Growing Up King (23 page)

So I was confirmed, but there was this undercurrent of contentiousness that went on past the January confirmation, even past
the April installation ceremonies. Some wealthy board members feared I was going to come out and confront all these people,
and stir things up, and try to wreak revenge. I never was going to do that. I kept it to myself, and my mother and siblings.
The general public never really knew about this.

Someone on the board put it out that a rift had come up between my mother and me. It was tense between Mother and me sometimes,
and really, as much as anything, that is what also led to my resigning as the titular president and head of the King Center
that following August.

The board called me in one day, after having discussed with Barbara Skinner her departure. There were professional differences
between the board and her, and she was moving on. They didn’t tell me or consult with me on that. Why would they? I was the
ultimate target because I stood between them and Mother. This was the last straw for me. Since Day One I had had numerous
battles with some board members who had never supported me and who wanted to micromanage the King Center. Even more important,
I was not being allowed to carry out the vision I had articulated for the Center, which was to bring my father’s message of
nonviolence to new generations of young people who needed it most of all.

I said to myself, “The mature thing to do is get out of the way, you all can have this.” I felt like, “If it means this much
to them where they’re going to go through all this stuff to hurt me, to hurt my mother, to hurt the King Center, then hey,
they can have it.”

Some people said, “If you were just a little more diplomatic,” or “If you understood you have to kind of work your way into
it.” In other words, they were saying, Stay and be a figurehead and eventually you’ll get it. I was president reporting to
the CEO. Mother was CEO. Then there was the board chairman. Then an “oversight committee.” I had a title with no means of
accomplishing anything, I only had the liability of being in charge, ceremonially, emotionally, and spiritually if something
went wrong.

When I resigned from the King Center in August ’89, I was devastated. I felt betrayed, torn. I felt then that while Mother
hadn’t caused the problem directly, she had indirectly. At the time I didn’t understand that she was an innocent bystander.
I was suffering to even have to question whether or not my mother had a hand in my leaving. I now don’t think she did, but
at the time I was still hurt. Some of her people had betrayed me. After I left, I went through other experiences that opened
my eyes, matured me; eventually I saw her hands had been tied, but at the time, I felt like she had cut me adrift—not willingly,
yet it had happened. These were her people, as I saw it. There should have been allegiance from them to her, at least to the
point where if she had intervened, they wouldn’t have been able to confront me in the way that they did.

Mother and I had verbal knock-down-drag-out arguments about it; I felt betrayed by her, and told her so. My father and grandfather
had had the same kind of philosophical arguments as well. And my grandfather had had similar arguments with his father.

I had been told that we at the Center would be able to work together to get things done, so I had tried to work in their structure,
against my better judgment. I felt it was flawed. I don’t know if it was anybody’s fault. The structure was not practical
or workable. But we tried it anyway; the experiment didn’t succeed. Mother fell victim to what some people were saying about
me: “What credentials does he have?” Mother, once she’s firmly behind something, will support it ardently, and she did support
my coming in. However, she didn’t know how to appease or placate those voices of dissent that were bringing to her attention
these “inadequacies” on my part, as they saw them.

Mother was concerned about appearances. I was not a traditional candidate, but then neither was Daddy. I’d never, ever compare
myself to him; but let’s face it, on some level he was not a traditional leader. He was a C student at Morehouse, an average
student by most academic standards, and became a true scholar only later. He reached heights of understanding I can’t hope
to equal, emulate, or imitate; yet his grandparents were functionally illiterate. So how do you judge a man? By where he’s
from, or by where he’s going? How do you judge a person’s efficiency without first giving them an opportunity to be efficient,
to fail, and to try again?

I don’t fault the board now. They put pressure on Mother, put her in an awkward spot, she was caught between a rock and a
hard place—I’m her son, she supported me, but then she had people to answer to, some out of the Movement. My hope was she
would’ve somehow been able to see beyond the past to our future; as a mom, I knew she’d support me, but I wanted her to validate
me, to believe that I knew what I was doing. Not just support me because I’m her child, because the legacy needs heirs, but
because quickly I’ll know what I’m doing, I’ll bring something fresh, modern to bear. But on the other hand, would she know
that from past experience?

Those other factions preyed on that doubt. They pushed her hot buttons and knew exactly how to get into her insecurities.
I could tell when they had talked to her. I could hear it in the tone of her voice, her discomfort.

“Mother, what is it?”

“It’s… nothing.”

When she says “nothing,” it’s usually something big.

Once I saw that everything I was trying to do was being shot down, I knew I had no support. At board meetings there had been
confrontations; there was open, deep hostility that these older people had for me, particularly older black males I didn’t
know. Some of those who found my presence objectionable were my father’s peers. All of them knew my father, but weren’t necessarily
of the inner circle. I resigned in August of 1989, but remained on the King Center board. Resignation was painful, but the
bigger trauma would have been not to resign. Mother’s getting caught in the crossfire—that threw me.

I was living alone in a townhouse in Midtown Atlanta by the end of ’89. I did not look back; but I could not look forward
either. I was stuck in a place of hurt, anger, and confusion. My old friend Phil Jones, my loyal confidant, friend, and collaborator,
went through all of this with me as a sounding board, and was probably the closest person to me. He knew the dynamics of it
all. Now he was like my consiglieri. He’d sat in on some proceedings, was a person who understood what went on from my point
of view. And he stuck by me. I could talk to him. He became my closest adviser. The choice I made—not going public or creating
a scene—was no choice. The press was looking for a story behind my leaving. I would not talk to anybody. With a newly minted
King national holiday, the last thing we needed was scandalous infighting. The media tried to make it about a rift between
me and my mother, but it wasn’t. The real rift was with these board members. But I didn’t go public, so I couldn’t defend
myself. I felt bad that my leaving the King Center presidency was portrayed as Mother’s and my having problems.

By November, I was in a funk. The only thing that saved me, outside my friendship with Phil, was that I’d met a woman who
became my girlfriend, a woman who was at the right place at the right time for me. I’ll call her Good Natured. I met her at
an event. I fell head over heels in love with Good Natured, such as it is within my ability to fall; I took her through all
of my ups and downs, which is my habit—maybe it is the habit of all men. She’d roll with the punches. I was on some kind of
journey of self-discovery and she was there with me, going through a shedding of the old skin, a metamorphosis, a slow, painful
one; she was there and went through it, good and bad. The relationship ended after two and a half years, got to a point where
our main issues—well, I don’t even know why we broke up, to tell you God’s honest truth. Sometimes I wish we hadn’t. It got
to the point where we were constantly at each other’s throats over any- and everything. But I never questioned whether this
was somebody I deeply cared for. Still, we didn’t make it.

I started doing therapy during that period with someone who wasn’t a traditional therapist, meaning she wasn’t a psychiatrist
or psychologist, but a spiritual counselor and an alternative health specialist. She helped me to realize I had issues I was
still dealing with in regard to Daddy’s death. “Dexter, you must come to grips with your father’s death in order to move on,”
became her mantra. When I was younger and went through that phase, meeting with therapists, I never got any answers I could
use. This was the first opening where I was dealing with psychological, emotional, spiritual needs. I was in year two of my
vegetarianism; I was in the zealot stage, I was learning, I was self-righteous about it. This was another reason why the relationship
with Good Natured soured; I imposed it on her: “You’ve got to be a vegetarian, you have got to eat this way.” The things I
love, I smother. Part of it, I learned through counseling, is because of the trauma of Daddy’s death; he and Big Mama and
Uncle A.D. gone. I developed a protective shell, where I was not giving of my heart because of too much pain. I held on to
my heart. There was this control thing, not knowing how to open up with the people closest to me because I’d been hurt, afraid
anybody who got close to me would be taken away. I wouldn’t let anyone close. That was my protection. I was told this over
and over. It just wasn’t really crystallizing.

Before that, I thought it was everybody else’s problem. I thought it was Good Natured’s.

I didn’t realize I was pushing her to some of these places and causing her to lash out. I was controlling and creating my
environment. We Kings were always so stoic, so necessarily stoic, after Daddy’s murder. I watched my mom and she seemed so
stoic and strong; me never really emoting or crying was no accident. Obviously emotions were touched. For a long time after
we broke up, Good Natured and I didn’t speak. The relationship ended badly; there was no communication. Later I tried to reach
out to her, but she’d been hurt. Said she had to shut me off in order to protect her feelings. Once I realized the hurt I
had caused her was my fault, I reached out to her to apologize and ask for her forgiveness. But she had already forgiven me
long before so that she might move on with her life. I can say today that we are on good terms. When we talk now about it,
it’s almost like yesterday, and it’s been many years. I feel fortunate that I was able to get out of denial for a while with
her. I was walking around oblivious to the fact I was carrying baggage.

On January 11, 1990, Mother unveiled the Behold monument. It was not on the King Center grounds, but just across Auburn Avenue,
on the National Park Service grounds, near a small mini-amphitheater. The plaque says it is a tribute to her late husband
and an enduring inspiration to all who fight for dignity, social justice, and human rights. The sculptor, Patrick Morelli,
was inspired by scenes from the ’70s TV miniseries
Roots,
the scene of actor Thalmus Rasulala, portraying the Gambian father, Omoro Kinte, lifting his newborn son Kunta to a star-studded
African night sky and reciting these words: “Behold, the only thing greater than yourself.” The statue itself is of the “baptism”
of the infant Kizzy, by her father, the slave Kunta Kinte, played by LeVar Burton.

Across Auburn Avenue stood the King Center administration building; that side of the street also holds old Ebenezer, and my
father’s tomb in the middle of the reflecting pool. Across Auburn is the Behold monument, and soon there would stand a new
multimillion-dollar Ebenezer Baptist Church; Ebenezer Horizon Sanctuary; then also the King Visitor Center set up by the National
Park Service for the 700,000 tourists who visit the King Historic District each year. Up Auburn Avenue a bit on that same
side of the street is the King Natatorium, the swimming pool. Above Boulevard, on the same side of Auburn Avenue as the King
Center, is Fire Station No. 6. Across from that, shotgun row houses, private residences; across from them, Daddy’s birth home,
501 Auburn Avenue. I often drove by his birth home. It was demanded of us, furthering this legacy. But even though physically
I was refreshed, spiritually I felt hollowed out, banished, betrayed, and, somehow, a betrayer. There was only one place left
to look for help.

B
ernice was seventeen when she heard the Call. My grandfather had always looked for it to first reach Martin III, Isaac, Derek,
Al, Vernon, one of his grandsons, the Call that for various reasons he and then both his sons, my father and Uncle A.D., had
received, in their different personal circumstances and lifetimes.

I never got it. Isaac never got it. Martin never got it. Derek got it, and Vernon got it. Meanwhile, Bernice got the Call
clear and strong. She says an inner voice told her she was going to preach like my father. For years she resisted it—for eight
years, from when she first got the Call before age eighteen until she was twenty-five years old. When she was a younger woman
she saw and felt and thought that preaching was something for men, mature men at that. No wonder she would get that impression,
since she was in the South, since she was in Atlanta, since she was in the Baptist Church, and since she was in Ebenezer Baptist
Church. Quadruple whammy.