CATHERINE REILLY reports from Memphis, Tennessee at the church of Reverend Samuel ‘Billy’ Kyles, who was present during Martin Luther King‘s last hours, and hears his thoughts on America as the 40th anniversary of King’s assassination approaches
It’s a gloriously sunny day in south Memphis, and just like every Sunday, the area’s African-American congregation have donned their Sunday best for the service at the Monumental Baptist Church. Doctors, nurses, teachers, FedEx workers, telephone company employees, State government officials – for all, this church is their shared sanctuary every Sunday at 11am, in the black neighbourhood where Aretha Franklin was born and where everyone seems to sing like a pro. This Sunday, the numbers are relatively modest, but rest assured, the singing is wholehearted.
Reverend Samuel ‘Billy’ Kyles is the church’s head pastor. The youthful-looking 70-something admits he can’t quite get used to describing himself as ‘old’. Students he encounters have their doubts too: “Sometimes they say: ‘C’mon, you can tell me, did you really know Martin [Luther King]?’ I say: ‘Yeah, I did.’ ‘March with him?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘With him when he was killed?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘But you don’t look old enough.’ I say: ‘That’s a compliment, thank you... I was in the civil rights movement, not the civil war.’”
A slow, Southern chuckle breaks out as he eats his meal in the church’s dining room, where the October Club (congregation members born in October) have prepared good, simple food. What people sometimes forget, he continues, is that the American civil rights movement was spearheaded by relatively young adults: “I mean, we were all young men. Nobody in that group was 40. Martin Luther King was 39; Jesse Jackson was 27; I was 33. Nobody was 40.”
Although raised in Chicago, Kyles has been pastor at the Monumental Baptist Church in Memphis since 1959. His civil rights campaigning was triggered by a fascination with the Greensboro ‘sit-ins’ in North Carolina in 1960, when four African-American students who had sat down at a segregated lunch counter were refused service and subsequently staged a ‘sit-in’ protest. It sparked similar actions across America – by both African- and Anglo-Amer-icans.
“To see them sit there, and have coffee thrown at them, sugar put on them… they had been trained in non-violence so they just sat there. And when it picked up all over the country, students started doing it – people and police beat them.”
By 1968, Rev Kyles was championing the cause of ill-treated local gar-bage workers in Memphis, and asked Martin Luther King to personally lend his support. On 3 April, King spoke at a rally held at Mason Temple in Memphis, where a large crowd heard his famous ‘Mountaintop’ speech. The following day, Kyles planned to have King come to his home for a meal.
“I told him dinner was at five; he called my house and they said six,” he recalls. This misunderstanding meant that Kyles had the “wonderful privilege” of spending King’s last hour with him (and the late Ralph Abernathy) when he went to the Lorraine Motel to pick them up.
At 5.45pm, King was on the balcony outside his room “greeting people, leaning over the rails”. Kyles then remembers a shot ringing out and King being knocked over. “There was a gaping hole on the right side of his face,” he says, “blood was everywhere.”
King died that evening, and James Earl Ray was later convicted of his murder – but doubts about Ray’s involvement, and whisperings about the possibility of there being more than Ray involved (something Kyles has said is probable) continue to this day.
The immediate effect of King’s death was rioting in dozens of American cities. Kyles, who says he knew King “before he was famous”, admits that he was initially consumed with anger at the shooting down – “like a dog” – of his friend. But his feelings were tempered because he knew King would have wanted a very different reaction.
“He cared about people so much,” recalls Kyles. “He never was raised poor himself. His father was quite well off – he was a director of a bank – but he had this tremendous concern for the less fortunate. He had a PhD at 28, won the Nobel Peace Prize, his oratorical skills were off the chart, and for all of his skills and abilities, he died on a balcony in Memphis, Tennessee helping garbage workers.”
King had a strong feeling that he’d die relatively young, reveals Kyles: “He never thought he’d live to be 40 – not that he didn’t want to.”
Kyles says he believes fate had decreed he would be a “witness” to King’s “crucifixion” (“all crucifixions need witnesses”) but his commitment to discussing his links with King has sometimes had negative repercussions – especially during the 1999 Martin Luther King Conspiracy Trial, when he was effectively accused by lawyers of seeking “notoriety” from the fact that he was present during the infamous shooting.
The accusation, which Kyles flatly rejected in his witness statement, doesn’t appear to have altered his approach, and he mentions that his diary for January and February next year (the lead-up to the 40th anniversary of King’s death) is practically full already. The Tuesday after the interview, he says he will bring the President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, on a private tour of the Lorraine Motel (now the National Civil Rights Museum).
Clearly, Kyles is comfortable in the role of “witness”, and obviously feels his presence at such a pivotal historical event gives him a platform with which to ultimately promote the civil rights movement. He explains: “I am struck by the fact that people around the world who are concerned about freedom and liberty, they regularly use Martin Luther King and the American civil rights movement as a philosophy. The kids at Tiananmen Square were singing ‘we shall overcome’, the people behind the Berlin Wall were singing ‘we shall overcome’.”
Closer to home, what does Kyles feel would be King’s thoughts on today’s America? “Well, I know he’d be against that war,” he responds. “I don’t speak for him, but I know he’d be against that war.”
On what basis? “We’d no right to go in, we’d no basis for going in, to risk all those lives and spend all that money.”
Domestically, Kyles suspects King would be very disappointed at the apathy displayed by Americans who don’t use their vote – and health would be another area of concern. “He would be terribly disappointed that this country has 46 or 47 million people with no health insurance… he’d be fighting back.”
The city of Memphis is predominantly black, due to the so-called ‘white flight’ which began in the 1970s, although Kyles points out that white people who are “sick of the commute” are slowly returning to the city, while some blacks are becoming affluent enough to move out.
Surprisingly, the lack of real integration between whites and blacks in the city isn’t something Kyles dwells on during the interview, even when specifically questioned about it. He simply concedes that they are some “rough spots” on the integration journey, and that people of the same “culture” (and, he suggests, class) tend to stick together.
These days, as well as his civil rights talks, Kyles’ area of attention is on the church. Unemployment in Memphis is a serious problem, and he is losing the congregation’s teenage members, many of whom seek pastures new.
Next year marks the 40th anniversary of King’s murder, but it is also significant in that America will choose its next President. Barack Obama has what would be considered an outside possibility of the Democratic nomination, al-though his fortunes could improve.
“I have such deep roots with the Clintons – Bill and I are very close, and Hillary,” explains Kyles, when asked about his own preference. “I haven’t made the choice yet. What I’d love to see is Hillary as President, Obama as vice. He more likely feels this is his time. What I’ve to be careful of, what I‘ve been advocating my entire adult life… we want to stop doing things just by race, I don’t want to just vote for him because he’s black, I want to have reasons. I don’t know him.”
Nevertheless, Kyles says he is “proud” of Obama’s quick progression, and in truth, seems to be having an internal debate on the matter. “Let it play out,” he concludes, “it’s started too early for me.”
One suspects that Obama’s ‘young man in a hurry’ vibe impresses Kyles, and the theme of making things happen while you can is something he returns to: “Martin Luther King changed the world, but that was not his intention, his intention was simply to help the oppressed and it just spread out wherever the oppressed is.
“So I challenge the young people of Ireland – politically, socially – to do the best that you can do, and be the best that you can be.”
Catherine Reilly was in the United States as part of a Managing Diversity in a Multi-Ethnic Society programme, sponsored by the US Department of State
