share nonviolence with the world. The key to Lafayette's room at the Lorraine Motel.
"We've got to help our young people understand that the only way they can make things different is they've got to be involved. You can't stand by and just expect others to do the work. That's why we have democracy."
Dr. Bernard Lafayette, first row, center, conducted a Kingian Nonviolence workshop in 2017 at Auburn University's Pebble Hill." style="width:100%; height:auto;" class="imported_image" legacy-link="http://grfx.cstv.com/photos/schools/aub/sports/genrel/auto_a_storywidenew/13060029.jpeg"> Dr. Bernard Lafayette, first row, center, conducted a Kingian Nonviolence workshop in 2017 at Auburn University's Pebble Hill.
Jeff Shearer is a Senior Writer at AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: Follow @jeff_shearer