A witness to history recalls Dr. King

Typically, examining the civil rights movement involves flipping through textbooks or listening to a lecture of second-hand information. On Thursday, VCU students and visitors from Virginia Union University were given insight into the movement from a man who was at its core: Wyatt Tee Walker.

Though often overlooked, Walker played a crucial role in the struggle for equality in one of America’s redefining eras. In 1960, Walker became the first full-time director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization that helped propel Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. into the most visible figure in the civil rights movement.

Later, as King’s chief of staff, Walker worked closely alongside the legendary civil rights leader while they sculpted the national message that illustrated King’s vision. During the next decade, Walker even substituted regularly for King in public appearances when he was sick or jailed as a result of the movement.

In his speech at VCU, Walker focused on outlining King’s legacy. The 76-year-old figure described King’s accomplishments from an up-close perspective and challenged what he called “revisionist historians” by redefining King’s mark on the United States.

“Since his brutal assassination in 1968, most of the attempts to decipher the mystique of Martin Luther King Jr. have failed,” said Walker, who now lives in Chester.

Walker discussed King’s impact on five areas: statutory segregation, public accommodations, the right to vote, human rights and international issues.

It’s not accurate, he said, to directly attribute the end of segregation to court challenges. Instead, Walker said, segregation came to an end because King convinced people that segregation was unacceptable.

“They committed themselves to pay any price, suffer any penalty, and to bear any burden until the walls of segregation came tumbling down,” he said.

When those walls fell, everyone benefited, Walker said. He said every improvement for blacks also helped other groups of people. The struggle for desegregation in schools, he pointed out, resulted in improved education for all.

Walker concluded his prepared speech by saying that at the center of King’s revolution was the ideal that communities should only judge a person “based on the fundamental of his or her being and not on the specificity of their identity.”

VCU Professor Clarence Thomas invited Walker to speak at VCU in conjunction with his Minorities and the Mass Media course and the Association of Black Communicators. Thomas, who said he first interviewed Walker as part of a civil rights history project for the Library of Congress, said Walker is still passionate about the issues he discussed in front of the audience.

“I think what keeps him motivated is the urgency of spreading the word to the younger generation,” Thomas said. “When you speak to people of that generation who have worked in the movement, a lot of them realize the people in the current generation are not even familiar with the movement.”

Walker, who survived four strokes in 12 months, showed his drive to keep informing younger generations about the civil rights movement by surmounting his health concerns.

“I would stand and speak to you, but I’m not able,” he told the audience. “As I get around, I tell people that I don’t intend any disrespect by not standing. Truth is the same whether you stand or sit.”

After his speech, Walker answered questions from the audience – and vividly recalling such now-historic moments as the “I Have a Dream” speech King gave in Washington, D.C., in 1963.

Before the speech, he said, “Andy Young and I stayed up all night that night, because we thought the ‘I Have a Dream’ section was hackneyed and trite. It had been used 25 to 35 times before, and we thought Dr. King needed a new conclusion. Of course, we were wrong, and Dr. King was right, because we had not envisioned that it would become a world stage.”

Walker was worried as he walked the grounds where the speech was to be held. He and other members of King’s staff feared a small audience might weaken the speech’s influence.

“We felt that if it was a sparse crowd, the nation would not pay much attention to our demands. If it was a big crowd, they’d have to pay attention. And I can’t tell you the thrill that was in my heart to see those buses streaming in from north and south with pilgrims to that great march on Washington.”

Walker looked ahead as well, advising the crowd to keep resisting racism and prejudice. He also acknowledged a gradual passing of the torch in the fight for equality, noting the recent deaths of Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King.

“Rosa Parks’ death and Mrs. King’s death signaled to me that our generation is passing – what I think was the greatest generation America has produced. Time is catching up with us,” Walker said.

He also addressed economic disparities in society today. King was convinced, Walker said, that there would not be a breakthrough in racism until wealth was evenly distributed.

Walker’s candid replies to some questions elicited particularly impassioned crowd reactions.

In one instance, Walker responded with visible frustration to recent concerns about King’s alleged infidelity.

“The journalists must do their research to find that most of the stories about his infidelity were planted by the FBI in order to defame him, and they were allegations that have never been proven,” Walker said.

Walker then gave his take on the perception that the federal government sought to bring King down for his disagreement with the Vietnam War.

“Most of us in the movement believe that Dr. King was assassinated by the military-industrial complex because of his opposition to the war,” he said. “A hit was put on him in Memphis. I do not believe James Earl Ray pulled the trigger.”

As for future strides toward social equality, Walker offered some words of advice. First, he emphasized the importance of the church in African-American life. The church, he said, must be “liberation headquarters.”

Walker also decried the obsession with material goods often associated with the age group he called “the hip-hop generation.”

“The generation of which I’ve been a part has been influenced by ideas rather than things. Dr. King died a poor man,” he said. “And this generation has been seduced by ‘bling bling’ and big cars and money and power rather than ideas.”

After the event, Thomas said Walker joked with him about how he was originally coming to speak before a single class. But with such a major figure coming to the university, Thomas said he knew he couldn’t limit the experience to 30 students.

“It had to become a bigger event,” Thomas said. “He’s too important of a historical figure. It grew from my class to maybe a couple of classes. It just kind of grew and grew to where we wound up with over 300 people in the audience.”