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| 143 CHAPTER ELEVEN I Am Not Now and Never Have Been a Member of the Communist Party M artin Luther King Jr. may have used the phrase “our friend,” referring to Stanley Levison, for the first time on November 28, 1962. He dictated a letter from Atlanta to Clarence Jones, in care of the Gandhi Society for Human Rights on Fifth Avenue in New York City. (The Gandhi Society was a somewhat short-lived institute for nonviolence that Jones oversaw. It did not raise much money and was overhauled by 1965 in order to acquire tax-exempt status.) “Dear Clarence,” wrote King. The editor of a publication called The Nation had solicited King to prepare a commentary, he reported. It was to be “something on what should be done on civil rights by the 88th Congress.” The typical working dynamic was now invoked. King wanted Jones to activate Levison to take on an assignment. “I would like to get the article in about the last of December so that it can come out in January. Please have 144| CHAPTER ELEVEN our friend begin working on it and let me know when it can be sent to me. Thank you.”1 This was still several months before the fateful Rose Garden encounter, during which President Kennedy demanded that King detach himself and his organization from Stanley Levison. The separation would require that Jones act as undercover intermediary between the men, filtering information and ideas from one to the other via telephone calls (which were being tapped, as it turned out), discreet letters, and occasional clandestine rendezvous. The code name for Stanley, one laced with affection and truth, was “our friend.” Here it was already being used by King in the November 1962 letter, indicating that both King and Jones by this time knew that their association with Levison was fraught with some danger. The Kennedys had not yet asked for Levison’s discrediting, but the government had been hounding him for years. The fbi, driven by director Hoover’s obsessions, made its first official report to the administration, asserting dangerous Communist-affiliate associations (specifically Levison) with King in January 1962. Robert Kennedy had some of his underlings speak with King, but the preacher was nonplussed. He was not aware of such a possibility and was not disposed to being judgmental about the people who helped him in his cause. He may have privately made some fun of Bayard Rustin’s sexual orientation, but he believed in and trusted Rustin completely. His devotion to Levison was unshakable; he had no illusions about how financially bereft the movement would have been without this “winter soldier.” He really had no direct familiarity with Levison’s alleged Communist participation. And the record shows that, although King has no history of Communist leanings or activities, he did not consider the Party as something malignant or treasonous. On the contrary: King declared from time to time that the egalitarian goals of the Communists were not inconsistent with the ideals of the civil rights movement. This would abet Hoover in his unending attempts to link King, as well as Jones and Belafonte, to Levison and left-wing enemies of the American republic. Hoover’s exertions, backed by the voluminous fbi structure and his own longtime stranglehold on US presidents, pushed the A MEMBER OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY| 145 already mistrustful Robert Kennedy, and his always calculating brother John, into a swirl of paranoia about King and company. Levison was subpoenaed by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in April 1962. Hoover had sent secret memos to Robert Kennedy indicating that confidential sources (which were actually the wiretaps on Stanley’s telephone) proved beyond doubt that King was manipulated by “the communist Levison.” The memoranda reported that it was Levison who had created “in King’s name” the new organization (shepherded by coconspirator Clarence Jones) known as the Gandhi Society for Human Rights. The organization was deemed highly suspect and likely subversive, even though it had a history of inviting noteworthy but decidedly non-Communist guests such as future secretary of state William P. Rogers and future senator Clifford Case (both Republicans) to its gatherings. Yet Hoover’s communications implied that suspected radicals, including Harry Belafonte and A. Philip Randolph (who definitely harbored Communist sympathies) were in on the formation of this dubious agency. Wiretaps, history, prejudice, and informants all combined into a web of foreboding and infamy: innocent or not, tainted or clean, a...

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