He put all of them down there. King's papers. That man wrote him on
everything—on his book, on his taxes, on his dealing with Fred Gray down
in Alabama when Gray wanted to rip him off for so much money for
representing him, on meeting out of Chicago. The whole emphasis of this
man was giving King advice and King seemed to have regarded his advice
highly. What was your impression of Stanley Levinson, number one?
Another individual was Bayard Ruskin. Ruskin gave him a great deal of
advice and there's something that's puzzling me in David Louis' book.
You mentioned about the middle of 1959
[interruption] King backed out at the last minute on his
participation in the Southern Conference on Education, in part because
he feared he might be called a communist being sympathetic to communism.
But at the same time, he was getting ready to make a recommendation to
the board that they hire Dayard Ruskin as his special assistant. There
was already rumors out that Ruskin might be
associated with or might have socialist or communist leanings. So I
can't reconcile how on one hand he would just completely disassociate
himself with S.C.E., and on the other hand he was going to
whole-heartedly endorse Ruskin when he pointed out in his recommendation
that he was mind ful of the fact that this might be
misinterpreted—people might attribute our going in different direction.
But he felt Ruskin was so valuable to him that he had to take that
chance.
And one other person that I want you to speak to is Smiley, Glen Smiley.
Now Mr. William Noah, who worked with F.O.R. along with Smiley, wrote
King around the middle of 1959. This was when all of this was coming to
a head. He suggested to him that there was some friction between Smiley
and Ruskin and that both of them were trying to get his attention. And
King replied to him by saying, yeah, he had been observing it for a
number of months but he was at a loss to know exactly what to do about
it. But there's no question about Smiley's committment to non-violent
principles and the fact that he was willing to give his all to S.C.L.C.
and the cause of non-violence.
These individuals, in addition to yourself, keep coming up.