Mr. Brackman:
I had the pleasure of spending much of last Sunday with Dr. King, or as you might choose to say, he spent much of the day under my so-called "protective arm." He impressed me more favorably than he apparently did you.
I found Dr. King gracious, warm, humble, and above all sincere. I did not sense this "slickness" nor this "air of good living almost of opulence" you refer to, nor does Dr. King's "smooth polish" remind me of a "movie star" or of a "foreign car salesman."
His thoughts on non-violence and his historical understanding of the Negro revolution help to make Dr. King the spiritual leader of his people. To label him merely a man of "style" is to do him an injustice.
Dr. King may not as of yet succumbed to Southern brutality and a toothbrush may accompany him to his cell, but your implication that he either lacks courage or the willingness to dirty his hands is in poor taste. Dr. King may get a police escort when he speaks in Boston, but whenever he travels through the Deep South (and he does so frequently), and whenever he defies its leaders and flaunts its laws, he exhibits courage of the highest sort.
I am sad you think Dr. King "was saying things that didn't need to be said at Harvard." Must Harvard choose between Malcolm X and Allen Ginsberg for speaker of the year?
Your most startling comment prophesies the failure of Dr. King's leadership and his consequent slipping into oblivion. The winning of a Nobel Peace Prize is a strange prelude to such obsolescence.
Perhaps I should not have been so protective of Dr. King, for if you had passed more time with him, you might have reacted differently. Burt Robs '65
Mr. Brackman relies:
If you have the chance to look over my article again, I hope you will find that I too was impressed with Dr. King's warmth, humility, sincerity. That he has enormous style, a style that we can immediately react to, may sometimes obscure, but never deny, the higher qualities you observe.
At Harvard, Dr. King chose not to analyze issues. Instead he spoke eloquently, with the rhetoric of the preacher and politician, and interspersed platitudes with references to William James, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Thoreau, Gordon Allport and a score more. His speech here was not very good. In another context--e.g., the dramatic setting of the Washington March--he can be magnificent.
I did not go so far as to prophesy the failure of King's leadership. I wished only to suggest that other Negro spokesmen, now operating within his broad-based coalition; may soon demand more widespread social and economic readjustments than King is willing to press for. If and when this happens, King will still be a "leader," but we will no longer be able to view the "movement" (or the race) as working for reform in a homogeneous and conciliatory manner.
