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Reverend describes King's last moments at the Lorraine Motel. (6:25)
 

Pastor of Monumental Baptist Church, reflects on how witnessing Dr. King's assassination has impacted his life. (17:56)
 

Tavis: Reverend Samuel "Billy" Kyles is the long-time pastor of the Monumental Baptist Church here in Memphis and the man who persuaded Dr. King to come here in support of striking sanitation workers back in 1968. Reverend Kyles, always an honor to see you.

Rev. Samuel "Billy" Kyles: My pleasure.

Tavis: How you been, man?

Kyles: Doing well.

Tavis: Must be a busy week for you, I can imagine.

Kyles: It is, but it's a good busy.

Tavis: Yeah. What do you mean by "good busy," because I can see the flipside of that, which is that it takes you back to all those memories of 40 years ago that might not be so good for you.

Kyles: Well yeah, but we work through those, and the fact that 40 years later you have the international press here and your press here and all these people coming in, normally the further you get away from a death date the less interest there is in the individual. And all this interest in the life and times of Martin Luther King is quite inspiring.

Tavis: And why do you think that is?

Kyles: Well, I think because he was a servant leader. He had so much compassion for the poor, and he took the mandate seriously that the voice of the poor needed to be heard, so. And he was a human being. We look at him now as this great icon and all that, but he was a human being who really cared about poor people. He was working on the Poor People's Campaign when he was killed.

Tavis: Tell me about your life. I'm going to come to the story of your relationship with Martin King in just a second and why you wanted him here and what he was doing at your house, headed to your house that night for dinner - talk about that in just a second. First, though, take me back to your life in this city before Martin King, your life as an organizer, as a worker.

Kyles: I was arrested in Memphis, Tennessee, very much like the bus that you see in the museum, for sitting on the front of the bus. And as I go around the country lecturing to young people, I tell them in my lifetime, I was arrested for sitting on the front of the bus, not in some foreign country - in America. Memphis, Tennessee, U.S.A.

And some interesting things happened. The people on the back of the bus - when I sat down on the front, the bus driver said, "What are you doing? You know the Jim Crow laws, you can't sit up here." I said, "Well, today I'm sitting up here." He said, "I'm calling the police." I said, "Well, do what you have to do."

He called the police. While waiting for the police - and the White people got off the bus and the Blacks were still in the back. The Black people on the back of the bus said to me, very respectfully, "Reverend, why don't you come on back here where you belong so we can go to work?" I bore them no ill will because they had to live with so many can'ts - you can't do this, you can't do that, you can't do the other.

I went to the back of the bus but I didn't go to keep from getting arrested. I went back there to have a civil rights meeting. So I had this meeting in the back of the bus with the Blacks. I said, "Do you see a steering wheel back here? Do you see clutch and driving mechanism?" They said, "No." I said, "There's no driving mechanism in the back. How can we ever drive these buses? We can do more than clean them. Our tax money supports them, and here we are having to sit in the back." I said, "We can do better than that. Am I making sense?" They said, "Yes, Reverend, we're sorry. We'll wait." So they went to work, I went to jail.

But as I speak to you now, the chairman of the trustees board of the church that I pastor is the president and general manager of the same bus company that arrested me.

Tavis: Wow.

Kyles: Yes.

Tavis: That's a great story.

Kyles: Yes, yes.

Tavis: Forty years later. What a story.

Kyles: Yes.

Tavis: So around the time that you were on the bus trying to make your argument, sanitation workers in this city were being maltreated, just like everybody else Black in this city was being maltreated, and so there comes the occasion where you think the time has come to get Dr. King to this city to help with the sanitation workers who were striking or going on strike. Tell me how and why you reached out to Dr. King to come to this city for that occasion.

Kyles: When you get a movement going in a city and you bring in various speakers, you really know when it's time to bring in Martin. The whole community came to the support of the workers. First of all, we tried to get them to go back. It was February and we said, "You really don't want to strike in February. You want to wait till July and August and June where you have the flies and the stench and that whole thing."

But they were so determined they would not go back. So we joined them. We had marches every day, and really had a movement going, and we knew it was time to send for Martin. When we sent for him, called for him to come, it went through his staff and the staff said, "Well, we support what you're doing but we just don't have time to come to Memphis because we're behind with the Poor People's Campaign, and we can't come."

So Martin got word of that and he overruled the staff. He said, "Oh, no, this is the group we're talking about. They're not lazy, shiftless people. They work hard. They just don't make enough to make a living."

Tavis: So he overruled his staff and decided to come to Memphis anyway.

Kyles: Yes, came on to Memphis anyway, yeah, he did, and made a great speech. And we got greedy and said, Martin, will you come back and lead a march? And he said, "Work it out." So we worked it out, and he came back to lead that march. Unfortunately it broke up in violence and he was so hurt it just - it tore at it him so.

And he said, "We're going to go back to Memphis and have a peaceful march, otherwise we can't go to Washington with the campaign." He came back into Memphis. He sent most of his staff into Memphis to work Memphis on how to have a peaceful march.

Tavis: Right.

Kyles: So that's why all the staff happened to have been here when the assassination took place. And then he came back on the third and it was thundering and lightning and raining and he thought there wouldn't be many - we had rallies every night, and this night -

Tavis: Rallies building up to the march.

Kyles: yes.

Tavis: Okay.

Kyles: And this night, the weather was so inclement that he said, "I'm going to stay at the motel and work on the Poor People's Campaign. You guys go to the church and have the meeting." He thought there wouldn't be many people because of the weather.

So we went to the church - Abernathy went, he came in, Jesse Jackson came in, Andy Young came in, I came in. And the people started clapping, and Abernathy's preacher sensed that these people ain't clapping for us; they think Martin coming in behind us. I ain't making no speech tonight. And he went to the phone and called Martin.

We almost missed, Tavis, the mountaintop speech. If Ralph had not made that call, there would have been no mountaintop speech. While waiting - so Martin came on over to the temple, Mason Temple, and while waiting to be introduced the shutters in the back of the church kept banging. And I noticed every time they would bang, he would do that.

Tavis: Martin would jump?

Kyles: Yeah, he would jump like that. So I had the custodian to turn the fans on and blow the shutters out so they wouldn't bang, and then Abernathy that night introduced Martin fully 20 minutes, and nobody said a word. That was very unusual, because in our tradition we know how to get the introducer out of the way. Amen, brother, amen. Amen.

Tavis: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyles: That means "get out the way, you are not the speaker."

Tavis: But he went 20 minutes.

Kyles: And nobody said a word. We had no way of knowing that would be the last introduction he'd make of his friend.

Tavis: So he gives the speech on that night, on the third, goes back to the hotel, and the next day he is coming to your house for dinner. And I love the joke, he said to you - I'll paraphrase, you'll give the exact quote, but he was teasing you about what y'all were going to have for dinner. What did he say to you?

Kyles: Oh, no, he didn't want that fancy stuff, no filet mignon, all that.

Tavis: He said it better be real soul food.

Kyles: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tavis: Yeah. Do you recall - it's a silly question but I've always wanted to ask you this, as many times as we've talked - do you all what you all had prepared? Because he was on his way to your house for dinner when he left his hotel room, 306, in this building. Do you recall what y'all were going to feed Martin that night?

Kyles: Well, the women of the church really had cooked and they cooked real southern food - fried chicken, baked ham, turnip greens, corns, sweet potatoes -

Tavis: That would have been his last meal.

Kyles: Yes, yes.

Tavis: How do you - you started out a few minutes ago at the top of this conversation very positive, talking about the fact that we've worked through it, and you told a wonderful story about how they wouldn't let where you wanted to sit on the bus and now the chairman of the bus company is a member of your church.

Kyles: Trustee chairman.

Tavis: Trustee chairman of the bus company now. Tell me how you have processed, how you've navigated your own life for these 40 years, having been there with him when he was assassinated.

Kyles: Yeah, I need to say just a think about that speech, too. In that speech he talked about death more - the last speech - than he'd ever talked about, than I'd heard him talk about it. He said, "The plane that I came over here in from Atlanta was under guard all night," because there were so many death threats against his life. And he said, "I may not get there with you, but you'll get to the Promised Land because God has allowed me to go on the mountain, and I've looked over and I've seen the Promised Land."

And when he said, "I may not get there," I am so certain he meant "I won't get there," but he wouldn't tell us he wouldn't get there. That would have been too much for us. So he softened it and said, "I may not get there. I may not get there, but you will get to the Promised Land." And then he said, "Tonight, I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the coming of the - " it is as if he preached himself through the fear of death. He got it out of him.

And that's why the next day, April 4th, he was so lighthearted. He and Andy Young started off pillow-fighting, telling jokes and having meetings, but lighthearted. And I went to get him - I told him dinner was at 5:00. So I came over here to get him at 5:00. He said, "Oh, no, dinner's not till 6:00, and I'm in no hurry. I called the house; they said it's at 6:00. I'm in no hurry, have a seat." He was never in a hurry, that's why I told him 5:00, hoping to get there by 6:00. (Laughter)

And I took a seat. That gave me, Tavis, the wonderful opportunity to spend the last hour of his life on Earth - three preachers in a room: Abernathy, King, and Kyles. And of the three, I am the only one left. And the world has asked what did three preachers do in a room for an hour? I say, "We talked preacher talk." They say, "What's preacher talk?" I say, "Whatever preachers talk about is preacher talk."

We were telling jokes. It was three guys hanging out. And he loved a good joke. He said, "If a preacher couldn't tell a joke, don't even fool with him because he can't preach, either." One of the things he said was that "Did you buy a new house?" I said, "I'm buying it." I said, "How'd you know?" He said, "I have my sources." I said, "Yeah, I'm buying a new house."

He said, "Well, don't be like that preacher in Atlanta. He bought a new house, invited Coretta and I to dinner. We got to the house - it was a gorgeous house. But when we went inside, he didn't have a stick of furniture. We had to have dinner on a card table, (laughter) the Kool-Aid was hot, the ham was cold, the biscuits were hard." Man, he just beat that dinner to death. (Laughter) He said, "Now if I go to your house and discover that you have bought a house and can't buy food, I'm going to call the networks - ABC, NBC, CBS, and all of them - and say, 'The Reverend Billy Kyles bought a new house, but he can't buy food.'" That kind of lightheartedness.

We stepped out on the balcony. Abernathy was still shaving, putting on lotion or something. And he was greeting people in the courtyard. He saw Jesse Jackson, said, "Jesse, you're not dressed for dinner." Jesse said, "I don't need a shirt and tie, I have an appetite; that's all I need."

And he was very lighthearted through the whole thing. He said, "And don't take that whole band to Kyles' house." Jesse brought a band down, breadbasket band down. He said, "I'm not taking the band, but I want you to meet the leader of the band. He's from Memphis." He said, "Bring him on over here."

We're up on the balcony at the railing, they were in the courtyard. So they started walking towards the balcony. And then somebody said, "It's going to be chilly to night; you'd better get your coat." So he said, "Ralph, bring my - " he didn't go back to the room. He said, "Ralph, bring my coat when you come out."

He was leaning over the railing talking to Ben and Jesse. I said, "Guys - " Martin stood here and I stood here. I said, "Guys, let's go. We have a rally after dinner." I turned to walk away. I got about five steps, and the shot rang out -kapow.

I looked back. He had been knocked from the railing back onto the floor. I rushed to his side. There was a gaping hole in the right side of his face, and a bigger wound under his shirt I could not see. But there was so much blood - blood was everywhere. I ran in the room to use the phone. You couldn't use the phone without the operator. When she heard the shot, she left the switchboard, came out into the courtyard, looked up and saw Martin lying on the floor, and she immediately had a heart attack. She died a few days later. She was the motel owner's wife.

Tavis: It is a riveting story to even hear 40 years later, and it is a blessing that of the three who were in that last meeting, headed to the last supper, you were the last one here. I take it that you take that as a blessing.

Kyles: Well, yes, I do, because when I - I couldn't get the operator and all that and I hollered to the police, "Call an ambulance on your police radio." And there was just so much blood. And I took a spread and covered him from his neck down, and told the ambulance where to take him, what hospital. And we waited. Got somebody on the phone, told Jesse to call Mrs. King, I called my house.

And then we waited, and we waited. And I wondered. Finally, the word came: we lost him. We lost him. And I wondered, "Why was I there?" We were personal friends and all that, young pastors and preachers, but why was I there at that crucial moment in time? And God revealed to me why I was there: crucifixions have to have witnesses, and I was there to be a witness.

And I have to be a truthful witness, because a lying witness is dangerous. A witness who has information and won't share it is of no consequence. And so my witness is Martin Luther King Jr. didn't die in some foolish, untoward way. He didn't overdose, he wasn't shot by a jealous lover, he wasn't shot leaving the scene of a crime.

He was a man with an earned Ph.D. degree at 28, a Nobel Peace Prize at 34 - at that time, the youngest to get one - and here he is, oratorical skills off the charts, all the things he could have been - U.N. ambassador, university president, megachurches around the nation - but here he is with all of these skills dying on a balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, helping garbage workers.

And they said, "We will shoot this dreamer and see what happens to his dream." That's where the witness comes in. The witness will tell all who will listen "Yes, you can kill the dreamer, but no, you absolutely cannot kill the dream." And so that witness has taken me through all of this for the last 40 years. I know that's what I'm supposed to do, and that's what I do.

Tavis: And he's still doing it 40 years later, the Reverend Samuel "Billy" Kyles, whose home Dr. King was on the way to for that last dinner. Reverend Kyles, good to see you, man.

Kyles: Always a pleasure.

Tavis: I'm glad to have you on the program.

Kyles: Always a pleasure.

Tavis: Stay strong in your work and your witness.

Kyles: Thank you.

Tavis: All right.

Kyles: Thank you.

Tavis: So Reverend Kyles was responsible for getting Martin to this city. Up next we'll talk to Taylor Rogers, one of the organizers of the sanitation strike here in Memphis back in 1968.