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business with might not want to deal with a bunch of bleeding hearts), I cannot say. But I respected their sense of propriety and justice. Nelson Rockefellers attitude back then
was the very soul of the well-worn and oft-misused phrase
compassionate conservatism.
Even the most cavalier student of American history knows
that Martin King ended up imprisoned in the Birmingham
city jail in the spring of 1963, and the hows and whys
are not the subject of this book. But something that has been
missed in the ongoing historical excavation is a fascinating
issue of economics. Just how was the SCLC able to make
good on its promise to bail out the schoolchildren whose parents would never allow them to stay in jail when we did not
have enough money to cover even a fraction of the unanticipated number of protesters locked up by Birminghams notoriously brutal public safety commissioner Bull Connor?
A good friend once told me, It seems like you were the bagman of the Civil Rights Movement. He meant it as a compliment, Im sure, but either way he was exactly right. Along
with Stanley Levison, my role in The Movementjust as in
my Wall Street workwas to make it rain.
Martin famously spent several gut-wrenching days in
solitary confinement, but by the time I had gotten in to see
him, he had been allowed back into the large, crowded holding cell. Solitary had been an intense experience. Martin King
may have been a man whose very personality was forged by

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the discipline of Christian faith, but he was not unafraid in

that cell. Fear is something so primal it cannot be willed away
by anything as man-made as sheer discipline. That experience didnt make him a frightened man, but the anxiety and
dread touched Martin easily because he loved life, and he
knew how tentative its continuation might be for a person
in his position. But solitary confinement also forced him to
focus on these things in a way that his everyday life didnt
allow. Though it was unnerving to Martin, it fed the flame of
his spirituality and nourishedemboldenedhis soul.
While in jail, Martin had been given a copy of The
Birmingham Herald, the local newspaper that ran the nowinfamous so-called open letter signed by eight white Alabama
clergymen. In reality it was a full-page paid advertisement,
one harshly critical of Martins techniques for trying to effect
change in the South. It was an attempt at appeasement by
the citys white religious establishment upon personally witnessing the power of The Movement. The ad read, in part:
In Birmingham, recent public events have given indication that
we all have opportunity for a new constructive and realistic approach to racial problems.
However, we are now confronted by a series of demonstrations by some of our Negro citizens, directed and led in part
by outsiders. We recognize the natural impatience of people who
feel that their hopes are slow in being realized. But we are convinced that these demonstrations are unwise and untimely.6

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That outsider was my friend and, more importantly, a legal

client. For that reason, while he was in jail, I alone among
those involved with the SCLC was allowed to see him.
When I finally reached him, he pushed the newspaper
at me, agitated. Have you seen this? he demanded.
I told him I had not. Ive been tied up raising funds,
Martin, I explained. But I looked over the ad there in the jail
cell. When I finished, I pointed out that it was cowardly bullshit. But I had to agree that, if the statements went unanswered, they had the potential to adversely influence white
people of goodwill throughout the country. Yes, a timely response to the white clergymens ad was a good idea. But I have
always known that you have to put out the fire closest to you,
so I had to share with Martin my concern (as well as Stanleys)
regarding the potential impact on his leadership if we could
not provide sufficient bail for the young demonstrators who
had followed and joined him in incarceration. Mothers were
screaming for us to get their kids out of jail and back to school,
and we did not have the money to honor our promise.
Martin understood and acknowledged the seriousness
of the bail issue but seemed far more concerned about
almost distracted bythe newspaper ad. It eclipsed his attention. I have to answer this, he said.
Now I noticed for the first time what Martin had done
to his copy of the newspaper. The margins were black with
his scribbling. His manifesto. I knew what it was like, that
feverish rush of ideology coming out of the point of a pen

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or, in this case, the broken nub of a pencil. The eight white
clergymen had truly upset Martin, and this was a man who
had been nothing but forgiving when he had faced down
fire hoses and police dogs or been stabbed in the chest while
autographing books.
Take this out of here, Martin whispered, opening my
suit coat and stuffing the pages in my waistband. Have Dora
type it up, okay? I thought it was crazy, but I was his lawyer
and a close friend. I began hiding the crucial sheets of newsprint where I could.
This mish-mash of words and arrows connecting them
would one day become the Letter from a Birmingham Jail,
a document in American social history up there with the
Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. But I
didnt know that then. All I knew was that there was
newsprint and toilet paper stuffed under my shirt and down
my pants, and Martin was not going to solve the bail money
problem from inside a cell. It was up to me.
See if you can smuggle some paper in for me tomorrow, Martin said.
I handed in the first scraps of what would turn out to be several days of Martins writings to Dora and Wyatt Tee, the
SCLCs chief of staff at the time.
What am I supposed to do with this? Dora asked.
Treat it like anything else he hand writes and asks you
to type, I said.

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Yeah, but he gives me those on lined paper. In order.

I offered a shrug. She knew exactly what to do. Decode it, I said. Well see what it looks like in the morning.
From my room in the Gaston Motel, I called Harry Belafonte. It was the same call any of us has made a hundred
times in our life. We have a money problem; we need someone to complain to about it. I wasnt asking for a solution,
just a shoulder to support me while I worried aloud. I needed
a sounding board while I sorted through what our options
were for raising funds.
But Harry surprised me. I have an idea, he said. I
think I can stir the pot. Let me do a little legwork. Ill get
back to you.
The next day I returned to Birmingham Jail and was
able to slip to Martin a legal pad, a pen, and Doras typedup draft. It wasnt exactly a file baked in a cake, but I have
to admit I did some sweating as the guards debated on
whether it was proper procedure to frisk a prisoners attorney, something the other guards hadnt considered the previous day.
With paper and a pen Martin was able to make much
better progress on his answer to the clergymen. Now even I
could see the power of what he had in mind. No wonder he
couldnt be bothered to worry about mundane bail issues.
What amazed me was there was absolutely no reference material for Martin to draw upon. There he was, pulling quote
after quote from thin air. The Bible, yes, as might be expected