I was only 15 years old in March of 1965 when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to Monroe.
At the time, I was not aware of the Civil Rights movement Dr. King led. I saw on television that he made a speech in Washington about his dream.
The dots didn’t begin to connect until I came to a Boy Scout meeting at the old First Baptist Church on 8th Street and found that the church was boarded up with chains on the doors. We were told that our scout meeting had been canceled because “Dr. King was supposed to speak here.”
I found out in subsequent years that Dr. King was moving across the South, drumming up support for the proposed 1965 Voting Rights Act. I didn’t know what that was, but subsequent conversations with the late Dr. John Reddix informed me that Dr. King had been invited to speak in Monroe, Shreveport, and other areas promoting the Voting Rights Act.
From conversations with the late W.L. “Jack” Howard, former Mayor of Monroe, I learned that Monroe’s leadership felt King’s presence would attract national media attention that would do more harm than good. He said he met with over 200 white businesses and encouraged them to desegregate Monroe before King’s arrival to avoid confrontations.
Howard said he called upon many prominent Monroe Negro leaders to test the city’s desegregation efforts by eating at public restaurants and using facilities that were previously denied to Negroes. The leaders, led by Morris Henry Carroll, Joe Pendleton, A.H. Bowie, and others, tested the public facilities and were served without incident. Afterward, they were convinced that Howard would desegregate Monroe without the media confrontation and violence they feared would come with a King visit.
Rev. P.C. Keal, pastor of First Baptist, had the church boarded up and King’s invitation to speak at First Baptist canceled. When King’s private plane landed in Monroe, a delegation of Negro leaders met him before Dr. Reddix arrived and told him that Monroe could handle its desegregation efforts internally. They thanked him for coming but asked him to leave.
Dr. King had received an invitation from the NAACP but was being disinvited by another group of leaders. He boarded his plane and flew to Shreveport, La., for a voting rights rally in that city.
A few days later, he was on national television attempting to cross the Edmond Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala.
Of course, Dr. Reddix and his wife Frances were upset. Desegregation of public facilities was not King’s reason for visiting Monroe; voting rights was the issue. The 1964 Civil Rights Act had made it illegal to discriminate in public accommodations. “Howard didn’t give us anything we didn’t already have,” said Dr. Reddix. He said Caroll and company fell for a smokescreen to divert attention from the voting rights issue.
Voting discrimination in Monroe was a national issue because the local registrar had purged over 5,000 blacks from the voting books in 1956, allowing Howard to be elected. Dr. Reddix and Attorney James Sharp testified before Congress about the injustices in Monroe, which was a reason King was invited to Monroe.
This week, Congress is against trying to pass legislation related to voting rights.
This week we also celebrated Dr. King’s birthday, but the issue of voting rights is still on the table, 57 years later.
