PART THREE:  "SHOW ME THE HORIZON"

1.  "THE BLACK ANGEL OF MEMPHIS"

"Somebody gotta wake up Martin."

"Ain't gonna be me, no suh!" [Laughter]

"Folks bin waitin mos' two hours at the church. Somebody gotta wake him up. He cain't sleep through this one."

"Well, he the mos' tired out ole nigger ever throwed his body down on a bed, and I ain't wakin' him up."

"How 'bout you, Joan? Y'all go sing him a li'l song, wake him up real nice."

"Me? I don't want to wake him up!"

I was ushered into the bedroom of the modest home in the black section of Grenada, Mississippi, where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and some of his aides were staying, and where Ira and I had joined them all for breakfast. It was the fall of 1966. The door closed quietly behind me. I waited a few seconds and then walked around to the side of the bed he was facing. He was dead to the world. He looked so peaceful I didn't want to make a sound. His black head made a cozy dent in the clean white pillowcase, and he looked like a big chocolate angel. I leaned over for a closer look. His Aida eyes were slanted upward and closed, and the lashes were downright kinky. His eyebrows were thick and well defined on the smooth brown skin. No lines. The famous little moustache jutted out over the huge, handsome lips of possibly the finest orator this country has ever produced. Those lips were drooping into the gravity of a daytime slumber.

I went back around to the other side of the bed and sat down on a well-worn stuffed chair with starched white doilies covering the arms. I started to sing softly.

I am a poor pilgrim of sorrow
I travel this wide world alone ...

I sang it the way I'd learned it from a soprano in a Birmingham church, using long, sustained, free-form notes and no particular rhythm.

No hope have I for tomorrow
I'm trying to make heaven my home.

The chocolate mound didn't move.

Sometimes I'm tossed and I'm driven, Ohhh.

The notes soared upwards.

Sometimes I don't know where to roam, Mmmmm,
But I know that there must be King Jesus, Ohhhh,
And I'm trying to make heaven my home.

The lump rolled slowly, in shifts, all the way around to face my chair, uttering a big delicious groan all the while.

"B'lieve I hear the sound of an angel. Sing me 'nother one, Joan ... Mmmm, thaz beautiful." He was smiling sleepily, and had faded out completely by the time I started the next line. I was worried about all the people waiting for him in the church, but I just went on singing until Andy Young poked his head in the door and smiled his half smile and said, "Shoulda known," and together we woke up God's darkest messenger and got him on his feet and full of coffee to go and preach the word to another town's flock.

Oh, how I loved to hear him speak. Sometimes I think he spoke more fervently about nonviolence when I was there, because he mentioned one time that all he had to do was say, "Non-VAHolence!" and I'd turn into one of his folk. It seemed a miracle that I would meet, and have the blessing to know and work with, one of the two saints of the phenomenon which had won my heart when I was barely sixteen years old: the concept of radical nonviolence, introduced to the world as a revolutionary political tool by Mahatma Gandhi in India, and reintroduced now by Martin Luther King, Jr., in the United States of America.

Gandhi had said that the job of India was to free the Indians from being in front of the British guns, and free the British from being behind them. The same rule was applying in the South, .largely because King truly believed that white men were his brothers, and because his followers loved him enough to at least take his word for it and hold tenaciously to the tactics of nonviolence.

I was in Washington in 1963 when King gave his most famous speech: "I have a dream." It was a mighty day, which has been described many times. I will only say that one of the medals which hangs over my own heart I awarded to myself for having been asked to sing that day. In the blistering sun, facing the original rainbow coalition, I led 350,000 people in "We Shall Overcome," and I was near my beloved Dr. King when he put aside his prepared speech and let the breath of God thunder through him, and up over my head I saw freedom, and all around me I heard it ring.

The first time I was in the South was in 1961. I was on a regular concert tour, and was barely aware of the civil rights movement, probably because I hadn't yet made the transition from Michael to the real world. I did discover, however, that no blacks were at any of my concerts, and would not have been allowed in if they had come. The following summer I wrote into the contract that I wouldn't sing unless blacks were admitted into the hall. The movement was beginning to swell in ranks and spirit, and I returned to the South and discovered that no blacks came to my concerts anyway, because they'd never heard of me. We had to call up the local NAACP for volunteers to integrate an audience for someone they'd never heard of. By then I was singing "Oh, Freedom" and "We Shall Overcome," and aligning myself entirely with the struggle. Not satisfied with "the level of my own commitment, I decided that the next time down I would sing in black schools. Even if I was unknown to the black population, the students would come to hear me simply out of curiosity and boredom. With a little negotiating, in '62 Manny set up a tour which included four black colleges deep in the heart of the South and he and Kimmie and I went. The most memorable of those would be Miles College in Birmingham, Alabama.

We had arrived a couple of days early to be with Dr. King and his entourage and stayed with them at the Gadston Motel, the only place which took both blacks and whites. Birmingham was organized to the teeth for demonstrations and civil disobedience, and we were wild with anticipation about the next few days.

We went to a Baptist church meeting on Sunday morning. The young preacher had a packed house. His sermon was called "Singing at Midnight." People got up to testify, and instead of talking about pie in the sky, they were talking about going to jail for their freedom. A woman stood up and testified that she and the other  others must not be afraid to let their children go to jail because, she said, "Jail be the only thang leff t'do, an it ain't a disgrace lahk Ah always bin taught, no suh (PRAISE THE LORD!), it is a honuh fgo t'jail in the footsteps of ow-uh great leaduh, Dr. Mawtin Luthuh King!" At the sound of King's name, a great response of "YES, WELL ... YES, UH-HUH!" and nods of affirmation and weeping and humming struck up and resounded throughout the room, and the choir burst into song, and an old man across the aisle "got happy" and went stiff and was carried out by four women in rustling white who fanned him and continued right on with the song. I was unashamedly drenched in tears, and next to me Kimmie began to shake. A lovely big black lady came and unbuttoned the top of Kim's blouse and fanned her, and smiled sweetly at the innocent white folks from "up North."

Then I heard the preacher saying, "An we lucky enough to have with us t'day a frien' o' all of us, come down from the North to be with us in ow-uh struggle .. ." Oh, Christ, not now, I thought. "An we gone ask her up heah to sing a li'l sumthin' f'us," he went on, "... Miss Jo-ann ... Jo-ann Bah-ezz." Folks mumbled and shifted around and wondered what else could possibly happen at their congregation in these strange times, and I went up to the pulpit. I started in singing "Let Us Break Bread Together on Our Knees," and folks joined in. I sang in a voice very different from the pure white one which is on all my records. I sang with the soul I was adopting right there in that room, and heads began to nod in approval, and wrinkled old faces smiled in confusion and pleasure. Then I sang "Swing Low:' and folks started to get happy. Handkerchiefs came out and fans doubled their speed. A couple of folks yelled out "UH-HUH, LAWD!" and then one old lady in a magenta hat went stiff and had to be carried out, and I was scared but I kept on singing, because, I suppose you might say, I had gotten the spirit.

***

The next day was the first day of mass arrests. The police chief, Bull Connor, known for riding around town in a baby blue tank, was giving orders to prepare for the fire hoses, tear gas, attack dogs, and arrests. I was furious because I had to give a concert and couldn't be arrested with my brothers and sisters. I promised Manny I'd be back at the hotel in time to leave for the concert, and went off with Kimmie in a movement car, me hiding face down on the back seat, Kim on the floor, to a church where children from all over Birmingham were gathering.

The church was already packed with kids marching up and down the aisles, filling the pews, clapping, singing, chanting, talking, and laughing. Periodically, over the din, a new group would start up the most popular tune of the day, which was simply the word "Freedom," sung over and over again to the tune of "Amen," substituting different opening lines like "Everybody needs " or "All the children need ..." and even "Bull Connor needs freedom, freedom, free-dom, free-dom!"

There was one other white in the room aside from Kimmie and me, brave Barbara Deming, who did march that day, committed civil disobedience, and spent time in the Birmingham jail, from where she wrote her well-known Prison Notes.

An organizer took the microphone and told the crowd that when Bull Connor realized that all the jails in Birmingham wouldn't be enough to contain all the folks who were planning to pay 'em a visit, he let the word out, and some rich white folks donated their tennis courts. Cheers and laughter went up all around, and whispers of anticipation by some children who had never seen a tennis court.

I made friends with some teenage girls, who laughed and talked and sang with me. When it came time for me to leave, I covered my hair with a scarf and held their hands and strutted right out the front door, jabbering and giggling, past the huge policemen who were swinging their billy clubs like pendulums. The billy clubs stopped swinging and hung still as Spanish moss in a breezeless swamp as we walked past. I was as dark as the lightest of the girls, and sounded pretty black when I wanted to. I guess I confused the police a little. Kimmie stayed in the church, promising not to get arrested, and I trudged reluctantly back to the Gadston to meet Manny and wait for our ride out to Miles College.

The first thing we saw on campus was a long trail of junior high school blacks marching across the lawn singing, "Miles College needs freedom!" Every glorious shade of black, they danced and clapped as they stepped, pushing each other playfully. Ironically, I was going to be singing to the most unpolitical blacks in all of Ala bama. Everybody involved in the movement was in town getting arrested.

Perhaps it was better that way. The amazing thing that happened had already begun as we stood on the lawn, talking with some of our hosts. As we looked around we saw white folks arriving, here and there, in small groups, or two at a time. They just quietly walked across the green and up to the entrance of the main building, all of which shouldn't have seemed odd, but did. Our hosts were also staring at the silent arrivals. One of them said thoughtfully, "This is the first time whites have ever stepped foot onta this campus."

The auditorium slowly filled to capacity, the center section made up of whites and a few blacks, and the side sections mostly blacks. I was experiencing something more than stage fright. I was fearing for my life. There was a revolution going on all around us, and if a white businessman and his family wanted to hear me sing "Fair and Tender Maidens," they had to come and sit in this boiling hot room and integrate an audience. I walked out onstage, took a bow and fought the slamming of my heart. In the first song there was a loud bang in the balcony. Every muscle in my body jerked, my skin went all prickly, and I thought I would simply pass out from fright. A quiet exclamation of nodding and shrugging rippled through the audience ("Must have been a chair collapsing"), and then my heart began slowing back to normal. I sang and talked, and no one seemed bored. Perhaps it was partly because of the electricity we could feel emanating from the center of town, miles away, where the kids were at that very moment being arrested and filling paddy wagons, singing and praying, scared to their bones but bolstered by each other's presence and by the knowledge that they were doing right in the eyes of God. Images of the kids gave me courage, and the concert was beautiful. It ended with "We Shall Overcome," and the audience rose and held hands, swaying back and forth while they sang. The singing was soft and tentative and many people were crying.

Years later, I was told by an influential Washington liberal that she had been there that day, sitting next to a noted right-wing news columnist. He explained to her that he was only there out of curiosity, but at the end he rose with her and sang, holding her hand and weeping along with so many others. She said that that concert had an overwhelming impact on her life. And so it did on mine.

The fire hoses aimed and sprayed, the dogs charged and sank their fangs through raggedy sleeves and into flesh, the billy clubs swung and struck, and Dr. King went to jail. The world watched, and all the civilized people put their thoughts, prayers, energies, sympathies, and letters with the black community, which was, rapidly now, and with the great dignity of nonviolence, rising to its feet and standing tall for the first time in American history. "Y'see," said Dr. King, "a man cain't rahhhd your back if it's straight!" On the train going to the next city we learned that the Gadston Motel had been bombed, but that no one had been hurt.

The first time I had a serious talk with King was in 1965. Andy Young was taking me to see King in his room, during a Southern Christian Leadership Conference meeting in South Carolina. We stopped outside of King's door, and my stomach knotted up as I heard King's voice raised in anger and frustration. Andy waited for a moment before knocking and slipping us both in. James Bevel and Jesse Jackson were there, hollering on about something to do with loyalty. King had a drink in his hand, and his eyes were glistening with tears. He was going on about how he couldn't take the pressure anymore, that he just wanted to go back to Memphis and preach in his little church, and he was tired of being a leader. He let a tear roll down his cheek and slither to a halt on that powerful jawbone. A woman who worked with King was crying over the sink in the bathroom. I went in and hugged her, not caring whether or not she wanted to explain anything, only wanting to be of some use and comfort.

Perhaps I was shocked at first that ow-uh great leader would get drunk and curse and weep and talk crazy and, I suspected, attaching rumors I'd heard to the scene in the hotel room, have girlfriends. But I was more relieved than shocked to be a witness to his human frailties. I knew that he would be criticized for his "weaknesses," and I knew also that it was inhuman to expect more from him than he could do, or be, or than he was already giving. Maybe someday I would be in a similar position. I wanted understanding and forgiveness in advance.

King was smiling but sheepish when we met the next day.

"Well," he began, "now that you know Ah'm not a saint ..."

"And I'm not the Virgin Mary," I said. "What a relief!"

***

The evening before the planning breakfast in Grenada (which King had slept through), I had been invited to go with James Bevel, a maniacal and wonderful and lesser-known preacher and aide to King, Jesse Jackson, Andy Young, and Hosea Williams to pick King up at the airport. I tried not to show my giddy delight at the fact that I would finally be with him, behind the scenes, hearing the planning and in talk of the leadership. I huddled by the window of the movement rent-a-car, looking out at the lush evergreens dripping with moss, and the undergrowth creeping up to meet the branches.

"Gosh, it's beautiful down here," I ventured. They all started to laugh and then thickened their accents for my benefit.

"Down heah we calls 'at beautiful scenery a swamp, an' folks that does'n pick enough bales o' cotton gits t'sIeep down there ..."

"Yeah, sleep fo' long tahm!"

I felt like an ass, but they all went into such gales of laughter that I had to laugh with them.

Bevel started telling survival stories about how he did the "Sambo." He said one time he was driving down this very road, and in the rearview mirror he saw a po-lice car pull out to follow him. He got nervous and sped up, and so, of course, did the po- ice. So he floored it and took off, in some wild fantasy that the junk heap he was driving could outdistance a sheriff's car. Naturally, the police caught up after a brief chase, lights flashing and siren screaming, and pulled Bevel over. Bevel jumped out of the car and ran up to the policemen, twisting his hat in his hands and doing what he called the "Sambo."

"Oh, Lawd," he strted in. "Ah sho' am glad l' see you be de police! Ah thought dey wuz some kids chasin' me and Ah done got so skeert Ah took off. Lawd Amighty, jus' whin Ah thot Ah wuz done fo' Ah seen yo' lights flashin', and oh, thank yew, off'suh, thank yew! Sho' feels lahk you jes save the life o' this po' nigguh ..." My eyes must have been half out of my head listening to Bevel and watching everyone howl with laughter, even though they'd heard the story a hundred times.

We quieted down as we pulled into the airport. Traveling mixed was risky anywhere in the South, and picking up Dr. King was even riskier, even though the FBI was supposed to secure his safety. I never knew how I really felt about the FBI. In a way, I was glad they were there, because they were paid to keep us from being lynched by the Ku Klux Klan. On the other hand, many of them were just regular southern folks who couldn't stand us either, and would be happy for any accident that might befall us outside of their jurisdiction.

King's plane landed, and after he'd got past the folks in the airport, we bundled him into the car and headed off. To my utter surprise, no serious matter was discussed all the way back to town. The jokes started up again, and King had brought some fresh ones from the last stop. They were mostly about blacks, and though I tried not to approve, everyone was having such a wonderful time, laughing with each new joke till they had to get out their handkerchiefs, that I abandoned myself to the merry, highly imprudent entertainment until the next event, which was food. King loved to eat.

Walking into the tiny soul-food restaurant with him was like walking in with God. Every face in the room was transformed. He smiled at everyone, and they nodded and smiled back reverently. Some of them carne up to shake his hand, and others couldn't stop thanking him, and still others just shook their heads in quiet amazement and brushed tears away. King ate with unrestrained gusto. I think I ordered just what he did, and apple pie and ice cream for dessert. The next day we would walk to school with a line of black elementary students who, up till now, had been refused admission to an all-white school. King would rally everyone in the church, and talk about how all folks were equal in God's eyes, and how we must love our white brothers and sisters, and understand that some of them were sick in their minds. It would be a scary little walk, but I would be right next to King and quite happy to die there.

Before King arrived, we had had rallies in the church and marches in town, led by the local organizers. In the center of Grenada, we had sung and clapped hands and prayed and greeted the local townspeople, including Klansmen who perched 'on little stools on the sidewalks, leaning against the parking meters, peeling apples and picking their fingernails with huge, ominous-looking switchblades. Once a blue-eyed freckled boy of eight hopped out of a pickup truck and carne up to me.

"Hi," I said. I had seen children curl their lips before, but usually in imitation of movie gangsters.

"Nigguh-lovuh," he said, looking me square in the eye.

"Well, yes, I suppose so, if you have to put it that way ... and what's your name?"

Startled at my friendliness he ran back to the truck. Most of the stores closed their curtains and the proprietors and salespeople pulled them aside cautiously and peeked out of chinks in the venetian blinds. At the umpteenth turn past the local beauty parlor, a tiny miracle took place, the kind that reminds one that life includes little victories among its big defeats. The door opened a crack and a girl's white hand thrust briefly and timidly out of the darkness making the V for victory sign. Should she read this, I thank her now for her bold action. Later on, all the women stood outside leaning against the storefront and there was no way to know which one of them had risked her job to offer us that fleeting moment of support.

Of the many photographs I have of myself and famous people, there is one which I had framed and have never forgotten. It is of King and me at the head of that line of schoolchildren in Grenada, Mississippi. Ira is in back of me, and Andy, and then a long string of kids, an black.

They were shining in smiles on that day, to be with their leader, and to be doing something important. King talked a lot about "historic moments," and they knew that this was one of them. A bright pigtailed girl was holding my hand. News cameras from every channel were there, and dozens of photographers. Across the street a clump of white kids headed to the same school. They looked particularly pasty, frightened, and unhappy on this day, not at an like a . "superior race." I whispered to King, "Martin, what in the hen are we doing? You want these magnificent spirits to be like them?," indicating the miserable little band on the opposite curb. "We must be nuts!" King nodded majestically at an overanxious cameraman, and said out of the corner of his mouth, "Ahem ... Not while the cameras are rollin' ..."

When we were a block from the school, we were stopped by the biggest policeman in the world. King wasn't much taller than my five feet six inches, and I felt as though we were encountering an alien from another planet. I'm sure the policeman felt the same way.

"Good morning," I said steadfastly. "We're walking these children to class."

"Yew cain't go no futhuh than this point."

"Well, they'd like to go to school, and we're just helping them exercise their rights as citizens."

"Yew cain't go no futhuh than this point. Only the payents kin go futhuh than this point."

"Yes. Well, I have a letter here from one of the parents which puts me in charge. Like a guardian," I bluffed on.

"Sorry. No futhuh than this point." After several minutes of this dialogue, we turned back.

That evening several hundred million people watched the news and saw black school children in Mississippi denied the right to their formal education. And, due more to the presence of the news media, alas, than to the power of love, no rocks had been thrown or kids beaten, at least at one school.

***

The time came when King was confronted with a terrible decision. He had to decide whether or not to come out openly against the war in Vietnam. Blacks were fighting and dying on the front lines of that already controversial and unpopular war. The civil rights movement's slogan, "Freedom now!," was already taking on a new dimension.

King would choose to take a public stand against the war, calling it illegal and immoral. His direct line to Lyndon Johnson would vanish in a day, and his own people would be thrown into confusion and division. He had listened to the "still, small voice within," a Quaker expression for conscience or guiding light and, in my opinion, he paid for it with his life.

King and Andy came to visit Ira and me when we were in jail in 1967. I had sung in a big benefit for S.C.L.C. at the Oakland  Coliseum. Harry Belafonte was there, and Sammy Davis, Jr. Sammy went up and put his arms around Harry and, looking up into his gorgeous face, said, "How come you're so tall and handsome and I'm so short and ugly?" And Harry had embraced him and said, "I guess that's just the way God planned it," and they had both laughed. After the show, Sammy went off to entertain the troops in Vietnam, and I went off to get three and a half hours of sleep before sitting in at the Oakland induction center in support of the antidraft movement. I was arrested along with about thirty-five other women and many men, and served the first of my two jail sentences over that specific issue, a short ten days.

Toward the end of our stay at the Santa Rita Rehabilitation Center, Ira and I got the news that King was coming to visit us. The "regulars," more than half of whom were black, were in a tizzy of excitement, and were told that under no circumstance would they be allowed to get near King. I tried to find a way to sneak one or two into the visiting room. Martin and Andy were sitting at a table in a little cubicle when I arrived. We embraced and talked. King looked tired. Tired and resigned. I felt guilty, as jail for me had entailed practically no sacrifice at all. I was gaining weight and making a lot of friends, and had plenty of time by myself. I made life miserable for the lieutenant and the guards by noncooperating with arbitrary orders, but then I'd sing them a song, or just chat, which confused them all the more. As my distinguished visitors and I talked, I spotted an animated black face peering around a partition and a hand gesticulating wildly to me. I winked at King and Andy and made a "shhhh" with my lips, and beckoned the girl over. She shook King's hand as he stood up to greet her, spread a tiny wrinkled paper out on the table and, in a frantic jumble, dropped her pencil, said "Shit!," and asked him if she could have his autograph. He said, "Certainly," and she said, "Hurry!," just as the sergeant appeared, smiling woodenly.

"I invited her in to meet Dr. King," I said in my most kissy tone. "I hope I'm not breaking any rules ..."

The girl ran off and, unable to contain her joy, let out a whoop when she reached her waiting friends.

"I got it! I got it! An' I shook his han'!" She wasn't allowed to go to the movies that night, but she lay on her bunk, glowing.

"I don' give a shit 'bout no fuckin' movie. I shook his han' and touched him and talked l' him ... Nuthin' kin ever take that away from me!"

Forgive me, Martin, but when you died, I couldn't feel anything. David and Ira and I were on tour, speaking and singing about draft resistance. We were in a crummy little motel back east, and Ira knocked on David's and my room and announced that you had been shot. When the press came to interview me the next day, when you were dead, I talked mostly of our differences, how you wanted the black people to have their share of the American society ... and how I thought having black sheriffs and city officials would not do much to transform corruption, and told them I didn't believe in funerals and would not be going. I did not watch the coverage of the funeral.

I wasn't ready to think about saying goodbye to you until eight years later. I was flipping the TV channels one afternoon after vacuuming the house. The cats and dogs were already settling down to stretch and scratch and spread their hairs all over the living room rug. I patted the rug next to me for the big shepherd to come and lie down. She complied, and I scratched her behind the ears and kissed her on the nose and thought about how cozy all the animals were, and how they kept me honest, cleaning up after them ... and I poked the remote control again, hoping to find something mindless to relax to. Instead, I saw your face. You and Coretta were getting off a plane. She was beautiful and you were wearing your hat, and you both looked young and fresh as an Easter day. You talked to the press, explaining about your commitment to nonviolent change, and I could feel the impact of you on my life coming at me like a tornado. There was nowhere to hide, and anyway, I was already transfixed and beginning to relive those mighty times. Gabe walked into the room, and I realized that I was soaked in tears.

"Listen, honey," I said, ''I'll be like this for a little while. If you want to see one of the greatest men in history, along with some of the toughest kids ..."

Gabe sat with me for a while, and he saw the children being attacked by dogs. I pointed out Bull Connor, who had given the orders, and Gabe said he was a "fucker." I told him that King didn't even hate Mr. Connor, because he considered him to be just one of his brothers who was sick in his mind.

"Well, I think he's a fucker," said Gabe, and then he patted my knee and looked up at my face apprehensively, not because he'd said fucker, but because kids hate to see their parents cry, and I simply couldn't stop. I kissed him and told him that I was absolutely okay, and would stop crying when the movie was over, and he kissed me and told me he loved me, and went out to play.

The documentary ended with the funeral, and your voice-over, giving your own eulogy, " Martin Luther King, Jr., trahhhd to live his life servin' others Martin Luther King, Jr., trahhhd to love somebody, I want ya ta say that I trahhhd ta be right on the war question ... I did trahhh to feed the hungry ... I want ya ta be able to say that I did trahhh in my life to clothe those who were naked ... that I did trahhh to visit those who were in prison ..." I saw Andy dressed in robes, sitting in a huge thronelike chair, wiping away tears. I felt as though the two of you would tear my heart right out of my chest. I watched what I could see through veils of tears, to the bitter end ... the procession, the mule and the wooden cart, the crowds. I saw the "dignitaries," who I thought had no business being there, and was glad I hadn't attended the funeral. And all the while, I kept trying to say goodbye.

And now, as I write these pages about you, another nine years have passed, and I see that I still can't say goodbye, and I see that it doesn't matter, and I don't have to. What I was concerned with was not your flesh, but your spirit, and it is as alive for me today as it was when I sang you awake in the little room in Grenada, Mississippi.

You, more than anyone else who has been a part of my life, are my hope and inspiration. When I hear the mountaintop speech, which is playing now, I long, more than anything, for the time and the place to come right again ... that my path will be clear again ... I long to regain the sureness of commitment and direction to go back out on the streets again, and know that the most important thing in my life is to do God's will. I long to end the preoccupation with age and death and all the pettiness from now till then, and to know that you must have known when you said, ''I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will." Because He had allowed you to go up to the mountaintop, and you had looked over and seen the promised land.

Every time I hear your voice, it brings me back to the foot of the mountain. I don't lack the courage, Martin. It's just that in the eighties I can't seem to find where the path begins.

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