My uncle had been investigating my father’s death. We hadn’t finished grieving for our father; it was hard to believe Uncle
A.D. was gone too. Uncle A.D. had become one of our surrogate fathers. He’d take us places. We spent time with his children,
who were close to our age. Vernon—named for his father’s first pastorate, Mt. Vernon First Baptist Church in Newman, Georgia—
was fun to be around: he made you laugh. Daddy liked to swim too; he’d taught me how to swim, but he was nowhere near as good
as Uncle A.D. Alveda was nearly grown at the time, maybe eighteen. I was eight. Vernon cried hard. They were all devastated
by the loss of their father. Until this day, Alveda, as a grown woman and mother of six, and as a former Georgia state legislator,
Mrs. Alveda King Tookes, I still don’t believe she’s recovered. You never recover.
Burial plans were once again made at Hanley’s Bell Street Funeral Home, and another King man was buried. We had to keep on
living—that much was not open to speculation, theorizing, or wondering why. We had to keep living, keep forging on. It had
to be difficult for my Aunt Christine, who’d lost both her brothers, and for Big Mama King and Granddaddy, Daddy King, M.
L. King, Sr., who had lost both of their sons.
I don’t remember Aunt Naomi’s reaction when she was told of Uncle A.D.’s death. That was kept away from us. I only remember
swimming in the ocean with Uncle A.D.; little lizards, like geckos, running around where we were staying, then running around
inside me, it seemed. Little things crawling all over the place. Then people scurrying. Then the word Uncle A.D. was dead.
Isaac said his mom totally lost it when she found out. I hurt for her. Both her brothers dead in a year: Daddy, now my Uncle
A.D. But the manner in which Aunt Christine had lost it scared Isaac. I never saw Aunt Christine or my mother lose it emotionally
when they’d gone through this with my father just the year before, then… Aunt Christine found out at 234 Sunset. She and Isaac
were in our basement. Mother was maintaining the space where the idea of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Non-Violent
Social Change started.
Uncle A.D.’s death damaged us all. But what really affected my spirit in an adverse way was what happened to Big Mama less
than five years later.
Time had passed after my father’s death and the death of Uncle A.D. We had watched our mother move the operations of the Martin
Luther King, Jr. Center for Non-Violent Social Change from our basement to the basement of the ITC, then finally next door
to my father’s birth home, 501 Auburn Avenue, where my great-grandfather A.D. and his wife, Jennie Williams, had lived, and
where their only surviving child, Alberta Williams King, Big Mama, had grown up, where she and my grandfather spent their
lives until Granddaddy got a house a few blocks away on Boulevard. For the first four years of my life we lived in a house
on Johnson Avenue that was down the street from where Granddaddy and Big Mama used to live.
The years between 1969 and 1974 passed with music in my head and my head hung down. Any extroverted tendencies I might have
entertained had been obliterated. I was paralyzed by the actions and potential actions of a world gone insane. Only music
soothed my mind and soul and heart. Only music could get through to me.
Martin and I rode our minibikes around Vine City. The Jackson 5 had that string of hits to keep us attentive to Motown. Aretha
Franklin sang “Ain’t No Way” and “Chain of Fools” on radio stations WAOK 1340 AM and WIGO 1380 AM; I spun the dial and heard
the Staple Singers—Daddy had loved Mavis Staples’s husky contralto. I heard Sly and the Family Stone doing “(I Want to Take
You) Higher,” “Everyday People,” “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).” Earth, Wind and Fire doing “That’s the Way of
the World,” Seals and Crofts, then the Isleys, doing “Summer Breeze.”
Being in Georgia, I began to watch the football served up to us every Friday night at high schools, every Saturday afternoon
for colleges on TV, pros on Sunday. We had pro teams in Atlanta, but it was all about the Kansas City Chiefs, then the Pittsburgh
Steelers winning a string of Super Bowls in the early ’70s by playing players from historically black colleges like the ones
around the corner from our backyard. The great baseball player Roberto Clemente was killed in a plane crash while delivering
relief to disaster victims in Nicaragua in 1972. In 1974, Hank Aaron, from Mobile, in our mother’s home state of Alabama,
hit his 715th home run at Atlanta’s Fulton County Stadium to beat Babe Ruth’s record. I was thirteen, had no idea of the volume
of hate mail he’d received or the kidnapping threats against his daughter, then attending Fisk University. I watched
Soul Train,
heard the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band doing “Express Yourself,” one-hit wonder Bloodstone performing the ethereal tune
“Natural High,” Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston and then Tammi Terrell having a string of duets—“Your Precious Love,” “Ain’t Nothing
Like the Real Thing.” I saw blacks begin to pepper the Southeastern Conference varsity football teams on Saturday afternoon
football games, even at the universities of Alabama and Georgia. Watching football was where I lost Martin. He wasn’t interested.
He was three years older. Three years is a lifetime at that age. Yolanda went to college— Smith. Bernice was turning eleven.
Granddaddy was still in the pulpit.
Six years had gone by since my father’s murder. On Sunday June 30, 1974, we happened to be together at church, me, Isaac,
and Vernon, Uncle A.D.’s youngest. We were at church, dodging the unswerving eye of Granddaddy, who was still measuring us
for a collar, while we were not seeing a deep, lingering sadness in him. Across Jackson Street from Ebenezer, there is a strip
mall, where there were and are small stores. We were in a store called Carter’s. We frequented it on Sundays for candy, novelties,
and such. This was our habit. We’d go over there between Sunday school and church, get a few goodies, then make our way into
church, Vernon, Isaac, and I, not as serious in our religious intent as my cousins Derek and Al, Uncle A.D.’s two eldest boys,
or even as serious as Martin. Rev. Calvin Morris, from New Jersey, was guest minister that morning. Cousin Derek was seated
in the pulpit. Aunt Christine and my grandfather were sitting in the first pew to the right, facing the pulpit, smiling, nodding,
humming, as my grandmother, Alberta Williams King, “Bunch” (short for “Bunch-o’-goodness”), as my grandfather called her,
played the Lord’s Prayer on the organ.
I can remember that even from the novelty store across the street I could hear my grandmother playing—but I can’t be sure.
Suddenly someone ran into Carter’s hollering, “Mr. Carter! You got a gun?!”
“…Wha?”
“They’re shootin’, they’re shootin’ over in the church!”
We raced over to the sanctuary. As we ran up the steps, what we saw was like remnants of a rummage sale: handkerchiefs, a
shoe, pocketbooks, a jacket, all lying on the steps. We proceeded into the church and my eyes went directly to the pulpit.
Just outside it, I saw my grandmother lying there, her head propped up in someone’s lap; she was conscious. I ran toward her,
but many someones—deacons—grabbed me. I was trying to get out of their grip, but it was no use. I could feel the flinty strength
of their old arms and hands. I was in a vise.
I saw the blood all over her.
My cousin Derek was at the time a theological student. Grand-daddy was not in the pulpit when the shooting started. He was
sitting in the pew preparing to leave the service early, to fly out of town for a speaking engagement. He wasn’t in the pulpit
but he was still in the church. And so was this wild-eyed young black man, who was named Marcus Wayne Chenault. Chenault was
a young man of medium build and complexion, with a big Afro. He wore glasses. His eyes were crazed. Insane. He had arrived
in Atlanta that very morning from Ohio, by interstate bus, then proceeded directly to the church from the bus station. Apparently
he had composed a list of other people from outside of Atlanta whom he also planned to murder, mostly black ministers, religious
leaders. His goal in Atlanta was set, and grim—he came to assassinate my grandfather first. Marcus Wayne Chenault was a disturbed
man, a pure lunatic, an antireligious and anti-Christian fanatic.
By fate, Chenault’s path crossed first with my grandmother. She was a sweet woman. All I know is, I always felt so special
around her. I didn’t have any special name for her other than we all called her Big Mama. Everybody in our family called her
Big Mama, and she was clearly the one who was the behind-the-scenes mover and shaker of her family. She got us together as
a family. She was Big Mama to everybody even beyond the King family— Big Mama of Ebenezer. I felt special around her even
though she had ten other grandchildren. She’d always call me to do things. I was made to feel handy as a kid. I could fix
things, became industrious with my hands. Could take things apart, put them back together. Anytime she had a mechanical problem,
she’d call me to come and repair whatever was broken for her, and one of my older cousins might come pick me up and take me
over to Collier Heights because Big Mama was sending for little Dexter—particularly after my father died.
I would often stay with my grandparents. Even if I or we were staying with Isaac, over at Aunt Christine’s and Uncle Isaac’s,
we’d always go down to Big Mama’s. As I’ve said, my grandparents lived within walking distance of Isaac’s family in Collier
Heights. Isaac and I spent the night there many times, particularly after my father died. I don’t want to alienate anybody
by saying I was Big Mama’s favorite grandchild, but I felt she appreciated my handiwork. I sensed she had a lot of faith in
me, too. I don’t know why she would, I don’t know what it was she saw.
More heartache—more, because I was not there, or not quite handy enough, when she was killed. I was there, but not physically
in the sanctuary. I still feel heartache until this day. I told you how Isaac and I sometimes would be out on walkabout, most
of the time, I would say, removed from the church service, the morning worship, doing our own thing, and this particular Sunday
was typical—we were not in the main sanctuary and… I don’t know why. Maybe I’m glad I wasn’t there, too. I vacillate. But
I felt and still feel guilty for not being there; it may be I could have done something, prevented it. But then there is another
side of me which says that if I had been there, what degree of additional trauma would I have now if I had tried and failed
to stop it, and only saw it happen in front of me, while being helpless? It was enough trauma being on the periphery. If I
had been in there, like some of my cousins were…
Derek was in the pulpit. He was the third child of Uncle A.D. and Aunt Naomi. Marcus Wayne Chenault, sitting in a pew next
to my grandmother, turned and shot her, then jumped up saying, “I’m taking over here this morning!”
Then he continued shooting.
He had come to Sunday school earlier that morning and blended in with the congregation. He sat through Sunday school. The
only thing people noticed was he had a briefcase. Inside it were two .38 caliber handguns and ammunition. As the service started,
with my grandmother playing the Lord’s Prayer, he sat down by her. My grandmother was director of the choir and was always
there to conduct and lead the music. The organ was between two pews. He was on the right side of her. He started shooting,
jumped up, then said those words. Initially, people didn’t know what it was, exactly. Some thought the organ might have backfired.
People didn’t react quickly because they were bowed in prayer. Then they heard the gunshots, and, not anticipating hearing
guns in such a setting, looked up in shock and saw what was happening. By then, three people were already shot. Deacon Edward
Boykin mortally wounded. But Big Mama…
Chenault had jumped up and started shooting people, then up in the air, into the ceiling; he’d turned and shot Deacon Boykin
point-blank in the chest, then shot Mrs. Jimmie Mitchel, who was sitting in the same pew. She was injured, but she lived.
Derek jumped out from behind the lectern up in the pulpit and dove toward Chenault without any thought or hesitation whatsoever.
Chenault saw Derek coming at him, leveled his pistol, and pulled the trigger twice.
Click, click.
Misfire.
Chenault reached to get ammunition to reload. By then, Derek and some deacons were on top of him, Derek’s fists hurtling into
Chenault. Derek did a good job of subduing him, screaming at him at the same time. All the frustration and anger poured out
of Derek then. His Uncle M.L., gone, his father, A.D., gone, now Big Mama, gone, shot right there in church. The remaining
deacons who weren’t holding my grandfather back on one side of the church and me and Isaac on the other, got to Derek, in
the process of beating Chenault into submission. If the deacons hadn’t pulled Derek off Chenault, there might have been another
murder in the sanctuary.
Isaac and Vernon and I tried to get to Big Mama but were held back by a sea of gnarled hands—it seemed they weren’t attached
to bodies even though I knew they were. Seemed I was trying to move in outer space—everything was slow, muffled.
By then, my head had swiveled toward my grandfather, far off on the other side of the pulpit. He was bound by the restraining
arms of the remaining deacons, but still so strong that he was moving the whole pile of them. “No! Don’t make me leave Bunch!
I can’t leave here without Bunch!”
The deacons said, “No, no, no, Reverend King, you’ll get hurt.” He was the type of man not to care. “I got to go get Bunch!”
I can still hear him. They were restraining him, but barely—Granddaddy was a big barrel-chested man, country strong, particularly
with the adrenaline pumping crazily like it was then. The look on his face seemed to say, “If something happens to her then
my life is not worth living.”
I know that’s what he felt. He said so later.
We raced to Grady Hospital. Aunt Naomi rode with Big Mama in the ambulance. We walked into the ER, then the OR, as if compelled,
as they wheeled Big Mama in. They began working on her on a long white table. We all stood there while they operated; a nurse
shooed us out saying, “Please, let the doctors work.” My grandfather, Isaac, and I went over to see Chenault, who also had
been brought to Grady for treatment. Even though he was in custody, we were allowed access; this may not have been the wisest
thing. We waited for Granddaddy to make a move. Once, when Granddaddy was a boy in Stockbridge, Georgia, a cruel landowner
beat him up for refusing to fetch water while he was carrying a bucket of milk and butter for his mother, Deliah. He’d gone
home bloodied. When his mother saw this, she asked him who did it, went down to the white man’s farm, jumped on him by the
barn, fought him, drew blood. He told her to get off his land. She said, “You can kill me, but if you harm one of my children,
this is my answer.” A mother this physically brave was an inspiration to Grand-daddy.