Growing Up King (16 page)

Uncle A.D.’s daughter, cousin Darlene, died while out jogging in 1976. She vomited and choked on it and suffocated. My cousin
Alfred died similarly in 1986, while jogging, of a heart attack. Darlene’s death was another chunk taken out of my grandfather—out
of all of us. In the back of our minds we could not help but think, Who would be next?

Where the King Center is now on Auburn Avenue, there used to be an open lot. As a kid I played in this open lot, which was
on the east side of Ebenezer Church. This is where the King Center now stands. The King Center was constructed in phases.
We watched it all come up out of nothing—the reflecting pool and arched, covered walkway known as “Freedom Walkway.” Next
the administration building went up, then adjacent to it, Freedom Hall was constructed. The construction of the center was
rewarding to Mother, because it was her insurance that her husband’s message and spirit would endure. There were people, well-intentioned
people, who thought it could never happen. Even Uncle Andy had talked about how he didn’t believe it could happen. Building
a multimillion-dollar anything is going to be difficult, whether it be to Martin Luther King, Jr.’s memory, or not. Many Americans—
white Americans—were still trying to figure out if Dr. King was friend or foe.

It wasn’t hard for me to figure.

Jimmy Carter, along with Henry Ford, helped galvanize the effort. Granddaddy King was pivotal in raising funds for the King
Center.

My college training, especially the first two years, brought many doubts into my mind… I revolted too against the emotionalism
of much Negro religion… shouting and stamping. I didn’t understand it, and it embarrassed me. I often say that if we, as a
people, had as much religion in our hearts and souls as we have in our legs and feet, we could change the world.

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

S
ome people are fine doing the routine, following a tradition. They are capable of it, fulfilled by it, and the circumstances
on which their routine or tradition was built do largely remain the same. Such was not the case for me. I think of Bernice
and Yolanda and Martin, and each, in his or her own way, was fine and good following traditional steps. I was not. If it reflects
badly on me, I can’t change it now. I can only go on from here. I use the comparison of the sacrament and the ceremony. To
me, sacrament is what’s in your heart; ceremony is what people expect you to do about it. A wedding is the ceremony, but the
love that you share with your companion is the sacrament. You do the ceremony for others, not for you; society, the world
at large, needs to see proof to feel it’s validated. In God’s sight, you’re there anyway. I wanted to find a connection to
something inspirational. I looked for it in a book, in a classroom, but didn’t find it there.

The fruitless search was never more evident than in my years at Morehouse College, a place of wonderful traditions, mostly.
There’s no great disappointment where there’s no great love. If I was an actor like Will Smith, a hooper like Kobe Bryant,
a ballplayer like Hank Aaron, a producer like Quincy Jones, I wouldn’t even have needed high school; you just go on to the
next thing you’re good at, were meant to do. But being the son of Martin Luther King, Jr., put extra oomph into my feelings
of failure when I didn’t follow his exact footprints.

I didn’t graduate Morehouse, but I did matriculate there. Had I been named Dexter Smith or something, and school hadn’t worked
out, then I would have just left. Being who I was, I couldn’t just leave. I still felt like I’d accomplished something by
the time I left Morehouse for good. It isn’t like I hate the memory. It was more a good feeling, actually. At least I knew
what I wasn’t.

It started with graduating from Frederick Douglass High. That year, 1979, there were three graduations in the family. Martin
graduated from Morehouse. Yolanda graduated from NYU, the MFA program in theater. “We’ve arrived!” I can still hear her chortling.
She was not the same Yoki after our father passed, but she could still be exuberant.

I couldn’t join in her feelings. People were telling me, “Oh you got no choice. You’re going to Morehouse.” Great-granddaddy
A. D. Williams was in the Morehouse class of 1898, the second graduating class of its existence; Granddaddy M. L. King, Sr.,
was class of 1930; Daddy was class of 1948; Uncle A.D. was class of 1950. Pressure never came from within 234 Sunset, yet
despite that everybody assumed, “Your mom and grandpa won’t let you go anywhere else.” Sure, Granddaddy King wanted me to
go to Morehouse. But he wanted Dad to do a lot of things he didn’t do either. Mother said, “Son, you don’t have to go there.
But you must go somewhere.”

I had at least three football scholarships. I almost ended up at the University of Southern California. If I’d chosen USC,
I could well have had a minor pro football career. The coaching and recruiting staff at USC didn’t exactly hound me, but the
offer was there if I wanted it.

If I stayed in Atlanta, I reasoned there would be some obvious advantages. Football didn’t interest me that much after high
school. I thought I was interested in electrical engineering.

People always ask young people, “What is it you want to do?” And in my opinion, all but the very lucky are thinking, “I don’t
know, what do you want me to do?” In high school, I was in a club called JETS, Junior Engineering Technology Society; then
there was also being the handyman for Big Mama.

Morehouse, like all the colleges in the AU Center, had dual-degree programs where you could take classes at AU Center and
Georgia Tech. In five years you’re out with two degrees—sounded good to me. I chose Morehouse. I said, “If I stay here, I’m
not going to play sports, because as far as football goes, Morehouse isn’t that well-known for it, so I figure I’m not going
to waste my time fooling around.” So I got into the engineering program and quickly realized it wasn’t what I wanted to do.
I’d heard of young people who started off in engineering and ended up in law school, for instance. I didn’t feel bad about
it. There was plenty else to feel bad about.

My brother had a collection of jazz LPs, vinyl, in his campus dorm room; and he had every reason to escape to them via headphones.
He took the first wave, the brunt of expectations at Morehouse for the sons of the school’s most famous alumnus. The pressure
on Martin, being Daddy’s namesake, was enormous. My first exposure to Lonnie Liston Smith and contemporary jazz fusion came
because of Martin at Morehouse. I hung out in his room, getting my mind expanded by Lonnie Liston Smith, vocals by his brother
Donald Smith, doing “Expansions” and “Give Peace a Chance” off the
Visions of a New World
LP. Music lived and moved and grooved and grew inside me. I didn’t concentrate on it. It just was.

In high school, I believed if I didn’t go to Morehouse, it would be scandalous.
Jet
editor emeritus the late Robert Johnson;
Ebony
editor Lerone Bennett; Maynard Jackson; Julian Bond; Olympic gold medalist Edwin Moses—all went to Morehouse; and in attendance
there at the same time as my brother, Martin, was a guy named Spike Lee. I didn’t notice him a lot, but I’d seen him. Always
thought he was somehow different. Everybody did; it was an impression we all had; Spike was kind of ahead of his time. I think
the word is “innovative.” Not a Big Man on Campus type. His persona was more tied to coming up with creative pursuits. Because
his was not a mainstream type of persona, he had a cult following— his troupe, if you will. Always had people hanging out
with him, kind of an entourage. I think he still works with some of those people till this day. I never really got to know
him in terms of working in that inner circle. I was on the periphery, a high school kid, the kid brother of Martin III. I
didn’t stand out. I don’t think anybody knew he was going to be the Spike Lee he is today. At that time, who was thinking
that far ahead?

I was going over to see Martin at Morehouse, hanging out, picking up the campus vibe, deejaying parties still. At one point
I had two or three mobile units; people working for me. My first memorable encounter with Spike was when he was directing
the Morehouse homecoming coronation, like in his movie
School Daze,
only this was real; I helped do the sound, audio engineering, even though I was still in high school. Spike Lee finished
Morehouse as I was about to enter freshman year.

I noticed the barrier still existed, even at Morehouse; the barrier was that people didn’t know how to relate to me and Martin,
whether to be down home, or serious, or more formal. I didn’t know how to be with myself, after always having to deal with
“What does the family of King represent?” We don’t have royalty in this country, as African Americans. Don’t have it or need
it. But maybe, like most people, secretly we do kind of want it. We want our version of it. We need positive myths; all people
do. One thing that got through my thick head at Morehouse was that some of the students and faculty needed to see Martin and
me as scions of the royal King family. But that also meant that those people didn’t really want to see or get to know the
real us, two young men trying to figure out who we were like every other college student in America. I tried to do well, but
maybe I didn’t try hard enough. Or maybe it wasn’t in me. Better to have people think I didn’t try hard than the alternative—that
somehow I didn’t have the equipment.

College life was still fun. Even I knew that. I managed to be less inhibited, worried less about the responsibilities of being
Dr. King’s son. I wanted no part of it. I’d seen what it got you. And so I became the black sheep of the family. Didn’t fit
the mold. Doing my own thing and being unconventional. Deejaying, and a preacher’s kid—PK, that’s one name I got called at
Morehouse.

Isaac came to Morehouse a year after I did. I never went to him specifically with any of my frustrations. We were always in
each other’s heads, so I didn’t have to. His situation was similar to mine. After all, his mother, Aunt Christine, taught
at Spelman. Seemed as if we both had to live out other people’s ideas. We were constantly talking through things because we
were dealing with some of the same issues. Some people seemed to be successful at college and yet became what we called “professional
students”—there were a number of them at the AU Center schools, who, for one reason or another, wound up staying in undergraduate
school five, six, seven, eight years. Not that they were stupid; they liked being there—the three squares, the casual academic
environment, the new batches of coeds every year, the safety of the college campus and the avoidance of the workaday world.
They were in their own way institutionalized. Others may have bright minds, but the regimentation of academia, for one reason
or another, doesn’t reveal their strengths. I don’t know why, but academic regimentation didn’t reveal me. I did know that.
I wasn’t the first one in history. I happened to be the first in my immediate family.

It was not the best idea for me, to follow the family male scholarly theme in the first place. We—Isaac and I—should’ve gone
away to school. Maybe to the army. But the armed forces weren’t options for me. The son of the prince of nonviolence, an infantryman?
Wouldn’t do. Then I was constantly being asked, “When are you going into the ministry?” Or “Pre-law? Hm?” We come from five
generations of ministers. Granddaddy’s mother and father had been functionally illiterate; when he first came to Atlanta,
there was not a high school or library where blacks could go. Like most black southern families, mine believed vehemently
in education, believed in it because for so long they were denied it, in some cases they could trace back only a generation
or two privileged by it. It affected Martin III at Morehouse. He was called out as Martin Luther King, Jr.’s son lots of times,
but with the piano playing of Lonnie Liston Smith consoling his ear, he made it through.

Aunt Christine was on the faculty at Spelman. Granddaddy had served on some of the boards of the institutions in the AU Center,
namely Morehouse and Atlanta University. Since Daddy’s death, there had been plans to build a bronze statue of him in front
of the Morehouse administration building. Eventually the memorial was built.

Maynard Jackson had been mayor of Atlanta. Now Andy Young was gearing up for a successful run at being mayor. Contrary to
what segregationists always said, Atlanta was still there after integration—not only was it there, it was also bigger and
better than ever.

In 1981, my third year at Morehouse, Uncle Andy ran for mayor and was elected.

I had always thought that I might pursue a career in politics; maybe even become Georgia’s first black governor. I was interested
in the arena, and it would serve the family legacy. But later, I saw how my brother got treated in politics. He was a Fulton
County commissioner in 1986. Isaac was his campaign manager. I helped on his campaign by organizing a fund-raiser that Robert
F. Kennedy, Jr., attended at which the singer Jennifer Holliday performed, at the home of Michael Lomax, the chairman of the
Fulton County Commission. Martin did get elected and served two terms. I admire Martin. I know deep down he wants to help
humanity. I know he cares. But I saw how he got dragged through the mud because he wasn’t Daddy. I said, “Not me.”