“This is the day he will die,” thought Roy Reed, a reporter for the New York Times.
On June 21, 1966, Reed was standing behind Martin Luther King Jr., who was surrounded by about 300 hostile white people in Philadelphia, Miss. King had led a delegation from the Meredith March Against Fear to commemorate the second anniversary of the killings of the civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner.
King was trying to navigate a rocky path full of obstacles: the threats of southern racists, a frayed alliance with President Lyndon B. Johnson and dissent within the civil rights movement.
His response showcased his greatest gifts — and his actions on June 21 painted a nuanced picture of what made King so influential. Much of our historical memory of the civil rights leader deifies him, a marker of the nation’s racial progress. It also, however, dramatically oversimplifies the man and the movement he helped lead. It cloaks the divisions within the civil rights movement, along with King’s struggle to harness different factions and tactics toward his goals.
The enshrinement of King also prevents Americans from seeing just how he married the ideals of American democracy with the righteous struggles of Black Americans. It eludes how he exhibited both spiritual power and political acumen. Looking at King’s actions during the Meredith March, by contrast, spotlights three of his most important roles in the civil rights movement: as an icon of moral courage, as a lodestone for Black activism and as an architect of sustainable ideals for a social justice movement.
All of these qualities were on display on the extraordinary day of June 21, 1966.
The Meredith March began on June 5 with one man, James Meredith, who had planned to walk from Memphis to Jackson, encouraging voter registration. On the second day, he got shot, and though he survived, the major civil rights organizations transformed his quest into a mass march.
By the time King gathered with the activists in Mississippi two weeks later, the big story was Black Power. On June 16, Stokely Carmichael introduced the new slogan as a message of self-determination. It implicitly criticized King’s bedrock values of nonviolence and racial integration.
On the morning of June 21, King met the marchers at a Black church — and he looked scared, with good reason. Philadelphia, in west-central Mississippi, was off the main route of the march. Instead of protection from the state police, the marchers were under the jurisdiction of Cecil Price, the deputy sheriff at the center of the federal conspiracy trial the three civil rights activists’ killing.
During their procession to Philadelphia’s town square, the marchers were jeered, spat upon and sprayed with hoses. The air was thick with danger.
Surrounded by his flock and his foes, King steeled himself. “I am not afraid of any man,” he proclaimed. “We are going to work together for freedom. We are here to save America.”
Despite the hostile crowd, King didn’t duck the heinous violence that the march was commemorating. He remembered the movement’s martyrs. “I believe in my heart that the murderers are somewhere around me,” he intoned.
“They’re right behind you!” shouted a white boy. The mob hooted. Price smirked.
As the activists left, the mob tossed eggs, rocks and bottles. Scuffles broke out. The marchers reached the Black district just before some white toughs arrived, brandishing knives, wrenches and ax handles.
Confronted by murderous hatred, he was a model of resolve and principle. His fortitude reassured his fellow marchers and it projected the movement’s integrity to the broader public.
After his speech in Philadelphia, King boarded a tiny, twin-engine plane for Sunflower County, in the Mississippi Delta, to speak at a voter registration rally.
“It was like a messiah walking through the community,” recalled local organizer Charles McLaurin. Alongside the legendary Fannie Lou Hamer, McLaurin had led a 10-mile march from the town of Sunflower to the county courthouse in Indianola.
There, King revealed his magnetic power. Wherever he went, Black folks followed. Because he was in Indianola, over 300 people attended the rally. As was the case throughout King’s life, his reputation attracted a big turnout and his charisma compelled political participation. More than any other figure, he drew people into the southern civil rights movement.
King’s day was not yet done. He got back on the plane, headed for Yazoo City, on the southern edge of the Delta, where the Meredith Marchers had stopped for the night.
King arrived for a nighttime rally in a public park. Radical activists gave speeches promising bloody retaliation if white people attacked them again. They won roars from the large crowd. Black Power, with its vows for self-defense and independence, struck emotional chords that exposed the widening fault lines in the movement.
Yet, even as the crowd cheered the rhetoric of Black militants, it reserved its greatest adoration for King. To reach the podium, he waded through the masses. Old ladies jostled each other to touch him, while weathered farmers pressed their palms into his.
And as this tumultuous, grueling day turned into a sweaty, bug-filled night, King painted a vision for the movement. He understood the need for Black political power. He acknowledged that Mississippi was afflicted by oppression. But segregation and violence were plagues on everyone, Black and white. To survive, to thrive, Black people needed a “coalition of conscience.”
“Now,” he said, “I’m ready to die myself.” In his classic style, he weaved together the rhythms of the pulpit with the ideals of American democracy.
“When I die I’m going to die for something, and at that moment, I guess, it will be necessary, but I’m trying to say something to you, my friends, that I hope we will all gain tonight, and that is that we have a power.” He recalled the movement’s great triumphs and celebrated their destiny to redeem the nation. In the process, he touched people’s souls.
By insisting on his ideals, and by summoning his greatest oratorical powers, King maintained his slippery grasp on the march’s message. In its final days, the Meredith March encountered more violence, including a tear gas attack in the town of Canton. Yet amid the cries of Black Power, the marchers maintained the discipline of nonviolence. They arrived in the capital city of Jackson for the largest civil rights demonstration in the history of Mississippi, signaling the resonance of mass protest in the lives of Black Americans
On the Meredith March, King illustrated why his birthday is a federal holiday, a memorial in the National Mall’s Tidal Basin celebrates his legacy and nearly 1,000 streets bear his name. He was neither a saint nor the movement’s single leader. But he exhibited the qualities of leadership, in the service of forging a genuine democracy.
King demonstrated profound courage, setting a meaningful example. He pulled followers into his orbit, articulating principles that resonated with people. And he insisted that a crusade for justice demanded the best of its advocates, investing their cause with the deepest meaning.
Throughout his glorious and tragic journey with the civil rights movement, King shared these blessings. Sometimes he did it all on one single day.
Aram Goudsouzian is the Bizot Professor of History at the University of Memphis. His books include the award-winning Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of The Inquirer.
