From: theleasthappyfella@gmail.com   
      
   Taylor Branch, "At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968" (2006)   
      
   The triumphs of the Montgomery bus boycott and the March on Washington with   
   its stirring I Have a Dream speech, the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting   
   Rights acts and the winning of the Nobel Peace Prize were all behind Martin   
   Luther King Jr. when he    
   began the last and perhaps loneliest year of his life in January 1968. Now   
   black-power militants and even some of his closest advisers were rejecting   
   King’s philosophy of nonviolence. Many white supporters of the civil rights   
   movement had redirected    
   their enthusiasm–and their dollars–to opposing the war in Vietnam. Other   
   whites chastised King for speaking out against the war. Constant travel to   
   rally support for his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), along   
   with his frequent affairs    
   on the road, strained King’s marriage. Premonitions of death stalked him.   
   Meanwhile, the FBI stepped up its harassment with wiretaps and dirty tricks.   
   Determined to revitalize his mission and himself, King hoped he could achieve   
   both by leading a    
   multiracial crusade against poverty. He called it the Poor People’s   
   Campaign, and although his staff had deep reservations about the idea, he   
   spent what would be his last months planning a new march on Washington. The   
   turbulence of King’s final days    
   comes vividly to life in Time’s exclusive excerpts from At Canaan’s Edge:   
   America in the King Years 1965-68, the final volume of Pulitzer prizewinner   
   Taylor Branch’s three-part history of the civil rights movement and its most   
   charismatic leader.    
   In this portrait of King as a man under siege, his passion and his rhetoric   
   reach new levels of grace.   
      
   JANUARY   
      
   DISCONTENT IN BOTH HIS HOUSES   
      
   King spent the early weeks of the new year flying around the country trying to   
   drum up support for his poverty campaign but he found one of his toughest   
   audiences back home in Atlanta   
      
   WITH HIS AIDE ANDREW YOUNG, KING TOOK A midnight flight through Dallas and   
   reached home early on Jan. 15. They arrived late and exhausted for King’s   
   morning presentation at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he was the pastor. Some   
   60 members of the SCLC    
   staff were gathered from scattered posts with their travel possessions, ready   
   to disperse straight from Atlanta to recruiting assignments for the poverty   
   campaign. SCLC executive director William Rutherford’s summons had described   
   a mandatory workshop    
   of crisp final instructions–'it is imperative'–but King labored more   
   broadly to overcome festering doubt and confusion about why they must go to   
   Washington. He thanked his father Daddy King and others for fill-in speeches   
   to cover his tardiness. He    
   made a faltering joke about the tepid response of friends with their coats   
   still on–'they act like it’s cold in my church'–and betrayed rare unease   
   in a defensive speech.   
      
   'Riots just don’t pay off,' said King. He pronounced them an objective   
   failure beyond morals or faith. 'For if we say that power is the ability to   
   effect change, or the ability to achieve purpose,' he said, 'then it is not   
   powerful to engage in an act    
   that does not do that–no matter how loud you are, and no matter how much you   
   burn.' Likewise, he exhorted the staff to combat the 'romantic illusion' of   
   guerrilla warfare in the style of Che Guevara. No 'black' version of the Cuban   
   revolution could    
   succeed without widespread political sympathy, he asserted, and only a handful   
   of the black minority itself favored insurrection. King extolled the   
   discipline of civil disobedience instead, which he defined not as a right but   
   a personal homage to    
   untapped democratic energy. The staff must 'bring to bear all of the power of   
   nonviolence on the economic problem,' he urged, even though nothing in the   
   Constitution promised a roof or a meal. 'I say all of these things because I   
   want us to know the    
   hardness of the task,' King concluded, breaking off with his most basic plea:   
   'We must not be intimidated by those who are laughing at nonviolence now.'   
      
   By tradition, workshops closed Monday night on a plenary round of music. 'Talk   
   about Peter, talk about Paul!' they sang in jubilant harmony, stomping their   
   feet ahead of claps on the back beat. 'Talk about Doctor King, you can talk   
   about ’em all! Long    
   as I know I’m gonna get my freedom, it’s all right, whoa, it’s all   
   right!' A shout from Andrew Young blocked King at the door–'Don’t let him   
   out of here!'–and hands pulled him into a sudden chorus of Happy Birthday.   
   King wore a sheepish,    
   captured look, recorded by one home-movie camera, when pioneer television host   
   Xernona Clayton came forward to toast his turning 39.   
      
   His affairs had been an open secret for years, but two weeks after his   
   birthday, King confessed one of them to his wife Coretta.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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